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[Illustration: FRAIL BRIDGE ON THE ROAD TO THE VÖRING FOSS.]




                              THE OXONIAN
                                  IN
                              THELEMARKEN;

                                  OR,

                NOTES OF TRAVEL IN SOUTH-WESTERN NORWAY
                   IN THE SUMMERS OF 1856 AND 1857.

                  WITH GLANCES AT THE LEGENDARY LORE
                           OF THAT DISTRICT.

                                  BY
                  THE REV. FREDERICK METCALFE, M.A.,
                  FELLOW OF LINCOLN COLLEGE, OXFORD,
                               AUTHOR OF
                       “THE OXONIAN IN NORWAY.”

          “Auf den Bergen ist Freiheit; der Hauch der Grüfte,
          Steigt nicht hinauf in die schönen Lüfte,
          Die Welt is volkommen überall,
          Wo der Mensch nicht hinein kömmt mit seiner Qual.”

          “Tu nidum servas: ego laudo ruris amœni
          Rivos, et musco circumlita saxa, nemusque.”

                            IN TWO VOLUMES.
                               VOL. II.

                                LONDON:
                    HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,
                     SUCCESSORS TO HENRY COLBURN,
                     13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
                                 1858.

               [_The right of Translation is reserved._]

                                LONDON:
                     SAVILL AND EDWARDS, PRINTERS,
                            CHANDOS STREET.




CONTENTS TO VOL. II.


                              CHAPTER I.

    Danish custom-house officials--Home sickness--The ladies of
    Denmark--Ethnological--Sweden and its forests--Influence
    of climate on Peoples--The French court--Norwegian and
    Danish pronunciation--The Swiss of the North--An instance of
    Norwegian slowness--Ingemann, the Walter Scott of Denmark--Hans
    Christian Andersen--Genius in rags--The level plains of
    Zealand--Danish cattle--He who moveth his neighbour’s
    landmark--Beech groves--The tomb of the great Valdemar--The two
    queens--The Probst of Ringstedt--Wicked King Abel--Mormonism
    in Jutland--Roeskilde--Its cathedral--The Semiramis of the
    North--Frederick IV.--Unfortunate Matilda                      pp. 1-17

                             CHAPTER II.

    Copenhagen--Children of Amak--Brisk bargaining--Specimens
    of horn fish--Unlucky dogs--Thorwaldsen’s museum--The Royal
    Assistenz House--Going, gone--The Ethnographic Museum--An
    inexorable professor--Lionizes a big-wig--The stone
    period in Denmark--England’s want of an ethnographical
    collection--A light struck from the flint in the stag’s
    head--The gold period--A Scandinavian idol’s cestus--How
    dead chieftains cheated fashion--Antiquities in gold--Wooden
    almanacks--Bridal crowns--Scandinavian antiquities peculiarly
    interesting to Englishmen--Four thousand a year in return
    for soft sawder--Street scenes in Copenhagen--Thorwaldsen’s
    colossal statues--Blushes for Oxford and Cambridge--A Danish
    comedy--Where the warriors rest                               pp. 18-38

                             CHAPTER III.

    The celebrated Three Crowns Battery--Hamlet’s grave--The Sound
    and its dues--To Fredericksborg--Iceland ponies--Denmark
    an equine paradise--From Copenhagen to Kiel--Tidemann, the
    Norwegian painter--Pictures at Düsseldorf--The boiling
    of the porridge--Düsseldorf theatricals--Memorial of
    Dutch courage--Young heroes--An attempt to describe the
    Dutch language--The Amsterdam canals--Half-and-half in
    Holland--Want of elbow-room--A new Jerusalem--A sketch for
    Juvenal--The museum of Dutch paintings--Magna Charta of Dutch
    independence--Jan Steen’s picture of the _fête_ of Saint
    Nicholas--Dutch art in the 17th century--To Zaandam--Traces
    of Peter the Great--Easy travelling--What the reeds seemed to
    whisper                                                       pp. 39-55

                             CHAPTER IV.

    Broek--A Dutchman’s idea of Paradise--A toy house for real
    people--Cannon-ball cheeses--An artist’s flirtation--John Bull
    abroad--All the fun of the fair--A popular refreshment--Morals
    in Amsterdam--The Zoological Gardens--Bed and Breakfast--Paul
    Potter’s bull--Rotterdam                                      pp. 56-64

                              CHAPTER V.

    Oxford in the long vacation--The rats make such a
    strife--A case for Lesbia--Interview between a hermit and
    a novice--The ruling passion--Blighted hopes--Norwegian
    windows--Tortoise-shell soup--After dinner--Christiansand
    again--Ferry on the Torrisdal river--Plain records of
    English travellers--Salmonia--The bridal crown--A bridal
    procession--Hymen, O Hymenæe!--A ripe Ogress--The head cook at
    a Norwegian marriage--God-fearing people--To Sætersdal--Neck or
    nothing--Lilies and lilies--The Dutch myrtle                  pp. 65-81

                             CHAPTER VI.

    A dreary station--Strange bed-fellows--Broadsides--Comfortable
    proverb--Skarp England--Interesting particulars--A hospitable
    Norwegian Foged--Foster-children--The great bear-hunter--A
    terrible Bruin--Forty winks--The great Vennefoss--A temperance
    lamentation--More bear talk--Grey legs--Monosyllabic
    conversation--Trout fished from the briny deep--A warning to
    the beaux of St. James’s-street--Thieves’ cave--A novelette for
    the Adelphi                                                  pp. 82-100

                             CHAPTER VII.

    A wolf-trap--The heather--Game and game-preserves--An
    optical delusion--Sumptuous entertainment--Visit to a
    Norwegian store-room--Petticoats--Curious picture of
    the Crucifixion--Fjord scenery--How the priest Brun was
    lost--A Sætersdal manse--Frightfully hospitable--Eider-down
    quilts--Costume of a Norwegian waiting-maid--The tartan in
    Norway--An ethnological inquiry--Personal characteristics--The
    sect of the Haugians--Nomad life in the far Norwegian
    valleys--Trug--Memorials of the Vikings--Female Bruin in a
    rage--How bears dispose of intruders--Mercantile marine of
    Norway--The Bad-hus--How to cook brigands--Winter clothing  pp. 101-124

                            CHAPTER VIII.

    Peculiar livery--Bleke--A hint to Lord Breadalbane--Enormous
    trout--Trap for timber logs--Exciting scene--Melancholy
    Jacques in Norway--The new church of Sannes--A clergyman’s
    midsummer-day dream--Things in general at Froisnaes--Pleasing
    intelligence--Luxurious magpies--A church without a
    congregation--The valley of the shadow of death--Mouse
    Grange--A tradition of Findal--Fable and feeling--A Highland
    costume in Norway--Ancestral pride--Grand old names prevalent
    in Sætersdal--Ropes made of the bark of the lime-tree--Carraway
    shrub--Government schools of agriculture--A case for a London
    magistrate--Trout fishing in the Högvand--Cribbed, cabined,
    and confined--A disappointment--The original outrigger--The
    cat-lynx--A wealthy Norwegian farmer--Bear-talk--The
    consequence of taking a drop too much--Story of a Thuss--Cattle
    conscious of the presence of the hill people--Fairy music   pp. 125-148

                             CHAPTER IX.

    Langeid--Up the mountain--Vanity of vanity--Forest
    perfumes--The glad thrill of adventure--An ancient
    beacon--Rough fellows--Daring pine-trees--Quaint old
    powder-horn--Curiosities for sale--Sketch of a group of
    giants--Information for _Le Follet_--Rather cool--Rural
    dainties and delights--The great miracle--An odd name--The
    wedding garment--Ivar Aasen--The study of words--Philological
    lucubrations--A slagsmal--Nice subject for a spasmodic
    poet--Smoking rooms--The lady of the house--A Simon Svipu--A
    professional story-teller--Always about Yule-tide--The
    supernatural turns out to be very natural--What happened to an
    old woman--Killing the whirlwind--Hearing is believing--Mr.
    Parsonage corroborates Mr. Salomon--The grey horse at
    Roysland--There can be no doubt about it--Theological argument
    between a fairy and a clergyman--Adam’s first wife, Lileth  pp. 149-178

                              CHAPTER X.

    Scandinavian origin of old English and Border ballads--Nursery
    rhymes--A sensible reason for saying “No”--Parish
    books--Osmund’s new boots--A St. Dunstan story--The
    short and simple annals of a Norwegian pastor--Peasant
    talk--Riddles--Traditional melodies--A story for William
    Allingham’s muse--The Tuss people receive notice to quit--The
    copper horse--Heirlooms--Stories in wood-carving--Morals and
    match-making                                                pp. 179-199

                             CHAPTER XI.

    Off again--Shakspeare and Scandinavian literature--A
    fat peasant’s better half--A story about Michaelmas
    geese--Explanation of an old Norwegian almanack--A quest after
    the Fremmad man--A glimpse of death--Gunvar’s snuff-box--More
    nursery rhymes--A riddle of a silver ring--New discoveries
    of old parsimony--The Spirit of the Woods--Falcons at
    home--The etiquette of tobacco-chewing--Lullabies--A frank
    invitation--The outlaw pretty near the mark--Bjaräen--A
    valuable hint to travellers--Domestic etcetera--Early
    morning--Social magpies--An augury--An eagle’s eyrie--Meg
    Merrilies--Wanted an hydraulic press--A grumble at
    paving commissioners--A disappointment--An unpropitious
    station-master--Author keeps house in the wilderness--Practical
    theology--Story of a fox and a bear--Bridal-stones--The
    Vatnedal lake--Waiting for the ferry--An unmistakeable hint--A
    dilemma--New illustration of the wooden nutmeg truth--“Polly
    put the kettle on”--A friendly remark to Mr. Caxton--The real
    fountain of youth--Insectivora--The maiden’s lament         pp. 200-237

                             CHAPTER XII.

    Ketil--A few sheep in the wilderness--Brown Ryper--The
    Norwegian peasants bad naturalists--More bridal-stones--The
    effect of glacial action on rocks--“Catch hold of her
    tail”--Author makes himself at home in a deserted châlet--A
    dangerous playfellow--Suledal lake--Character of the
    inhabitants of Sætersdal--The landlord’s daughter--Wooden
    spoons--Mountain paths--A mournful cavalcade--Simple
    remedies--Landscape painting--The post-road from Gugaard to
    Bustetun--The clergyman of Roldal parish--Poor little Knut at
    home--A set of bores--The pencil as a weapon of defence--Still,
    still they come--A short cut, with the usual result--Author
    falls into a cavern--The vast white Folgefond--Mountain
    characteristics--Author arrives at Seligenstad--A milkmaid’s
    lullaby--Sweethearts--The author sees visions--The Hardanger
    Fjord--Something like scenery                               pp. 238-259

                            CHAPTER XIII.

    Author visits a glacier--Meets with two compatriots--A good
    year for bears--The judgment of snow--Effects of parsley fern
    on horses--The advantage of having a shadow--Old friends of
    the hill tribe--Skeggedals foss--Fairy strings--The ugliest
    dale in Norway--A photograph of omnipotence--The great Bondehus
    glacier--Record of the mysterious ice period--Guide stories--A
    rock on its travels                                         pp. 260-272

                             CHAPTER XIV.

