The First Tour Abroad

One day in September, Sophus Lie left Christiania and set course for the great outside world. He had planned to travel by way of Copenhagen, but when the ship berthed at Fredrikshavn in Denmark, he disembarked and instead, journeyed down through the Jutland Peninsula to Germany and Berlin. The reason he had wanted to visit Copenhagen was that he felt he could obtain good advice there about how he could best spend his time abroad. At least this is what he expressed some while later in a letter to Professor Zeuthen in Copenhagen, where he simultaneously explained why he had not come through that city. Lie wrote, “Unfortunately I am such a wretched Sailor that when we landed in Fredrikshavn, I am ashamed to say, Matter overruled Mind, and I preferred Jutland to Copenhagen?” Were he to have continued on to Copenhagen, he would have had to board another ship. Instead, he proceeded onward by land.