Norwegian Life eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 199 pages of information about Norwegian Life.

Norwegian Life eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 199 pages of information about Norwegian Life.

For young men destined for the technical trades and professions, there are open, after they have passed the maturity examination at the secondary school, two special institutions, where they complete their technical training—­the Technical High School of Stockholm, and the Chalmers Technical Institute at Gothenburg, besides elementary technical schools at other places.  The Stockholm Technical School, which is the most complete, comprises five branches:  (1) mechanical technology and machinery, shipbuilding and electrotechnics; (2) chemical technology; (3) mineralogy, metallurgy, and mining mechanics; (4) architecture; (5) engineering.  The course in each of these sections takes between three and four years.  Generally several are combined, constituting a course of six or seven years.

There are two universities in Sweden—­Upsala in the north, founded in 1477; and Lund in the south, founded in 1668, to which may be added the Medical College in Stockholm, founded in 1810, and limited to the medical faculty.  The studies at these universities are thorough and comprehensive, but unusually long.  They have each four faculties,—­theology, jurisprudence, medicine, and philosophy,—­and grant three different degrees in each, besides special degrees in theology and jurisprudence for entering the church and the government services.  Even these last, which are easiest to obtain, require a course of from four to five years.  To take a medical degree a young man must stay nine years at the university, and two additional years in the hospitals, making eleven years in all.  Unlike English and American universities, the Swedish universities are non-residential.  Like those of the Continent, they are only teaching institutions, and the students who matriculate at Upsala and Lund must lodge in town or board with families living there.  Beyond attending the lectures and going up to be tested, they have no direct intercourse with their professors.

In this brief sketch of the institutions provided by the state it will be seen that what especially characterizes public instruction in Norway and Sweden is its undoubted thoroughness and depth, though a serious penalty is paid for this in the extreme length of the course.  By the time it is completed, and the young man issues from the protracted ordeal, armed for the battle of life, several of the best years of his youth are passed; he is already between twenty-five and thirty years of age when he first treads on the threshold of his career.  On the other hand, he enters it not only with the necessary qualifications whereby to rise to eminence in it, of which the severe tests he has undergone offer evident proof, but with the assurance of finding the way more or less open to success.[i]

CHAPTER X

HAAKON VII, THE NEW KING OF NORWAY

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
Norwegian Life from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.