    Three generations--Dangers of the Folgo--Murray at
    fault--Author takes boat for the entrance of the Bondehus
    Valley--The king of the waterfall--More glacier paths--An
    extensive ice-house--These glorious palaces--How is the
    harvest?--Laxe-stie--Struggle-stone--To Vikör--Östudfoss,
    the most picturesque waterfall in Norway--An eternal crystal
    palace--How to earn a pot of gold--Information for the
    _Morning Post_--A parsonage on the Hardanger--Steamers for
    the Fjords--Why living is becoming dearer in Norway--A
    rebuke for the travelling English--Sunday morning--Peasants
    at church--Female head-dresses--A Norwegian church
    service--Christening--Its adumbration in heathen Norway--A
    sketch for Washington Irving                                pp. 273-292

                             CHAPTER XV.

    Up Steindalen--Thorsten Thormundson--Very near--Author’s
    guide gives him a piece of agreeable information--Crooked
    paths--Raune bottom--A great ant-hill--Author turns rainbow
    manufacturer--No one at home--The mill goblin helps author out
    of a dilemma--A tiny Husman--The dangers attending confirmation
    in Norway--The leper hospital at Bergen--A melancholy
    walk--Different forms of leprosy--The disease found to be
    hereditary--Terrible instances of its effects--Ethnological
    particulars respecting--The Bergen Museum--Delicate little
    monsters--Fairy pots--The best bookseller in Bergen--Character
    of the Danish language--Instance of Norwegian good-nature--New
    flames and old fiddles                                      pp. 293-315

                             CHAPTER XVI.

    The safest day in the year for travelling--A
    collision--Lighthouses on the Norwegian coast--Olaf the Holy
    and the necromancers--The cathedral at Stavanger--A Norwegian
    M.P.--Broad sheets--The great man unbends--Jaederen’s Rev--Old
    friends at Christiansand--Too fast--The Lammer’s schism--Its
    beneficial effects--Roman Catholic Propagandism--A thievish
    archbishop--Historical memoranda at Frederickshal--The Falls
    of the Glommen--A Department of Woods and Forests established
    in Norway--Conflagrations--A problem, and how it was
    solved--Author sees a mirage--Homewards                     pp. 316-327




THE OXONIAN IN THELEMARKEN.




CHAPTER I.

    Danish custom-house officials--Home sickness--The ladies of
    Denmark--Ethnological--Sweden and its forests--Influence
    of climate on Peoples--The French court--Norwegian and
    Danish pronunciation--The Swiss of the North--An instance of
    Norwegian slowness--Ingemann, the Walter Scott of Denmark--Hans
    Christian Andersen--Genius in rags--The level plains of
    Zealand--Danish cattle--He who moveth his neighbour’s
    landmark--Beech groves--The tomb of the great Valdemar--The two
    queens--The Probst of Ringstedt--Wicked King Abel--Mormonism
    in Jutland--Roeskilde--Its cathedral--The Semiramis of the
    North--Frederick IV.--Unfortunate Matilda.


Being desirous of proceeding to Copenhagen, I landed at Nyeborg;
together with the Dane and his lady.

The steamer across to Korsör will start at four A.M., and so, it
being now midnight, we must sleep as fast as we can till then. The
politeness of the Danish custom-house officials surpassed everything of
the kind I ever encountered from that class. We put up at Schalburg’s
hotel. Mine host cozened us. I recommend no traveller to stop at his
house of entertainment.

“Morgen-stund giv Guld i Mund,” said the fair Dane to me, quoting a
national proverb, as I pointed out to her the distant coast of Zealand,
which a few minutes before was indistinctly visible in the grey dawn,
now gilded with the sun.

She was quite in ecstasies at the thoughts of setting foot on her dear
Zealand, and seeing its level plains of yellow corn and beechen groves,
after the granite and gneiss deserts of Lapland and Finmark. Sooth to
say, the Danish ladies are not infected with that deadly liveliness
which characterizes many of the Norwegians; while, on the other hand,
they are devoid of that bland facility and Frenchified superficiality
which mark many of the Swedes. How is it that there is such a wide
distinction between the Swede and the Norskman? Contrast the frank
bluffness of the one; strong, sterling, and earnest, without artifice
and grace: and the supple and insinuating manner of the other. The very
peasant-girl of Sweden steps like a duchess, and curtsies as if she
had been an _habitué_ of Almack’s. Pass over the Borders, as I have
done, from Trondjem Fjord through Jemte-land, and at the first Swedish
change-house almost, you are among quite a different population,
profuse of compliments and civilities which they evidently look upon
as all in the day’s work, and very much disposed withal to have a deal
with you--to sell you, for instance, one of their grey dog-skin cloaks
for one hundred rix dollars. One is reminded, on the one hand, of
the sturdy, blundering Halbert Glendinning; and on the other, of the
lithesome, adroit Euphuist, Sir Piercie Shaftón. And yet, if we are to
believe the antiquarians and ethnologists, both people are of pretty
much the same stock: coming from the countries about the Black Sea,
two centuries after Christ, when these were overrun by the Romans, and
supervening upon the old Gothic or second migration. It may be said
that the Norsk character caught some parts of its colouring from the
stern, rugged nurse in the embrace of whose mountains their lot has
been cast; with the great backbone of primæval rock (Kiölen) splitting
Norway in two, and rendering intercourse difficult. So that now you
will hear a Norskman talk of Nordenfjelds (north of the mountains), and
Söndenfjelds (south of the mountains), as if they were two distinct
countries. But then, if the Swedes did live on a flatter country, and
one apparently more adapted for the production of the necessaries of
life, and so more favourable to the growth of civilization; yet it,
too, presented obstacles almost equally insurmountable to the spread of
refining arts and tastes.

They also used to talk, not like the Norwegians, of their north of the
mountain and south of the mountain, but of their north of the forest
(nordenskovs) and south of the forest (söndenskovs), in allusion to
the impenetrable forests of Kolmorden and Tiveden, which divided the
district about the Mälar Lake from the south and south-west of Sweden.
And is it much better now? True, you have the canal that has pierced
the country and opened it out to culture and civilization; but even at
the present day the climate of Sweden is less mild than that of Norway,
and four-sevenths of the whole surface of the country are still covered
by forests. In travelling from the Trondjem Fjord to the Gulf of
Bothnia, I found myself driving for four consecutive days through one
dense forest, with now and then a clearing of some extent; and as for
the marshes, they are very extensive and treacherous. One day I saw two
cranes not far from the road along which I was driving, and immediately
stepped, gun in hand, off the causeway, to try and stalk them. But I
was nigh becoming the victim; for at the first step on what looked like
a grassy meadow, I plunged deep into a floating morass. A Swede who
was my companion luckily seized me before I had played out the part of
Curtius without any corresponding results.

The nation which has to fight with a cold climate and such physical
geography as this, is not much better situated than the one which in
a milder climate has to wring a subsistence from rocks, and which, to
advance a mile direct, has to go up and down twain. Like those heroes
and pioneers of civilization in the backwoods, they both of them have
to clench the teeth, and knit the brow, and stiffen the sinews, if they
want to hold their own in the stern fight with nature. And this sort of
permanent, self-reliant obduracy which by degrees gets into the blood,
is by no means prone to foster those softer graces that bud forth under
the warmth of a southern sky and in the lap of a richer soil, where
none of the asperities generated by compulsion are requisite, but Dame
Nature, with the least coaxing possible, listens to and rewards her
suitors.

Why is it, then, that the manners of these two people are so different?
People tell me it did not use to be so. The first and great reason,
then, appears to be the different governments of the two countries; the
absence of liberty and the excessive powers and number of the nobility
in the one, and the abundance of liberty and absence of nobles in the
other. The influence of rule upon the inhabitants of a country is, in
the long run, as mighty as that of breed and blood.

Improbable as it may appear to some, I am inclined to lay great stress
on the influence of a French Court. Bernadotte, it is true, was the
son of a plebeian, a notary of Pau; but he was a Frenchman, and every
Frenchman is versatile, and gifted with external polish, at all events;
and his Court was French, and Court influence did its work, penetrating
to the very roots of society; so that by degrees the graces of the
capital became engrafted on the obsequious spirit already engendered
by long servitude among the Swedish population. At Christiania, on the
contrary, there is no Court; the nobility are not, and the country
is all but a republic. This is, I believe, a part solution of the
problem--a “guess at truth.” While on this subject, I may as well refer
to the difference between the pronunciation of Danish and Norwegian,
though they are at present the same language. The vapid sweetness
which your Dane affects in his articulation, is most distasteful after
the rough and strenuous tongue of Norway. It is a case of lollipop to
wholesome gritty rye-bread. The Dane, especially the Copenhagener,
rolls out his words in a most lackadaisical manner, as if he were
talking to a child. Mammas and papas will talk thus, we know, to their
babies, the language of endearment not being according to the rules
of the Queen’s English. At times I thought great big men were going to
blubber, and were commiserating their own fate or that of the person
addressed, when perhaps they were only asking what time the train
started to Copenhagen, or whether the potato sickness had reappeared.

Going to the fore part of the steamer to get some English money turned
into Danish, I find two of those Swiss of the North, Dalecarlian
girls, on board. They are from Mora, and one is very pretty. The most
noticeable feature in their costume is their short petticoats and red
stockings. That most sprightly girl, Miss Diana Redshank, will at
once perceive whence it is that we borrow the fashion now prevailing
in England. As a matter of course, they were artists in hair, and
they immediately produced their stock-in-trade--viz., specimens of
bracelets, necklaces, and watch-chains, very well worked and very
cheap. They have been from home all the summer, and are now working
their way back. In winter they weave cloth and attend to the household
duties. I bought a hair bracelet for three shillings.

As an instance of Norwegian slowness, I may mention that although the
railway is opened from Korsör to Copenhagen, distant three hours, the
Norwegian steamer still continues to stop at Nyeborg, on the further
side of the Belt, thereby necessitating this trip across, and much
additional delay, trouble, and expense.

The novels of Ingemann have made all these places classic ground. The
Danes look on him as the Walter Scott of their country. He is now past
seventy, and living in repose at the Academy of Sorö. Denmark sets a
good example in the reward of literary merit.

Well do I remember, years ago, meeting a goggle-eyed young man, with
lanky, dark hair, ungainly figure, and wild countenance, and nails just
like filberts, at a table-d’hôte in Germany. All the dinner he rolled
about his large eyes in meditation. This was Hans Christian Andersen,
now enjoying a European reputation, and holding, with a good stipend,
the sinecure of Honorary Professor at the University of Copenhagen.
Hitherto he had been candle-snuffer at the metropolitan theatre, but
his hidden talents had been perceived, and he was being sent to Italy
to improve his taste and get ideas at the public expense.

If we contrast the fate in England and in Denmark of genius in rags,
we may be reminded of the märchen, told, if I remember, by Andersen
himself, how that once on a time a little dirty duck was ignored by the
sleek fat ducks around, when it meets with two swans, who recognised
the seemingly dirty little duck, and protected it. Whereupon the
astonished youngster happens to see himself in a puddle, and finds that
he is a genuine swan.

What a contrast between these flat plains of Zealand, with the
whitewashed cottages and farm-houses--the ridge of the thatched roof
pinned down with straddles of wood--and the rocky wilds of Norway, its
log-houses, red or yellow, with grass-covered roofs, nestling under a
vast impending mountain. In Denmark, the highest land is only a few
hundred feet above the sea. How immensely large, too, the cows and
horses look after the lilliputian breeds of Norway. There being hardly
any fences, the poor creatures are generally tethered: yonder peasant
girl with the great wooden mallet is in the act of driving in the iron
tethering-pin.

