Copenhagen

Copenhagen is the expedition’s last major European stop before Iceland, where Professor Hardwigg secures passage aboard the Valkyrie and turns a visit to a church tower into an impromptu course in confronting heights. The city is both a practical gateway, where introductions and travel arrangements move the expedition forward, and a threshold where Henry begins to acquire the physical composure demanded by the journey below ground.

Arrival and Preparation

After reaching Copenhagen by rail, Professor Hardwigg scarcely pauses for refreshment before presenting a letter of introduction to the director of the Museum of Antiquities. The director, already informed that the travelers are bound for Iceland, does what he can to assist them. Henry privately hopes that no ship will be sailing for so distant a destination; instead, he learns that the Danish schooner Valkyrie is due to leave for Reykjavik on the second of June.

The captain, M. Bjarne, treats the Iceland voyage as routine, while Professor Hardwigg greets their meeting with striking enthusiasm. Bjarne takes advantage of that excitement to double the fare. He tells the travelers to board on Tuesday morning at seven, and the arrangement fixes the next stage of their route. For Professor Hardwigg, Copenhagen is less a place to linger than a place to convert ambition into forward movement.

The City Seen and Overlooked

After breakfast, Henry and his uncle visit the Kongens–Nye–Torw, the king’s palace, a canal bridge near the museum, Thorwaldsen’s immense cenotaph, Rosenberg Castle, and other sights. Yet the professor scarcely notices them: his attention is already absorbed by the anticipated expedition. The contrast sets the city’s familiar monuments against the destination that occupies his mind, making ordinary sightseeing seem almost irrelevant beside the promised underground world.

One structure does arrest Professor Hardwigg’s attention: a church on the Island of Amak, reached by steam ferry and approached through narrow streets where galley slaves work under taskmasters. The church itself seems unremarkable. What draws him is its elevated steeple, which rises from a circular platform and has an exterior staircase winding all the way to its summit. The professor reads the tower not as a monument to admire but as an opportunity to practise.

The Tower as Training Ground

Henry protests that he cannot climb church towers because he is subject to dizziness. Professor Hardwigg nevertheless orders him to come, dismissing delay as a waste of valuable time. Henry yields because his uncle’s commands are difficult to resist. After paying a fee, they obtain the key from a verger who is himself reluctant to make the ascent.

The professor runs up the steps with the ease of a schoolboy. Henry follows, but once outside the tower his head begins to swim. At about 150 steps, near the platform, the cold air and the prospect of the exposed winding staircase leave him clinging to the railing and unable to continue. The height appears to him to climb toward the sky, an image that sharply opposes his preference for the security of the ground. His first response is not wonder but fear, and he cries that he cannot go on.

There is no reprieve. Professor Hardwigg makes him rise and continue, and the first lesson lasts nearly an hour. Henry reaches the ground almost two hours later, bent with pain. The professor calls this enough for one day but intends to begin again the next morning. What starts as a forced ascent becomes a repeated discipline: Henry’s lessons continue for five days, until he can climb cheerfully and look down into the depths without blinking, even taking some pleasure in the view. Copenhagen thus supplies a small but consequential rehearsal for the greater descents to come. The tower does not remove danger from the journey; it changes Henry’s capacity to face it.

A European Threshold and a Measure of Distance

The journey soon leaves Copenhagen behind. In Iceland, Professor Hardwigg presents the letters from Copenhagen to Governor Baron Trampe, who places himself at the professor’s disposal. The city’s introductions therefore carry practical authority beyond its streets, helping the travelers secure cooperation at their destination. They have reached Iceland, but the expedition’s access to local officials is already shaped by connections arranged in Copenhagen.

Copenhagen also belongs to the expedition’s later geography through contrast. At the summit of Sneffels, Professor Hardwigg explains that Greenland is only thirty-five leagues away and identifies the two peaks, while Hans supplies the local name Scartaris for the one on which they stand. The expedition’s knowledge of the landscape is assembled through different kinds of authority: the professor’s measurements and explanations, alongside the guide’s brief place-name. This pattern of describing, identifying, and naming spaces will continue as the travelers move beyond familiar maps.

On the underground sea, Henry records in his journal that the party has traveled 270 leagues, more than 800 miles, since leaving Port Gretchen; they are 620 leagues from Iceland and, according to his calculation, exactly beneath England. The statement gives the adventure a startling geographical scale, but it also recalls the practical departure from Copenhagen: the extraordinary inward route began with a fare, a ship’s sailing date, and letters of introduction. As the expedition’s point of departure toward Iceland, Copenhagen anchors a journey that will turn travel arrangements into an audacious claim about where the travelers have gone.