As the clocks struck eight one Monday late in August the big gates to the school grounds swung open. With a shout waiting boys ran through one gate to a playground which they had not seen for several weeks. Crowds of girls ran through a gate to another playground on the other side of that same schoolhouse.

That August day was the first day of school for girls and boys in nearly every city and town in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark.

Girls and boys who live in those countries do not have such long summer vacations as have American girls and boys. Many of them go to school until the first of July and come back to school again in the last week of August. They go to school more days each week, too, than do American children. They go to school on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

They start to school each morning after a very early breakfast. In winter all the children of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark must dress and eat their breakfast by electric lights, and go along the streets to school while the street lights are still burning. Of course, those girls and boys in the far northern part of Norway and Sweden work by electric light in their classrooms all the winter days.

With such an early breakfast, the pupils are hungry by the middle of the morning. They are given a lunch time around ten thirty or eleven o’clock each day. Many girls and boys eat a lunch at the schoolhouse, but others go home for a lunch which they call “breakfast” even though they had eaten an earlier meal. The younger pupils go home from school about one o’clock and the older pupils leave school each day about three o’clock.

Schoolhouses in the lands far to the north look much like American schoolhouses. Of course all the schoolhouses in those countries do not look alike any more than do the school buildings in America.

1. At School in Norway

Harold lives in Oslo, Norway. He is in the third grade. All the pupils in his room are boys and the teacher is a man.

The first day of school was a busy one for Harold. When the boys were in the room the teacher said, “Write your name on the paper which I shall give you.” Harold wrote his name in clear letters.

After the teacher got the names of all the boys he said, “Now I shall tell you what lessons you will have each day. You may write them down on a time plan.”

Harold and his classmates knew what a “time plan” is. The storekeepers in the bookstores had given them pretty picture cards with blank places on them where the pupils could write the names of the subjects and the time at which each would recite. So when the teacher told them the lessons they would have each day they wrote them on their time plans. Harold’s time plan looked like the one shown here.

Most of the subjects the Norwegian girls and boys study in the third grade are the same as those which American pupils study in the third grade. American girls and boys study English; but on Harold’s time plan instead of English is Norsk. Norsk is the name for the language of Norway.

In one of the reading texts which many children read the first picture is a flag of Norway. Across the page from the picture is a poem about Norway. The poem is in Norsk of course. Children in Norway learn that poem so that they can say it without looking at the words.

On the seventeenth of May each year the Norwegian girls and boys march through the streets carrying flags and singing “Ja, vi elsker dette landet.” The seventeenth of May to them is what the Fourth of July is to us. It is their Independence Day.

For many, many years Norway, Sweden, and Denmark were governed by one king. But in 1905 Norwegians became free to govern themselves. They chose a king for their country. On the seventeenth of May each year school children of Oslo and towns near Oslo parade past the palace of the King. The King watches their parade. The children stand very quietly then while the King speaks to them about Norway, their country.

Harold’s sister is in the seventh grade. Her time plan is shown on page 137.

Many pupils in the seventh grade find English to be their hardest subject. Only a few English words are like Norsk words which they speak. On the time plan you see the names of the days of the week—Mandag (Monday), Tirsdag (Tuesday), Onsdag (Wednesday), Torsdag (Thursday), Fredag (Friday), Lørdag (Saturday), Søndag (Sunday). They are much like English names for the days of the week.

Norwegian pupils soon learn the English word “summer,” for the Norsk word is “sommer.” They soon can say “come,” for in Norsk they say “komme,” and “Many thanks” which in Norsk is “Mange takke.”

The Norwegians did not get words from the English, however. The English got words from the Norwegians. Long, long ago some people from these northern lands went to live in the land of the English people. From them the English learned to use some of the old Norsk words and they have kept some of those words in their language. English settlers brought the English language to America, so Americans too use those old Norsk words.

The Norwegian pupils have a hard time learning to pronounce words which have the letter “w,” for “w” is not used in the Norsk language. The English word “warm” is “varme,” “work” is “verke,” “wash” is “vaske,” “window” is “vindue,” “west” is “vest,” and “well” is “vel.”

But, of course, many, many other English words are not at all like Norsk words.

Greda was very happy one morning as she went to school. She carried a small bundle in her hand as she hurried along. When she entered her classroom she whispered to the teacher, “Today is my birthday.” Then the teacher brought out a small stand just big enough to hold the little Swedish flag which Greda took out of her bundle. As Greda put the flag into the flag holder, her classmates said, “Happy birthday, Greda,” and sang a song to the flag.

In that Swedish school girls and boys study almost the same subjects as the Norwegian girls and boys study. When winter comes and snow covers the hills, the skiing teacher comes to school every day. Now skiing sounds like play, but it is a school study for girls and boys in those North lands.

Girls and boys of Norway and Sweden want to be good ski runners and ski jumpers. They begin to ski when they are very young. The young children run only on small hills near the school. The older girls and boys go out to longer mountainsides for their practice.

Of course many pupils get tumbles in the snow as they learn to run on skis. The teacher says, “To be a good ski runner, you must have courage to try, and if you fail, you must laugh and try again.”

Some children of the North lands go to school in the summer too. But the summer school is very different from the regular school. “Summer school is much more fun,” Martha, a Swedish girl, said after she had spent a summer in a camp and had studied with a camp teacher. Her brother Nils likes camp school too.

Martha and Nils are twins. They were nine years old when they went to the summer camp.

That summer Martha picked gooseberries. She learned to make gooseberry pie, gooseberry jelly, and gooseberry preserves. Nils only helped to take the stems off the berries, but he thought that was fun when he worked with the other girls and boys of the camp.

Nils helped to repair the roof on one of the summerhouses. That roof was of red tile. Nils carefully measured and fitted each piece of tile into its proper place.

Nils helped some of the older boys to build a boat. He had his first lesson in rowing in that very boat too.

But both Martha and Nils liked best the foot races which the girls and boys of the camp ran every day. Martha was the best runner of the girls and Nils had a good record too even though he ran with boys larger than himself.

If you were to see a group of school children in a Danish town you would find that they look very much like the Norwegian children and the Swedish children. They look much like girls and boys in America too.

Those children study about the same subjects that the Norwegian and Swedish girls and boys study. They study from books written in Danish. Danish words and Norwegian words are alike in print, but the Danes and the Norwegians do not pronounce them alike.

Since an island is a small body of land with water all around it, and Denmark has so many islands, many girls and boys in Denmark live near water. Since there is so much water in Denmark almost all Danish pupils learn to swim at school. They begin swimming lessons when they first enter school.

In Copenhagen, which is Denmark’s largest city, the schools have swimming contests. On the day of the contests classes from different schools gather at the water front. A high board wall has been built around a part of the water so that the place for the contests looks much like a pool. Mothers and fathers sit on the platform near the walls and watch the contests. Danish flags fly in the breeze. Everybody is excited when the contest begins.

The older girls and boys in the schools in Copenhagen, like those in Oslo, study English. One day each month a librarian visits each school in the city to take books to the pupils. She takes story books written in Danish to the younger pupils. But to the older pupils she takes books written in other languages which they have studied. Some of the books are written in French, some in German, and some in English. Those Danish pupils read some of the same stories that American pupils read in their libraries.