No wonder that in a country so open, superstition has had recourse
to terrify the movers of their neighbour’s landmarks. Thus the
Jack-o’-Lanterns in the isle of Falster are nothing but the souls of
dishonest land-measurers running about with flaming measuring-rods,
and crying, “Here is the right boundary, from here to here!” Again,
near Ebeltoft, there used to live a rich peasant, seemingly a paragon
of propriety, a regular church-goer, a most attentive sermon-hearer,
one who paid tithes of all he possessed; but somehow, nobody believed
in him. And sure enough when he was dead and buried, his voice was
often heard at night crying in woful accents, “Boundary here, boundary
there!” The people knew the reason why.

Instead of those dark and sombre pine-forests so thoroughly in keeping
with the grim, Dantesque grandeur of the Norwegian landscape, or the
ghostlike white stems of the birch-trees, the only trees visible are
the glossy-foliaged, wide-spreading groves of beech, with now and then
an oak.

I descend at Ringstedt to see the tombs of the great Valdemar (King
of Denmark), and his two wives, Dagmar of Bohemia, and Berengaria of
Portugal. The train, I perceive, is partly freighted with food for the
capital, in the shape of sacks full of chickens (only fancy chickens
in sacks!) and numbers of live pigs, which a man was watering with a
watering-can, as if they had been roses, and would wither with the heat.

Having a vivid recollection of Ingermann’s best historical tale,
_Valdemar Seier_, it was with no little interest that I entered the
church, and stood beside the flag-stones in the choir which marked
the place of the King’s sepulture. On the Regal tomb was incised,
“Valdemarus Secundus Legislator Danorum.” On either side were stones,
with the inscriptions, “Regina Dagmar, prima uxor Valdemari Secundi,”
and “Regina Berengaria, secunda uxor Valdemari Secundi.” The real
name of Valdemar’s first wife was Margaret, but she is only known to
the Dane as little Dagmar, which means “dawning,” or “morning-red.”
Her memory is as dear to the people as that of Queen Tyra Dannebod.
She was as good as she was beautiful. The name of “Proud Bengard,” on
the contrary, is loaded with curses, as one who brought ruin upon the
throne and country.

At this moment a gentleman approached me with a courteous bow; he was
dressed in ribbed grey and black pantaloons, and a low-crowned hat.
I found afterwards that he was a native of Bornholm, and no less a
personage than the Probst of Ringstedt; he was very polite and affable,
and informed me that these graves were opened not long ago in the
presence of his present Majesty of Denmark. Valdemar was three ells
long; his countenance was imperfect. Bengard’s face and teeth were in
good preservation. Dagmar’s body had apparently been disturbed before.

In the aisle near, he pointed out the monument to Eric Plugpenning, the
son of Valdemar. He had the nickname of Plugpenning (Plough-penny), for
setting a tax on the plough. He was murdered on a fishing excursion by
his brother. The fratricide’s name was not Cain but Abel. There was
no luck afterwards about the house; the curse of Atreus and Thyestes
rested upon it. Of course, after such an atrocity King Abel “walks,”
or more strictly speaking he “rides.” Slain in a morass near the Eyder
in 1252, his body was buried in the cathedral of Sleswig. But his
spirit found no rest; by night he haunted the church and disturbed
the slumbers of the canons; his corpse was consequently exhumed, and
buried in a bog near Gottorp, with a stake right through it to keep it
down; the peasants will still point out the place. But it was all to
no purpose; a huntsman’s horn is often heard at night in the vicinity,
and Abel, dark of aspect, is seen scouring away on a small black horse,
with a leash of dogs, burning like fire.

Here, then, in Denmark, we see the grand Asgaardsreia of Norway
localized, and transferred from the nameless powers of the invisible
world to malefactors of earth; while in Germany it assumes the shape of
“The Wild Huntsman.”

Returning to the inn, I amused myself till the next train arrived
by looking at the Copenhagen paper, from which I learn that twenty
pairs were copulerede--married--last week, and that there has been
a great meeting of Mormons in the capital. Such has been the effect
of the mission of the elders in Jutland, that that portion of Denmark
is becoming quite depopulated from emigration to the city of the Salt
Lake. There is also a list of gold, silver, and bronze articles lately
discovered in the country, and sent to the museum of Copenhagen, with
the amount of payments received by each. In the precious metals these
are according to weight. One lucky finder gets 72 rix dollars.

By the next train I advance to Roeskilde, which takes its name from the
clear perennial spring of St. Roe, which ejects many gallons a minute.
Baths and public rooms are established in connexion with it. But it
was the Cathedral that drew me to Roeskilde. A brick building, in the
plain Gothic of Denmark, it has not much interest in an architectural
point of view; but there are monuments here which I felt bound to see.
Old Saxo Grammaticus, the chronicler of early Denmark, the interior of
whose study is so graphically described by Ingermann in the beginning
of _Valdemar Seier_--he rests under that humble stone. Here, too, is
buried in one of the pillars of the choir, Svend Tveskjaeg, the father
of Canute the Great, who died at the assize at Gainsborough, in 1014.

Queen Margaret (the Northern Semiramis), who wore the triple crown
of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, sleeps behind the altar, under a
full-length monument in white marble more than four centuries old. It
were well if the Scandinavian idea, now absorbing the minds of thinking
men in the North, were to find a more happy realization than in her
case--the union, instead of allaying the hostility with which each
nation regarded the other, only serving to perpetuate embroilments.
Some good kings and great repose here; also some wicked and mean.
Among the former, it will suffice to mention Frederick IV., whom the
Danes look upon as their greatest monarch. A bronze statue of him
by Thorwaldsen is to be found in one of the chapels. In the latter
category we unhesitatingly place Christian VII., to whom, in an evil
hour, was married our Caroline Matilda, sister of George III., who died
at the early age of twenty-three.

“And what do the Danes think now of Matilda?” inquired I of a person of
intelligence.

“Oh, they say ‘Stakkels Matilda!’” (unfortunate Matilda), was the
touching but decisive reply. So that by the common voice of the people
her memory is relieved from the stain cast upon it by those who were
bound to protect her, the vile Queen-mother and the good-for-nothing
King.




CHAPTER II.

    Copenhagen--Children of Amak--Brisk bargaining--Specimens
    of horn fish--Unlucky dogs--Thorwaldsen’s museum--The Royal
    Assistenz House--Going, gone--The Ethnographic Museum--An
    inexorable professor--Lionizes a big-wig--The stone
    period in Denmark--England’s want of an ethnographical
    collection--A light struck from the flint in the stag’s
    head--The gold period--A Scandinavian idol’s cestus--How
    dead chieftains cheated fashion--Antiquities in gold--Wooden
    almanacks--Bridal crowns--Scandinavian antiquities peculiarly
    interesting to Englishmen--Four thousand a year in return
    for soft sawder--Street scenes in Copenhagen--Thorwaldsen’s
    colossal statues--Blushes for Oxford and Cambridge--A Danish
    comedy--Where the warriors rest.


It was late in the evening when the third train of the day whisked us
into Copenhagen, where I took up my abode at a quiet hotel near the
ramparts.

What a strange place this is. Works of art, and museums superior to
anything in Europe, and streets, for the most part very paltry, and
infamously paved. Traveller, be on your guard. The trottoirs of
granite slab, worn slippery by the perambulating hobnails of those
children of Amak, are very treacherous, and if you are supplanted, you
will slide into a gutter nearly a foot deep, full of black sludge.

These people are a Dutch colony planted by King Christian II. in the
neighbouring island of Amak.

The original female costume, which they still retain, consists of
little black coalscuttle Quaker bonnets, very large dark-blue or white
aprons, which almost hide their sober- stuff gowns with their
red and yellow edgings. Their ruddy faces, at the bottom of the said
scuttles, look like hot cinders got there by mistake. Altogether they
are a most neat, dapper, and cleanly-looking set of bodies. The men
have also their peculiar costume. These people are the purveyors of
vegetables for Copenhagen. Yon lady, standing in a little one-horse
shay, full of flower-pots and bouquets, is another specimen of the
clan, but seemingly one of the upper-crust section. Locomotive shops
appear to be the fashion. Near the Church of our Lady are a lot of
butchers’ carts drawn up, with meat for sale. They come from the
environs of the city. Much life is concentred round the bridge near the
palace. In the canal are several little stumpy sailing boats at anchor,
crammed full of pots and crockery. These are from Bornholm and Jutland.
Near them are some vessels with awnings: these are depôts of cheeses
and butter from Sleswig and Holstein.

Look at yon row of women with that amphibious white head-dress
spotted brown. In front it looks like a bonnet; behind, it terminates
in a kerchief. You are reminded by the mixture of another mongrel,
but picturesque article of dress, worn by the Welsh peasant-women,
the pais a gwn bach. How they are gabbling to those ladies and
housekeeper-looking women, and sparring linguistically about something
in the basket. Greek contending with Trojan for the dead body of
Achilles.

Their whole stock in trade consists of specimens of “hornfish,” an
animal like a sand eel, with long spiky snout, and of a silvery
whiteness. They are about two feet long, and twenty skillings the pair.
These women are from Helsingör, which is the whereabouts of the said
fish. They come from thence every day, if the wind serves; and if it
does not, I fancy they manage to come all the same.

Look at these men, too, in the street, sawing and splitting away for
dear life, a lot of beech logs at that door. Fuel, I find, is very
dear, from seventeen to twenty dollars the fathom.

Alas! for the poor dogs, victims of that terrible fear of hydrophobia
which seems to infect continental nations more than England; they
are running about with capacious wire muzzles, projecting some
inches beyond the smeller, which renders them, it is true, incapable
of biting, but also of exchanging those amiable blandishments and
courtesies with their kind, so becoming and so natural to them, and
forming one of the great solaces of canine existence.

Yonder is Thorwaldsen’s museum, with its yellow ochre walls, and
frescoes outside representing the conveyance of his works from Italy
hither. But that is shut up to-day, and besides, everybody has read
an account of this museum of sculpture. An Englishman is surprised
to learn that the sculptor’s body rests, at his own request, under
some ivy-covered mould in the quad inside. But the ground, if not
consecrated episcopally, is so by the atmosphere of genius around.

Let us just pop into this large building opposite. There is something
to be seen here, perhaps, that will give us an insight into Copenhagen
life.

“What is this place, sir?”

“This, sir, is the Royal Assistenz Huus.”

“What may that be?”

“It is a place where needy people can have money lent on clothes. It
enjoys a monopoly to the exclusion of all private establishments of
the kind. If the goods are not redeemed within a twelvemonth, they are
sold.”

A sale of this kind, I found, was now going on. Seated at a table,
placed upon a sort of dais, were two functionaries, dressed in
brown-holland coats, who performed the part of auctioneers. One drawled
out the several bids, and another booked the name and offer of the
highest bidder, and very hot work it seemed to be; the one and the
other kept mopping their foreheads, and presently a Jewish-looking
youth, who had been performing the part of jackal, handing up the
articles of clothing, and exhibiting them to the buyers, brought
the two brown-holland gents a foaming tankard of beer, which being
swallowed, the scribe began scribbling, and the other Robins drawling
again. A very nice pair of black trousers were now put up: “Better
than new; show them round, Ignatius.” A person of clerical appearance
seized them, and examined them thoroughly; then a peasant woman got
hold of them; she had very dark eyes and a very red pippin-<DW52>
face. A broad scarlet riband, passing under her chin, fastened her
lace-bordered cap, while on her crown was a piece of gold cloth. One
would have thought that the way in which her countenance was swaddled
would have impeded her utterance; but she led off the bidding, and
was quickly followed by the motley crowd round the platform. But the
clerical-looking customer who had been lying by, now took up the
running, and had it easy. He marched off in triumph with his prize, and
I feel no doubt that he would preach in them the next Sunday.

