1847
“Perhaps You Would Also Like Me to Listen
to Your Brain Beating?”The 1840s were the first decade of steam power in Denmark, and during
his wanderings along the ramparts Kierkegaard could see how, one after the
other, the windmills went over to steam-driven grindstones .This efficient
power source penetrated from the suburbs to the outskirts of the city and
was soon within the ramparts of the city itself; factory chimneys sprung up
everywhere .People complained about the noise and the stinking coal
smoke, but manufacturers and clever investors saw that there was quick
money to be made, and before long the entire town was full of smoke and
steam, all the way from Marstrand Bakery’s little flour mill down in Silke-
gade to Burmeister’s sprawling machine works out in Christianshavn.
The urban scene was also being transformed by a new form of transporta-
tion for which someone had come up with a Latinate and democratic name,
“omnibus,” because these carriages were available to everyone .The first of
these were horse-drawn and drew attention to themselves with their brightly
painted coachwork and with fancy names such as the Sun, the Red Lady,
the Lion, the Eagle, and the North Star .The first omnibuses ran from Ama-
gertorv, in the middle of town, to Frederiksberg, a nearby suburb, but soon
they were traveling out to Lyngby, Charlottenlund, and the Deer Park.
During these years, the steam train was literally breaking new ground .An
enterprising man named Søren Hjorth had studied steam carriages in En-
gland as early as 1834, and on his return to Denmark he and other enthusiasts
began to plan a railroad from Copenhagen to Roskilde; it was opened in
1847 with much ceremony and with the king in attendance .For a long time
this little fragment of railroad was the only line in Scandinavia and was thus
a great tourist attraction, so when university students from Uppsala, Sweden
visited the city in 1852, a trip on the steam train to Valby, about three miles
from the center of town, was one of the diversions with which Copenha-
geners could impress their dumbfounded Scandinavian cousins.
There was also progress in smaller things .In the early 1840s the innumer-
able writers of the day could celebrate the replacement of the old-fashioned,
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