Leaving these daws to scramble for the plumes, I passed into another
large room, where I saw some nice-looking, respectable persons behind
a large counter, examining different articles brought by unfortunates
who were hard up. There was none of that mixture of cunning, hardness,
and brutality about their demeanour which stamps the officials of the
private establishments of the sort in England.

Hence we go to an old clothes establishment of another sort--I mean
the Ethnographic Museum. Here you find yourself, as you proceed from
chamber to chamber, now _tête-à-tête_ with a Greenland family in their
quaint abode; anon you are lower down Europe among the Laplanders, and
among other little amusements you behold the get-up of a Lap wizard and
his divining drum (quobdas). Hence you proceed eastward, and are now
promenading with a Japanese beau in his handsome dress of black silk,
now shuddering at the hideous grimaces of a Chinese deity. All this
has been recently arranged with extraordinary care, and on scientific
principles, by the learned Professor Thomsen.

“Herr Professor,” exclaimed a bearded German, “can’t we see the Museum
of Northern Antiquities to-day? I have come all the way from Vienna to
see it, and must leave this to-morrow.”

“Unmöglich, mein Herr,” replied the Professor. “To-morrow is the day.
If you saw it to-day you would not see the flowers of the collection;
and we will not show it without the flowers. The most costly and
interesting specimens are locked up, and can’t be opened unless all the
attendants are present.”

“Mais, Mons. Professeur,” put in a French savan.

“C’est impossible,” replied the Professor, shrugging up his shoulders.

“Could not we just have a little peep at it, sir?” here asked some of
my fair countrywomen, in wheedling accents.

“I am very sorry, ladies, but this is not the day, you know. I shall be
most happy to explain all to-morrow, at four o’clock,” was the reply of
the polyglot Professor.

It would be well if the curators of museums in England would have the
example of Professor Thomsen before their eyes. There is no end to
his civility to the public, and to his labours in the departments of
science committed to his care. Speaking most of the European languages,
he may be seen, his Jove-like, grizzled head towering above the rest,
listening to the questions of the curious crowd, and explaining to each
in their own tongue in which they were born the meaning of the divers
objects of art and science stored up in this palace. Next day, I found
him engaged in lionizing a big-wig; at least, so I concluded, when I
perceived that, on either breast, he wore a silver star of the bigness
of a dahlia flower of the first magnitude; while his coat, studded
with gold buttons, was further illustrated by a green velvet collar.
Subsequently I learned, what I, indeed, guessed, that he was a Russian
grandee on his travels. He is the owner of one of the best antiquarian
collections in Europe. Professor Thomsen, not to be outdone, likewise
exhibited four orders. While the Muscovite examined the various
curiosities of the stone,[1] the bronze, and the iron period, I heard
him talking with the air of a man whose mind was thoroughly made up
about the three several migrations from the Caucasus of the Celts,
Goths, and Sclavonians.

An Englishman, when he sees this wonderful collection, cannot but be
struck with astonishment, on the one hand, at the industry and tact of
Professor Thomsen, who has been the main instrument in its formation;
and with shame and regret, on the other, that Great Britain has no
collection of strictly national antiquities at all to be compared with
it; and, what is more, it is daily being increased. The sub-curator,
Mr. C. Steinhauer, informed me, that already, this year, he had
received and added to the museum one hundred and twenty different
batches of national antiquities, some believed to date as far back as
before the Christian era. And then, the specimens are so admirably
arranged, that you may really learn something from them as to the
state of civilization prevailing in Scandinavia at very remote periods:
the collection being a connected running commentary or history, such as
you will meet with nowhere else. Observe this oak coffin, pronounced to
be not less than two thousand years old; and those pieces of woollen
cloth of the same date. Look at that skeleton of a stag’s head,
discovered in the peat.

“There is nothing in that,” says an Hibernian, fresh from Dublin. “Did
you ever see the great fossil elk in Trinity College Museum?”

Ay! but there is something more interesting about this stag’s head,
nevertheless. Examine it closely. Imbedded in the bone of the jaw,
see, there is a flint arrow-head; the bow that sped that arrow must
have been pulled by a nervous arm. This “stag that from the hunter’s
aim had taken some hurt,” perhaps retreated into a sequestered bog to
languish, and sunk, by his weight, into the bituminous peat, and was
thus embalmed by nature as a monument of a very early and rude period.

Presently we get among the gold ornaments. There the Irishman is
completely “shut up.” “The Museum of Trinity College,” and “Museum of
the Royal Irish Academy,” are beaten hollow. Nay, to leave no room for
boasting, facsimiles of the gold head and neck ornaments in Dublin are
actually placed here side by side with those discovered in Denmark.
The weight of some of the armlets and necklets is astonishing. Here is
a great gold ring, big enough for the waist; but it has no division,
like the armlets, to enable the wearer to expand it, and fit it to the
body; moreover, the inner side presents a sharp edge, such as would
inconvenience a human wearer.

“That,” said Professor Thomsen, seeing our difficulty, “must have
been the waistband of an idol; which, as there was no necessity for
taking it off, must have been soldered fast together, after it had once
encircled the form of the image.[2]”

“What can be the meaning of these pigmy ornaments and arms?” said I.

“Why, that is very curious. You know the ancient Scandinavian chieftain
was buried with his sword and his trinkets. This was found to be
expensive, but still the tyrant fashion was inflexible on the subject;
so, to comply with her rules, and let the chief have his properties
with him in the grave, miniature swords, &c., were made, and buried
with him; just in the same way as some of your ladies of fashion,
though they have killed their goose, will still keep it; in other
words, though their diamonds are in the hands of the Jews, still love
to glitter about in paste.”

“Cunning people those old Vikings,” thought I.

“Yes,” continued our obliging informant, “and look at these,” pointing
to what looked like balls of gold. “They are weights gilt all over.
The reason why they were gilt was the more easily to detect any
loss of weight, which a dishonest merchant, had discovery not been
certain, might otherwise have contrived to inflict on them.” Those
mighty wind-instruments, six feet long, are the war-horns (Luren) of
the bronze period; under these coats of mail throbbed the bosoms of
some valorous freebooters handed down to fame by Snorro. “Look here,”
continued he, “these pieces of thick gold and silver wire were used
for money in the same way as later the links of a chain were used for
that purpose. Here is a curious gold medal of Constantine, most likely
used as a military decoration. The reverse has no impress on it.” This
reminded me of the buttons and other ornaments in Thelemarken, which
are exact copies of fashions in use hundreds of years ago. Here again
are some Bezants, coins minted at Byzantium, which were either brought
over by the ships of the Vikings, or were carried up the Volga to
Novgorod, a place founded by the Northmen, and so on to Scandinavia,
by the merchants and mercenary soldiers who in early times flocked
to the East. Gotland used to be a gathering-place for those who thus
passed to and fro, and to this Wisby owes its former greatness. Many of
these articles of value were probably buried by the owner on setting
out upon some fresh expedition from which he never returned, and their
discovery has been due to the plough or the spade, while others have
been unearthed from the barrows and cromlechs. Here, again, are some
primstavs, or old Scandinavian wooden calendars. You see they are of
two sorts--one straight, like the one I picked up in Thelemarken,
while another is in the shape of an elongated ellipse. If you compare
them, you will now find how much they differed, not only in shape, but
also in the signs made to betoken the different days in the calendar.
“You have heard of our Queen Dagmar. Here is a beautiful enamelled
cross of Byzantine workmanship which she once wore around her neck.
You have travelled in Norway? Wait a moment,” continued the voluble
Professor, as he directed an attendant to open a massive escritoir.
“You are aware, sir, that it is the custom in Norway and Sweden for
brides to wear a crown. I thought that, before the old custom died, I
would secure a memento of it. I had very great difficulty, the peasants
were so loth to part with them, but at last I succeeded, and behold the
result, sir. That crown is from Iceland, that from Sweden, and that
from Norway. It is three hundred years old. That fact I have on the
best authority. It used to be lent out far and near for a fixed sum,
and, computing the weddings it attended at one hundred per annum, which
is very moderate, it must have encircled the heads of thirty thousand
brides on their wedding-day. Very curious, Excellence!” he continued,
giving the Russian grandee a sly poke in the ribs.

The idea seemed to amuse the old gentleman of the stars and green
velvet collar wonderfully.

“Sapperlot! Potztannsend noch ein mal!” he ejaculated, with great
animation, while the antiquarian dust seemed to roll from his eyes,
and they gleamed up uncommonly.

In the same case I observed more than one hundred Danish, Swedish, and
Norwegian spoons of quaint shape, though they were nearly all of what
we call the Apostle type.

But we must take leave of the museum with the remark that, to see
it thoroughly, would require a great many visits. To an Englishman,
whose country was so long intimately connected with Scandinavia,--and
which has most likely undergone pretty nearly the same vicissitudes of
civilization and occupancy as Scandinavia itself--this collection must
be intensely interesting, especially when examined by the light thrown
upon it by Worsaae and others.

Indeed, if England wishes to know the facts of her Scandinavian period,
it is to these people that she must look for information.

“Ten per cent. for my money!” That, alas! is too often an Englishman’s
motto now-a-days; “and I can’t get that by troubling my head about King
Olaf or Canute.”

While I write this I am reminded of an agreeable, good-looking young
Briton whom I met here; he is a physician making four thousand a-year
by administering doses of soft sawder. Thrown by circumstances early
on the world, he has not had the opportunity of acquiring ideas or
knowledge out of the treadmill of his profession. He is just fresh from
Norway, through which he has shot like a rocket, being pressed for time.

“How beautiful the rivers are there,” he observed; “so rapid.
By-the-bye, though, your river at Oxford must be something like them.
The poet says, ‘Isis rolling rapidly!’”

Leaving the museum, I dined at the great restaurant’s of Copenhagen,
Jomfru Henkel’s, in the Ostergade; it was too crowded for comfort.
Dinner is _à la carte_.

Some convicts were mending the roadway in one of the streets; their
jackets were half black, half yellow, trousers ditto, only that where
the jacket was black, the inexpressibles were yellow on the same side,
and _vice versâ_. Their legs were heavily chained. Many carriages
were assembled round the church of the Holy Ghost; I found it was a
wedding. All European nations, I believe, but the English, choose the
afternoon for the ceremony.

Thorwaldsen’s colossal statues in white marble of our Saviour and
his Apostles which adorn the Frue Kirke, are too well known to need
description.

At the Christianborg, or Palace of King Christian, the lions that
caught my attention first were the three literal ones in massive
silver, which always figure at the enthronization of the Danish
monarchs. Next to them I observed the metaphorical lions, viz., the
sword of Gustavus Adolphus, the cup in which Peter the Great used to
take his matutinal dram, the portrait of the unhappy Matilda, and of
the wretched Christian VII.

Blush Oxford and Cambridge, when you know that on the walls of this
palace, side by side with the freedom of the City of London and the
Goldsmiths’ Company (but the London citizens are of course not very
particular in these matters), hang your diplomas of D.C.L., engrossed
on white satin, conferred upon this precious specimen of a husband and
king.

That evening I went to see a comedy of Holberg’s at the theatre, _Jacob
von Tybö_ by name. It seemed to create immense fun, which was not to be
wondered at, for the piece contained a rap at the German customs, and
braggadocio style of that people in vogue here some hundred years ago.
The taste for that sort of thing, as may readily be imagined, no longer
exists here. Roars of laughter accompanied every hit at Tuskland.
The two Roskilds and Madame Pfister acquitted themselves well. The
temperature of the building was as nearly as possible that of the Black
Hole of Calcutta, as far as I was able to judge by my own feelings
compared with the historical account of that delectable place. A lady
next me told me that they had long talked of an improved building.

Next day I visited the Seamen’s Burial Ground, where, clustering about
an elevated mound, are the graves of the Danish sailors who fell in
1807. I observed an inscription in marble overgrown with ivy:--

    Kranz som Fadrelandet gav,
    Den visner ei paa falden Krieger’s Grav.

    The chaplet which their fatherland once gave
    Shall never fade on fallen warrior’s grave.

True to the motto, the monuments are decked every Saturday with
fresh flowers. Fuchsias were also growing in great numbers about.
The different spaces of ground are let for a hundred years; if the
lease is not renewed then, I presume the Company will enter upon the
premises. There were traces about, I observed, of English whittlers.
Our countrymen seem to remember the command of the augur to Tarquinius,
“cut boldly,” and the King cut through.




CHAPTER III.

    The celebrated Three Crowns Battery--Hamlet’s grave--The Sound
    and its dues--To Fredericksborg--Iceland ponies--Denmark
    an equine paradise--From Copenhagen to Kiel--Tidemann, the
    Norwegian painter--Pictures at Düsseldorf--The boiling
    of the porridge--Düsseldorf theatricals--Memorial of
    Dutch courage--Young heroes--An attempt to describe the
    Dutch language--The Amsterdam canals--Half-and-half in
    Holland--Want of elbow-room--A New Jerusalem--A sketch for
    Juvenal--The museum of Dutch paintings--Magna Charta of Dutch
    independence--Jan Steen’s picture of the _fête_ of Saint
    Nicholas--Dutch art in the 17th century--To Zaandam--Traces
    of Peter the Great--Easy travelling--What the reeds seemed to
    whisper.


The name of the steamer which took me past the celebrated Three
Crowns Battery, and along to the pretty low shores of Zealand to
Elsineur (Helsingör), was the _Ophelia_, fare three marks. In the
Marielyst Gardens, which overhang the famed Castle of Kronborg, is
a Mordan’s-pencil-case-shaped pillar of dirty granite, miscalled
“Hamlet’s grave.” Yankees often resort here, and pluck leaves from the
lime-trees overhanging the mausoleum, for the purpose of conveyance to
their own country.

But this is not the only point of interest for Brother Jonathan. Look
at the Sound yonder, refulgent in the light of the evening sun, with
the numberless vessels brought up for the night, having been warned by
the bristling cannon to stop, and pay toll. I don’t wonder that those
scheming, go-ahead people, object to the institution altogether--albeit
the proceeds are a vital question for Denmark. On the steamer, I fell
into conversation with a Danish pilot about this matter. I found that
he, like others of his countrymen, was very slow to acknowledge that
ships are forced to stop opposite the castle. He said that only ships
bound to Russia do so, because the Czar insists on their having their
papers _viséd_ by the Danish authorities before they are permitted to
enter his ports.[3]

Finding there was no public conveyance to Fredericksborg, which I
purposed visiting, I must fain hire a one-horse vehicle at the Post.
It was a sort of mail phaeton, of the most cumbrous and unwieldy
description--I don’t know how much dearer than in Norway--so slow,
too. On the road we pass the romantic lake of Gurre, the scene of King
Valdemar’s nightly hunt. Some storks remind the traveller of Holland.
Right glad I was when we at length jogged over divers drawbridges
spanning very green moats, and through sundry gates, and emerged upon a
large square, facing the main entrance to the castle.

The private apartments, I found, were, by a recent regulation,
invisible, as his Majesty has taken to living a good deal here. But I
was shown the chapel, in which all the monarchs of Denmark are crowned,
gorgeous with silver, ebony, and ivory; and the Riddersaal over it,
one hundred and sixty feet long, with its elaborate ceiling, and many
portraits: and, marvellous to relate, the custodian would have nothing
for his trouble but thanks. In the stable were several little Iceland
ponies, which looked like a cross between the Norsk and Shetland
races. They were fat and sleek, and, no doubt, have an easy time of
it; indeed, Denmark is a sort of equine paradise. What well-to-do
fellows those four strapping brown horses were that somnambulized with
the diligence that conveyed us to Copenhagen. That their slumbrous
equanimity might not be disturbed, the very traces were padded, and,
instead of collars, they wore broad soft chest-straps. The driver told
me they cost three hundred and fifty dollars each. That flat road,
passing through numerous beech-woods was four and a-half Danish miles
long, equal to twenty English, and took us more than four hours to
accomplish.

Bidding adieu to Copenhagen, I returned by rail to Korsör, and embarked
in the night-boat _Skirner_, from thence to Kiel. As the name of the
vessel, like almost every one in Scandinavia, is drawn from the old
Northern mythology, I shall borrow from the same source for an emblem
of the stifling state of the atmosphere in the cabin. “A regular
Muspelheim!” said I to a Dane, as I pantingly look round before turning
in, and saw every vent closed. A fog retarded our progress, and it
was not till late the next afternoon that I found myself in Hamburg.
Some few hours later I was under the roof of mine host of the “Three
Crowns,” at Düsseldorf, where I purposed paying a visit to Tidemann,
the Norwegian painter. Unfortunately, he was not returned from his
summer travels, so that I could not deliver to him the greeting I had
brought him from his friends in the Far North. His most recent work,
which I had heard much of, the “Wounded Bear-hunter returning Home,
having bagged his prey,” was also away, having been purchased by the
King of Sweden. At the Institute, however, I saw several sketches and
paintings by this master.

Anna Gulsvig is evidently the original of the “Grandmother telling
Stories.”

Bagge’s “Landscape in Valders,” and Nordenberg’s “Dalecarlian Scenes,”
brought back for a moment the land I had quitted to my mind and vision.
“The Mother teaching her Children,” and “The Boiling of the Porridge,”
also by Tidemann, proclaim him to be the Teniers of Norway. Though
while he catches the national traits, he manages to represent them
without vulgarity. But perhaps this lies in the nature of the thing.
The heavy-built Dutchman anchored on his square flat island of mud
can’t possibly have any of that rugged elevation of mind, or romance of
sentiment, that would belong to the child of the mountain and lake.

The school of Düsseldorf--if such it can be called--has turned out some
great artists, _e.g._, Kaulbach and Cornelius; but the place has never
been itself since it lost its magnificent collection of pictures, which
now grace the Pinacothek at Munich.

As I sipped a cup of coffee in the evening, I read a most grandiloquent
account of the prospects of the Düsseldorf Theatre for the ensuing
winter. The first lover was perfection, while the tragedy queen was
“unübertrefflich” (not to be surpassed). The part of tender mother
and matron was also about to be taken by a lady of no mean theatrical
pretensions. This self-complacency of the inhabitants of the smaller
cities is quite delightful.

On board the steamer to Emmerich was a family of French Jews, busily
engaged, not in looking about them, but in calculating their expenses,
though dressed in the pink of fashion.

Here I am at Amsterdam. In the Grand Place is a monument in memory of
Dutch bravery and obstinacy evinced in the fight with Belgium. This
has only just been erected, with great fêtes and rejoicings. Well, to
be sure! this reminds me of the Munich obelisk, in memory of those
luckless thirty thousand Bavarians who swelled Napoleon’s expedition
to Russia, and died in the cause of his insatiable ambition. “Auch sie
starben für das Vaterland” is the motto.

V. Ruyter and V. Speke are both monumented in the adjoining church.
The former, who died at Syracuse from a wound, is described in the
inscription as “Immensi tremor Oceani,” and owing all to God, “et
virtuti suæ.”

The warlike spirit of Young Amsterdam seems to be effectually excited
just now. As I passed through the Exchange at a quarter to five P.M.,
the merchants were gone, and in their room was an obstreperous crowd
of _gamins_, armed “with sword and pistol,” like Billy Taylor’s true
love (only they were sham), and thumping their drums, and the drums
thumping the roof, and the roof and the drum together reverberating
against the drum of my ear till I was fairly stunned. “Where are the
police?” thought I, escaping from the hubbub with feelings akin to what
must have been those of Hogarth’s enraged musician, or of a modern
London householder, fond of quiet, with the Italian organ-grinders
rending the air of his street. Dutch is German in the Somersetshire
dialect; so I managed to comprehend, without much difficulty, the short
instructions of the passers-by as to my route to various objects of
interest. By-the-bye, here is the house of Admiral de Ruyter, next to
the Norwegian Consulate. Over the door I see there is his bust in stone.

As I pass along the canals, it puzzles me to think how the Dutchman
can live by, nay, revel in the proximity of these seething tanks of
beastliness and corruption. That notion about the pernicious effects of
inhaling sewage effluvia must be a myth, after all, and the sanitary
commission a regular job. Indeed, I always thought so, after a
conversation I once had with a fellow in London, the very picture of
rude health, who told me he got his living by mudlarking and catching
rats in the sewers, for which there was always a brisk demand at
Oxford and Cambridge, in term time. Look at these jolly Amsterdamers.
I verily believe it would be the death of them if you separated them
from their stinking canals, or transported them to some airy situation,
with a turbulent river hurrying past. Custom is second nature, and
that has doubtless much to do with it: but the nature of the liquids
poured down the inner man perhaps fortifies Mynheer against the evil
effects of the semi-solid liquid of the canals. Just after breakfast
I went into the shop of the celebrated Wijnand Fockink, the Justerini
and Brooks of Amsterdam, to purchase a case of liqueurs, when I heard
a squabby-shaped Dutchman ask for a glass of half-and-half. It is
astonishing, I thought with myself, how English tastes and habits are
gaining ground everywhere. Of course he means porter and ale mixed. The
attendant supplied him with the article he wanted, and it was bolted at
a gulp.

Dutch half-and-half, reader, is a dram of raw gin and curaçoa, in equal
portions.

What a crowd of people, to be sure. “Holland is over-peopled,” said a
tradesman to me. “Why, sir, you can have a good clerk for 20_l._ per
annum. The land is ready to stifle with the close packing.”

“Yes,” said I, “so it appears. That operation going on under the bridge
is a fit emblem of the tightness of your population.”

As I spoke, I pointed to a man, or rather several men, engaged in a
national occupation: packing herrings in barrels. How closely they were
fitted, rammed and crammed, and then a top was put on the receptacle,
and so on, _ad infinitum_.

We are now in the Jewish quarter. “Our people,” as the Israelites are
wont to call themselves, formerly looked on Amsterdam as a kind of New
Jerusalem. Indeed, they are a very important and numerous part of the
population. The usual amount of dirt and finery, young lustrous eyes,
and old dingy clothes, black beards and red beards, small infants and
big hook noses, are jumbled about the shop-doors and in the crowded
thoroughfares. Here are some fair peasant girls, Frieslanders, I
should think, or from beyond the Y, judging by their helmet-shaped
head-dresses of gold and silver plates, with the little fringe of lace
drawn across the forehead, just over the eyebrows, the very same that
Gerard Dow and Teniers have placed before us. If they were not Dutch
women, and belonged to a very wide-awake race, I should tremble for
them, as they go staring and sauntering about in rustic simplicity,
for fear of that lynx-eyed Fagan with the Satyr nose and leering eye
fastened upon them, who is clearly just the man to help to despoil them
of their gold and silver, or something more precious still, in the way
of his trade.

As we walk through the streets, the chimes, that ever and anon ring
out from the old belfries, remind us that we are in the Low Countries;
and if that were not sufficient, the showers of water on this bright
sunny day descending from the house-sides, after being syringed against
them by some industrious abigail, make the fact disagreeably apparent
to the passer-by. This will prepare me for my visit to Broek; not that
there is so much to be seen there--and Albert Smith has brought the
place bodily before us--but if one left it out, all one’s friends that
had been there would aver, with the greatest possible emphasis and
solemnity, that I had omitted seeing _the_ wonder of Holland. So I
shall _do_ it, if all be well.

Here is the Trippenhuus, or Museum of Dutch paintings, situated, of
course, on a canal. Van der Helst’s picture of the “Burgher Guard
met to celebrate the Treaty of Münster”--the Magna Charta of Dutch
independence, pronounced by Sir Joshua to be the finest of its kind
in the world--of course claims my first attention. The three fingers
held up, emblematic of the Trinity, is the continental equivalent to
the English taking Testament in hand upon swearing an oath. But as
everybody that has visited Amsterdam knows all about this picture, and
those two of Rembrandt’s, the “Night-watch,” and that other of the
“Guild of Cloth Merchants,” this mention of them will suffice.

That picture is Jan Steen’s “Fête of St. Nicholas,” a national festival
in Holland. The saint is supposed to come down the chimney, and shower
bonbons on the good children, while he does not forget to bring a rod
for the naughty child’s back.

De Ruyter is also here, with his flashing eye, contracted brow, and
dark hair. While, of course, the collection is not devoid of some of
Vandervelde’s pictures of Holland’s naval victories when Holland was a
great nation.

There must have been great genius and great wealth in this country
wherewith to reward it, in the seventeenth century. In this very town
were born Van Dyk, Van Huysum, and Du Jardin; in Leyden, G. Douw,
Metzu, W. Mieris, Rembrandt, and J. Steen. Utrecht had its Bol and
Hondekoeter; while Haarlem, which was never more than a provincial town
with 48,000 inhabitants, produced a Berghem, a Hugtenberg, a Ruysdael,
a Van der Helst, and a Wouvermans.

In proof of the _sharpness_ of the Amsterdamers, I may mention that
most of the diamonds of Europe are cut here.

Next day, I took the steamer to Zaandam, metamorphosed by us into
Saardam, pretty much on the same principle, I suppose, that an
English beefsteak becomes in the mouths of the French a “biftek.” The
tumble-down board-house, with red tile roof, built by the semi-savage
Peter, in 1632, will last all the longer for having been put in a
brick-case by one of the imperial Russian family. I always look on
Peter’s shipwright adventures, under the name of Master Baas, as a
great exaggeration. He perhaps wanted to make his subjects take up the
art, but he never had any serious thoughts of carpentering himself. He
only was here three days, and, as the veracious old lady who showed the
place told me, he built this house himself, so what time had he for the
dockyards? When some of your great folks go to the Foundling Hospital,
and eat the plum-pudding on Christmas-day, or visit Woolwich and taste
the dietary, and seem to like it very much, that is just such another
make-believe.

“Nothing is too little for a great man,” was the inscription on the
marble slab over the chimney-piece, placed there by the very hand
of Alexander I. of Russia. In the room are two cupboards, in one of
which Peter kept his victuals, while the other was his dormitory.
If Peter slept in that cupboard, and if he shut the door of it, all
I have to say is, the ventilation must have been very deficient, and
how he ever survived it is a wonder. The whole hut is comprised in two
rooms. In the other room are two pictures of the Czar. In the one,
presented in ’56 by Prince Demidoff, the Czar, while at work, axe in
hand, is supposed to have received unwelcome intelligence from Muscovy,
and is dictating a dispatch to his secretary. The finely chiselled
features, pale complexion, and air of refinement, here fathered on
this ruffian, never belonged to him. The other picture, presented by
the munificent and patriotic M. Van der Hoof, is infinitely more to
the purpose, and shows you the man as he really was, and in short, as
he appears in a contemporary portrait at the Rosenborg Slot. Thick,
sensual lips--the very lips to give an unchaste kiss, or suck up
strong waters--contracted brow, bushy eyebrows, coarse, dark hair and
moustache--that is the real man. He wears broad loose breeches reaching
to the knee, and on the table is a glass of grog to refresh him at his
work.

Ten minutes sufficed for me to take the whole thing in, and to get
back in time for the returning steamer, otherwise I should have been
stranded on this mud island for some hours, and there is nought else
to see but a picture in the church of the terrible inundation; the
ship-building days of Zaandam having long since gone by, and passed to
other places.

By this economy of time I shall be enabled to take the afternoon
treckshuit to Broek. A ferry-boat carries us over the Y from
Amsterdam, a distance of two or three hundred yards, to Buiksloot, the
starting-place of the treckshuit, when, to my surprise, each passenger
gives an extra gratuity to the boatman. This shows to what lengths the
fee-system may go. And yet Englishmen persist in introducing it into
Norway, where hitherto it has been unknown. Entering into the little
den called cabin, I settled down and looked around me. On the table
were the Lares, to wit, a brass candlestick, beyond it a brass stand
about a foot high, with a pair of snuffers on it, and then two brasiers
containing charcoal, the whole shining wonderfully bright. Opposite
me, sitting on the puffy cushions, was a substantial-looking peasant,
immensely stout and broad sterned, dressed in a dark jacket and very
wide velveteen trousers. He wore a large gold seal, about the size and
shape of a half-pound packet of moist sugar, and a double gold brooch,
connected by a chain. As the boat seemed a long time in starting, I
emerged again from this odd little shop to ascertain the cause of the
delay, when I found to my surprise that we were already under way. So
noiselessly was the operation effected, that I was not aware of it.
Dragged by a horse, on which sat a sleepy lad, singing a sleepy song,
the boat glided mutely along. The only sound beside the drone of the
boy was the rustling of the reeds, which seemed to whisper, “What an
ass you are for coming along this route. You, who have just come from
the land of the mountain and the flood, to paddle about among these
frogs.” Really, the whole affair is desperately slow, and there is
nothing in the world to see but numerous windmills, with their thatched
roof and sides, whose labour it is to drain the large green meadows
lying some feet below us, on which numerous herds of cows are feeding.




CHAPTER IV.

    Broek--A Dutchman’s idea of Paradise--A toy-house for real
    people--Cannon-ball cheeses--An artist’s flirtation--John Bull
    abroad--All the fun of the fair--A popular refreshment--Morals
    in Amsterdam--The Zoological Gardens--Bed and Breakfast--Paul
    Potter’s bull--Rotterdam.


I was not sorry when the captain, who of course received a fee for
himself besides the fare, called out “Broek!” The stagnation of water,
and sound, and life in general, on a Dutch canal, is positively
oppressive to the feelings; it would have been quite a relief to have
had a little shindy among the passengers and the crew, such as gave a
variety to the canal voyage of Horace to Brundusium.

To enliven matters, supposing we tell you a tale about Broek, which
I of course ferreted out of a drowsy Dutch chronicle, but which the
ill-natured Smelfungus says has been already told by Washington Irvine.
In former times, the people of the place were sadly negligent of their
spiritual duties, and turned a very deaf ear to the exhortations of
the clergyman. A new parson at last arrived, who beholding all the
people given to idolatry in the shape of washing, washing, washing
all the day long, and apparently thinking of nothing else, hit upon
a new scheme for reforming them. He bid them be righteous and fear
God, and then they should get to Paradise, and he described what joys
should be theirs in that abode of bliss. This was the old tale, and the
congregation were on the point of subsiding into their usual sleep.

“The abode of bliss,” continued the preacher, “and cleanliness, and
everlasting washing.” The Dutchmen opened their eyes. “Yes,” proceeded
the preacher; “the joys of earth shall to the good be continued in
heaven. You will be occupied in washing, and scrubbing, and cleaning,
and in cleaning, and washing, and scrubbing, for ever and ever, amen.”

He had hit the right chord; the parson became popular, the church
filled, and a great reformation was wrought in Broek.

Sauntering along the Grand Canal, from which, as from a backbone,
ribbed out divers lesser canals, I entered, at the bidding of an old
lady, one of the houses of the place, with the date of 1612 over it.
Of course its floor was swept and garnished, and the little pan of
lighted turf was burning in the fireplace; and there was the usual
amount of china vases, and knickknacks of all descriptions scattered
about to make up a show. And then she showed me the bed like a
berth, which smelt very fusty, and the door, which is never opened
except at a burial or bridal. After this, I walked into a little
warehouse adjoining, all painted and prim, and saw eight thousand
cannon-ball-shaped cheeses in a row, value one dollar a piece, each
with a red skin, like a very young infant’s. This colour is obtained, I
understand, by immersing them in a decoction of Bordeaux grape husks,
which are imported from France for the purpose. I next went to the
bridge over the canal, and tried to sketch the avenue of dwarf-like
trees and the row of toy-houses, and the old man brushing away two or
three leaves that had fallen on the sward. At this moment came by a
buxom girl in the genuine costume of the place, who exclaimed, “Lauk,
he’s sketching!” (in Dutch) and stood immovable before me, and so of
course I proceeded incontinently to sketch her in the foreground, she
keeping quite still, and then coming and peeping over my shoulder, to
see how she looked on paper.

Finding it was late, I hurried back to catch the return boat, faster,
I should think, than anybody ever ventured before to go in Broek; at
least, I judged so from the looks of sleepy astonishment and almost
displeasure which seemed to gather on the Lotos-eater-like countenances
of the citizens I met. As it was, I just saved the boat, and am now
again gliding smoothly back to Amsterdam.

As I look through the windows of the cabin, I perceive a few golden
plover and stints basking listlessly among the reeds, undisturbed by
our transit. This time, however, there was more bustle on board. There
were two foreigners who were very full of talk, and who, though they
were speaking to a Dutchman in French, I knew at once to be English.
As I finished up my sketch, I heard one of these gentlemen say, “Ah!
I am an Englishman; you would not have thought it, but so it is. Few
English speak French with a correct accent, but I, maw (moi?); jabbeta
seese ann ong France, solemong pour parlay lar lang, ay maw jay parl
parfaitmong biong.” I differed from him. It has seldom been my lot to
hear French spoken worse. John Bull abroad is certainly a curiosity.

That evening I sallied out to see the Kirmess, or great annual fair.
Its chief scene was round the statue of Rembrandt, in the heart of
the city. Hogarth’s “Southwark Fair” would give but a faint idea of
the state of things. There was the usual amount of wild beasts and
giants; there was a pumpkin of a woman and her own brother, as thin
as if he were training to get up the inside of a gas-pipe, to be seen
inside one show, and their faithful portraits outside on a canvas,
painted after the school of Sir Peter Paul Rubens. A mechanical theatre
from Bamberg was apparently doing an immense trade under the auspices
of an unmistakable Jewish family, who appeared from time to time on
the platform. Close by was a picture of Sebastopol, which professed
to have arrived from London. But the undiscerning public seemed to
care very little about it; it was in vain that they were summoned to
advance to the ticket-office by the sound of fife and drum--one could
almost imagine, that the person of rueful and despairing aspect who
was waiting for the people to ascend the parapet, had been spending
some weeks in the trenches before the devoted city. The crowds, that
surged about in serried masses, had their wants well seen to in the
refreshment way. One favourite esculent was brown smoked eels, weighing
perhaps half a pound each, and placed in large heaps on neat-looking
stalls, kept by neat-looking people. The eels were stretched out full
length as stiff as pokers, and I saw several respectable looking
sight-seers solacing themselves with a fish of the sort.

But the most popular refreshment remains to be mentioned. Ranged along
the street, in a compact row, were a number of gaudily painted temples;
in front of each sat the priestess. Mostly, she was young and pretty,
but here and there, blowsy and obese. By her side was a large bright
copper caldron, steaming with a white hasty-pudding-looking substance.
In front of her was a fire, over which was a broad square plate of
iron, studded with small holes like a bagatelle-board. The female held
in her hand a wand, or rather a long iron spoon, which she dabbed
into the caldron, and then delivered a portion of the contents into
the little holes above-mentioned. This required great adroitness; but
custom appeared to have brought her to the pinnacle of her art, and
she hardly ever missed her mark. In a second or two, the hasty-pudding
became transformed into a sort of small pancake, and was whipped out
of its _locus in quo_ by a light-fingered acolyte of the male sex. I
observed that behind the priestess were sundry little alcoves, shaded
by bright- curtains; in these might be seen loving pairs,
feasting on the handiworks of the lady of the spoon. The repast was
simple, and was soon dispatched, for a constant succession of votaries
kept entering and issuing from the alcoves. If I was correctly
informed, it would have been possible to have got as high as the top
button of your waistcoat for the small sum of a few stivers.

I was sorry to hear that this national festival--a sort of Dutch
carnival, which is visited by all classes--is ruinous to what is left
of morals in Amsterdam.

Before leaving the city, I must not omit to mention the Zoological
Gardens. If you wish to find them, you must ask for the “Artis;” that
is the name it is known by to every gamin and fisherman in Amsterdam.
The Dutch are very classical, and the inscription over the entrance is,
“Naturæ artis magistra.” Half-a-dozen other public places go by Latin
names. Thus, the Royal Institution of Literature and Art is called
“Felix Meritis,” from the first words of a legend on the front of the
building.

Next day, I take leave of my room in the hotel, with its odd
French-shaped beds, closed in by heavy green stuff curtains, and great
projecting chimney-piece. In my bill, the charge for bed tacitly
includes that for breakfast; these two items being, seemingly,
considered by the Dutch all one thing. Cheese appears to be invariably
eaten by the natives with their morning coffee, which is kept hot by a
little spirit-lamp under the coffee-pot.

After this, I stopped at Shravenhagen (the Hague), to see Paul Potter’s
Bull. On the Sunday, attended a Calvinistic place of worship, where
I was horrified to behold the irreverent way in which the male part
of the congregation, who looked not unlike your unpleasant political
dissenter at a church-rate meeting, gossiped with their hats on their
heads until the entrance of the clergyman.

Next day, I found myself at Rotterdam. The steamer for London managed,
near Helvoetsluys, to break the floats of her paddle-wheel; the engine
could not be worked; and as there was a heavy sea and strong wind
blowing on-shore, we should soon have been there, had not another
steamer come to our assistance, and towed us back into a place of
safety. After repairing damages, we proceeded on our voyage, and
eventually arrived unharmed in London.




CHAPTER V.

    Oxford in the Long Vacation--The rats make such a
    strife--A case for Lesbia--Interview between a hermit and
    a novice--The ruling passion--Blighted hopes--Norwegian
    windows--Tortoise-shell soup--After dinner--Christiansand
    again--Ferry on the Torrisdal river--Plain records of
    English travellers--Salmonia--The bridal crown--A bridal
    procession--Hymen, O Hymenæe!--A ripe Ogress--The head cook at
    a Norwegian marriage--God-fearing people--To Sætersdal--Neck or
    nothing--Lilies and lilies--The Dutch myrtle.


I was sitting in my rooms, about the end of the month of July, 1857,
having been dragged perforce, by various necessary avocations, into the
solitude of the Oxford Long Vacation; not a soul in this college, or,
in short, in any college. “A decided case of ‘Last Rose of Summer,’”
mused I. “Those rats or mice, too, in the cupboard, what a clattering
and squeaking they keep up, lamenting, probably, the death of one of
their companions in the trap this morning; but, nevertheless, they are
not a bit intimidated, for it is hunger that makes them valiant.”
The proverb, “Hungry as a church mouse,” fits a college mouse in Long
Vacation exactly. The supplies are entirely stopped with the departure
of the men: no remnants of cold chicken, or bread-and-butter, no
candles. It is not surprising, then, they have all found me out.

I positively go to bed in fear and trembling, lest they should make a
nocturnal attack.

    Each hole and cranny they explore,
      Each crook and corner of the chamber;
    They hurry-skurry round the floor,
      And o’er the books and sermons clamber.

The fate of that worthy Bishop Hatto stares me in the face. If they did
not spare so exalted a personage, what will become of me? And as for
keeping a cat, no, that may not be. I am not a Whittington. They are a
treacherous race, and purr, and fawn, and play the villain--quadrupedal
Nena Sahibs. I always hated them, and still more so since an incident I
witnessed one year in Norway.

On the newly-mown grass before the cottage where I was staying, a lot
of little redpoles--the sparrows of those high latitudes--were very
busily engaged picking up their honest livelihood, and making cheerful
remarks to one another on the brightness of the weather and the flavour
of the hay-seeds. Intently examining their motions through my glass, I
had paid no heed to a cat which seemed rolling about carelessly on the
lawn. Suddenly, I perceived that it had imperceptibly edged nearer and
nearer to the pretty little birds, and was gliding, snake-like, towards
them. I tapped at the window lustily, and screamed out in hopes of
alarming my friends; but it was too late; they flew up, the cat sprung
up aloft likewise, caught a poor little fellow in mid-air, and was away
with it and out of sight in a moment.

    At vobis male sit, _catis dolorum_
    _Plenis_, qui omnia bella devoratis!
    Tam bellum mihi passerem abstulistis!
    O factum malé! o miselle passer!

Norway! and why am I not there? It is too late this year to think of
it. I must write to that friend, and say I can’t keep my promise, and
join him thither. No, I must be content with a little trout-fishing
in Wales or Scotland. At this moment a tap is heard at the door. An
ingenuous youth, undergraduate of St. Sapientia College, and resident
in the neighbourhood, had brought a letter of introduction from a
common friend, begging me, as one deep in the mysteries of Norwegian
travelling, to give the bearer some information respecting that
country, as he thought of taking a month’s trip thither.

As I pulled out Munck’s map, chalked out a route for the youth, and
gave him a little practical advice on the subject, a regular spasm came
across me. Iö was never plagued by that malicious gadfly, or “tsetse,”
so much as I was for the rest of the day by an irresistible desire to
be off to the old country. The steamer was to start in three days.
On the third day I stood on board of her, in the highest possible
spirits. The ingenuous youth was also there; but high hope was not
the expression on his countenance. Most wofully he approached me. To
make assurance doubly sure, and secure a good berth, he had left home
the day before. On arriving at the terminus, his box was not to be
found--the box with all his traps, and the 50_l._ in it. He had sent
telegrams, or telegraphemes, to the four ends of Great Britain for the
missing box; but it was not forthcoming. In a few hours we weighed
anchor. The expectant visitor was left behind, and as there was no
vessel to Norway for the next fortnight, the chances were that his trip
thither would not take place. The above facts will serve as a warning
to young travellers.

As daylight peered through the small porthole in the morning, I found
that we had no less than eight people in our cabin, and that the
porthole was shut, although it was smooth water.

“What an atmosphere,” said an Englishman, in an adjoining berth. “I
have opened that porthole two or three times in the night; but that
fat, drum-bellied Norwegian there, who seems as fond of hot, stifling
air as a melon, has shut it again.”

“What can you expect of the people of a country,” replied I, “where the
windows are often not made to open?”

A tall, gentlemanly-looking man, who stood before the looking-glass,
and had just brushed his glossy wig into a peak like Mr. Pecksniff,
here turned round and said, in Norwegian-English--

“I do assure you, sir, that the Norwegian windows will open.”

“Yes, in the towns; but frequently in the country not. I have been
there a good deal, and I speak from experience.”

I find that our friend, who is very communicative, was in London in
the days of the Prince Regent--yes, and he once dined with him at the
London Tavern, at a dinner given in aid of foreigners in distress:
the ticket cost 10_l._ He remembers perfectly well how, on another
occasion, a tortoise-shell, all alive, was carried round London in a
cart, with a notice that it would be made into _tortoise-shell_ soup on
a certain day. He dined, and the soup was super-excellent.

Consul ----, for I found that he had attained that distinction--was
well acquainted with all the resorts of London. Worxall pleased him
much. He had even learned to box. He had also something to say about
the war with the Swedes, led on by Karl Johann, in which he took part.

After dinner we divert ourselves by observing the sleeping countenance
of the obese Norwegian who was so fond of carbonic acid gas, assume all
sorts of colours,--livid, red, yellow,--not from repletion, though this
might well have been the case, but from the light of the painted glass
overhead, which transferred its chameleon hues to his physiognomy.

Here I am, once more plunging into the heart of Norway in the national
vehicle, the carriole; up hills, down hills, across stony morasses,
through sandy pine forests. We landed this afternoon at Christiansand,
and I am now seven miles north of it, and standing by the side of the
magnificent Torrisdal river, waiting for the great unwieldy ferry-boat
to come over. The stream is strong and broad, and there is only one man
working the craft; but, by taking advantage of a back stream on the
other side, and one on this, he has actually accomplished the passage
with little trouble, and hit the landing-place to an inch.

On the other side, three or four carrioles, some of them double ones,
are just descending the steep hill, and I have to wait till they get
down to the waterside, in consequence of the narrowness of the road.
One of the strangers, with a broad gold band round his cap, turns out
to be the British consul. He is returning with a party of ladies and
gentlemen from a pic-nic at the Vigelandsfoss, about three miles from
this, where the river makes a fine fall.

That evening we stop at the Verwalter’s (Bailiff’s), close by the
falls. I have no salmon-rod, but Mr. C----, an Englishman, who has come
up with me to sketch the foss, and try for a salmon, obtains leave,
as a great favour, to fish in the pools for one dollar a day, and a
dollar to each of the boatmen. The solitary grilse that he succeeded in
catching during the next day cost him therefore some fifteen shillings.
The charges are an infallible sign that Englishmen have been here.

As in the Tweed, the take of salmon in these southern rivers has fallen
off terribly. In Mandal river, a little to the westward, the fishing in
the last twenty years has become one-tenth of what it was. Here, where
1600 fish used to be taken yearly, 200 only are caught. But at Boen, in
the Topdal river, which, like this, enters the sea at Christiansand,
no decrease is observable. For the last ten years the average yield
of the salmon fishery there has been 2733 fish per annum. In this
state of things, the services of Mr. Hetting, the person deputed by
the Norwegian Government to travel about the country and teach the
inhabitants the method of artificially breeding salmon and other
fish, have been had recourse to. Near this, breeding-places have been
constructed under his auspices.

Extensive saw-mills are erected all about this place; and it is
probable that the dust, which is known to bother the salmon by clogging
their gills, may have diminished their productiveness, or driven them
elsewhere. The vast volume of water which here descends, is cut into
two distinct falls; but a third fall, a few hundred yards above, excels
them in height and grandeur.

While eating my breakfast, an old dame comes in with a large basket
and mysterious looks. Her mission is one of great importance--viz.,
to hire the bridal crown belonging to the mistress of the house,
for a wedding, which will take place at the neighbouring church this
afternoon. She gets the article, and pays one dollar for the use of it.
Hearing that the bridal _cortège_ will sweep by at five o’clock, P.M.,
on its way from the church, I determined to defer my journey northwards
till it had passed.

At that hour, the cry of “They come! they come!” saluted my ears.
Pencil or pen of Teniers or Fielding, would that you were mine, so that
I might do justice to what I saw. Down the steep hill leading to the
house there came, at a slow pace, first a carriole, with that important
functionary, the Kiögemester, standing on the board behind, and, like a
Hansom cabman, holding the reins over the head of the bridesmaid, a fat
old lady, with a voluminous pile of white upon her head, supposed to be
a cap. Next came a cart, containing two spruce young maidens, who wore
caps of dark check with broad strings of red satin riband, in shape
a cross between those worn by the buy-a-broom girls and the present
fashionable bonnet, which does _not_ cover the head of English ladies.
Their jackets were of dark blue cloth, and skirt of the same material
and colour, with a narrow scarlet edging, similar to that worn by
peasant women in parts of Wales. Over the jacket was a  shawl,
the ends crossed at the waist, and pinned tight. Add to this a large
pink apron, and in their hands a white kerchief, after the manner of
Scotch girls, on their way to kirk. After these came a carriole, with
four little boys and girls clustered upon it.

But the climax is now reached. The next vehicle, a cart, contains the
chief actors in the show, the bride and bridegroom, who are people
of slender means. He is evidently somewhat the worse, or better, for
liquor, and is dressed in the short blue seaman’s jacket and trousers,
which have become common in Norway wherever the old national costume
has disappeared. The bride--oh! all ye little loves, lave the point of
my pen in _couleur de rose_, that I may describe meetly this mature
votary of Venus. There she sat like an image of the goddess Cybele;
on her head a turret of pasteboard, covered with red cloth, with
flamboyant mouldings of spangles, beads, and gold lace; miserable
counterfeit of the fine old Norwegian bridal crown of silver gilt!
Nodding over the turret was a plume of manifold feathers--ostrich,
peacock, chicken, mixed with artificial flowers; from behind it
streamed a cataract of ribands of some fifteen different tints and
patterns. Her plain yellow physiognomy was unrelieved by a single lock
of hair.

“It is not the fashion,” explained a female bystander, “for the bride
to disclose any hair. It must on this occasion be all tucked in out of
sight.”

This ripe ogress of half a century was further dressed in a red skirt
with gold belt, a jacket of black brocade, over which was a cuirass
of scarlet cloth shining resplendently in front with the national
ornament, the Sölje, a circular silver-gilt brooch, three inches
in diameter, with some twenty gilded spoon-baits (fishermen will
understand me) hung on to its rim. Frippery of divers sorts hung about
her person. On each shoulder was an epaulet or bunch of white gauze
bows, while the other ends of her arms were adorned by ruffles and
white gloves.

As this wonderful procession halted in front of the door, the gallant
Kiögemester advanced and lifted the bride in his arms out of her
vehicle. As she mounted the door-steps, a decanter of brandy in hand,
all wreathed in smiles and streamers, flowers and feathers, I bowed
with great reverence, which evidently gratified her vanity.

“I’ll tell you what she reminds me of,” said my English companion,
who had left his profitless fishing to see the sight, “a Tyrolese cow
coming home garlanded from the châlet. No doubt this procession would
look rather ridiculous in Hyde Park, but here, in this wild outlandish
country, do you know, with the sombre pine-trees and the grey rocks,
and wild rushing river, it does not strike me as so contemptible. She
is tricked out in all the finery she can lay her hands on, and in that
she is only doing the same as her sex the world over, from the belle
savage of Central Africa to Queen Victoria herself.”

The Kiögemester (head cook)--not that he attends to the cooking
department, whatever he might have done in former days--is a
very ancient institution on this occasion. He is the soul of the
whole festival. Without him everything would be in disorder or at
a stand-still. Bowing to the procession, he is also bowed down by
the weight of his responsibility. In his single self he is supposed
to combine, at first-rate weddings, the offices of master of the
ceremonies, chief butler, speechifier, jester, precentor, and, above
all, of peace-maker. His activity as chief butler often calls forth a
corresponding degree of activity as an assuager of broils. The baton
which he frequently wields is shaped like the ancient fool’s bauble. If
he is a proficient in his art he will, like Mr. Robson, shine in the
comic as well as the serious department, alternating original jests
with solemn apophthegms. But the race is dying out. The majority are
mere second-hand performers. The real adepts in the science give an
_éclat_ to the whole proceedings, and are consequently much in request,
being sent for from long distances.

By-the-bye, I must not omit to mention that on the left arm of the
bride hung a red shawl, just like that on the arm of the Spanish
bull-fighter, whose province it is to give the _coup de grace_ to the
devoted bull. From the manner in which she displayed it, I fancy it
must have been an essential item in her toilette. Hearing no pipe and
tabor, or, more strictly speaking, no fiddle, the almost invariable
accompaniment of these pageants, I inquired the reason.

“They are gudfrygtig folk (God-fearing people); they will have nothing
to do with such vanities,” was the answer.

There seemed to me, however, to be some contradiction between this
“God-fearing” scrupulosity and the size of the bride’s person. It
struck me, as I saw the stalwart master of the ceremonies exerting all
his strength to lift her into the cart again, that it was high time she
was married.

At this moment up drives a gentleman dressed in black, with dark
rat-taily hair shading his sallow complexion, and a very large nose
bridged by a huge pair of silver spectacles, the centre arch of which
was wrapped with black riband, that it might not press too much on the
keystone. This is the parson who has tied the fatal noose, and is now
wending his way homewards to his secluded manse.

Bidding adieu to my companion, who purposed driving round the coast, I
now set off to the station, Mosby, to join the main route to Sætersdal,
one of the wildest, poorest, and most primitive valleys of Norway,
which I’m bent on exploring. On the road I once or twice narrowly
escape coming into collision with the carriole of a young peasant
who has been at the wedding. Mad with brandy, he keeps passing and
repassing me at full gallop. The sagacious horse--I won’t call him
brute, a term much more applicable to his master--makes up by his
circumspection for his driver’s want of it. He seems to be perfectly
aware of the state of things, and, while goaded into a break-neck pace,
dexterously avoids the dangers.

Oak--a rare sight to me in this country--aspen (asp), sycamore (lön),
hazel, juniper, bracken, fringe the sides of the road northward. Now
and then a group of white “wand-like” lilies (Tjorn-blom) rises from
some silent tarn (in Old Norsk, Tjorn), looking very small indeed
after those huge fellows I have left reposing in the arms of the Isis
at Oxford. Their moonlight- chalice is well-known to be a
favourite haunt of the tiny water-elves, so I suppose the Scandinavian
ones are tinier than their sisters of Great Britain.

Nor must I omit to mention the quantities of Dutch myrtle, or sweet
gale (pors), with which the swampy grounds abound. It possesses strong
narcotic qualities, and is put in some districts into the beer,
while, elsewhere, a decoction of it is sprinkled about the houses to
intimidate the fleas, who have a great horror of it. Lyng (lüng),
some of it white, and that of a peculiar kind, which I have never
seen before, also clings to the sides of the high grounds, while
strawberries and raspberries of excellent taste are not wanting.




CHAPTER VI.

    A dreary station--Strange bed-fellows--Broadsides--Comfortable
    proverb--Skarp England--Interesting particulars--A hospitable
    Norwegian Foged--Foster-children--The great bear-hunter--A
    terrible Bruin--Forty winks--The great Vennefoss--A temperance
    lamentation--More bear talk--Grey legs--Monosyllabic
    conversation--Trout fished from the briny deep--A warning to
    the beaux of St. James’s-street--Thieves’ cave--A novelette for
    the Adelphi.


I stop for the night at the dreary station of Homsmoen. By a singular
economy in household furniture, the cornice of the uncurtained
state-bed is made to serve as a shelf, and all the crockery, together
with the other household gods or goods of the establishment, are
perched thereon, threatening to fall upon me if I made the slightest
movement, so that my feelings, and those of Damocles, must have been
not unlike; and when I did get to sleep, my slumbers were suddenly
disturbed by the creeping of a mouse or rat, not “behind the arras,”
for the wooden walls were bare, but under my pillow. Gracious
goodness! is it my destiny then to fall a prey to these wretches?
Notwithstanding, I soon dozed off to sleep again, muttering to myself
something about “Coctilibus muris,” and “dead for a ducat.”

In the morning, when the peasant-wife brings me coffee, I tell her of
the muscipular disturbances of the past night. She replies, with much
_sang froid_, “O ja, de pleie at holde sig da” (Oh yes, they are in the
habit of being there), _i.e._, in the loose bed-straw.

While sipping my coffee, I read a printed address hung upon the
wall, wherein “a simple Norwegian, of humble estate,” urges his
countrymen not to drink brandy. A second notice is an explanation of
infant baptism. This is evidently to counteract the doctrines of the
clergyman Lammers, who, as I have mentioned elsewhere, has founded an
antipædobaptist sect. Indeed, I see in the papers advertisements of
half-a-dozen works that have lately appeared on the subject. Another
specimen of this wall-literature was a collection of Norwegian
proverbs, one of which might perhaps serve to reconcile an explorer in
this country to indifferent accommodation. “The poor man’s house is his
palace.” Another proverb rebuked pride, in the following manner:--“Dust
is still dust, although it rise to heaven.”

Next day we pass a solitary farmstead, which my attendant informs me is
called Skarp England (_i.e._, scanty, not deep-soiled, meadow-land).
Were it not for those Angles, the generally reputed godfathers of
England, one would almost be inclined to derive the name of our country
from that green, meadow (eng) like appearance which must have caught
the attention of the immigrant Jutes and Saxons. At least, such is the
surmise of Professor Radix.

“And what road is that?” I asked, pointing to a very unmacadamized
byway through the forest.

“It is called Prest-vei (the Priest’s-way), because that is the road
the clergyman has to take to get to one of his distant churches.”

“Gee up!” said I to the horse, a young one, and unused to his work,
adding a slight flip with the whip (Svöbe), a compliment which the
colt returned by lashing out with his heels.

“Hilloa, Erik! this won’t do; it’s quite dangerous.”

“Oh no, he has no back shoes; he won’t hurt you--except,” he afterwards
added, “out of fun he should happen to strike a little higher.”

The ill-omened shriek of a couple of jays which crossed the road
diverted my attention, and I asked their Norwegian name, which I found
to be “skov-shur” (wood-magpie) in these parts.

As we skirt the western bank of the Kile Fjord, a fresh-water lake,
a dozen miles long, and abounding in fish (meget fiskerig), the man
points to me a spot on the further shore where the Torrisdal River,
after flowing through the lake, debouches by a succession of falls in
its course to Vigeland and the sea at Christiansand.

At every station the question is, “Are you going up to the copper
works?” These are at Valle, a long way up the valley. They have
been discontinued some years, but, it is said, are now likely to be
re-opened.

At Ketilsaa I am recommended to call on the Foged of the district,
a fine, hearty sexagenarian, who gave me much valuable information
respecting this singular valley and its inhabitants; besides which,
what I especially valued under the circumstances, he set before me
capital home-brewed beer, port wine, Trondjem’s aquavit, not to
mention speil aeg (poached eggs) and bear ham. Bear flesh is the best
_travel_ of all, say the Greenlanders, so I did not spare the last. The
superstitions and tales about Huldra and fairies (here called jügere)
are, the Foged tells me, dying out hereabout, though not higher up the
valley.

His foster-son,[4] a jolly-looking gentleman, sends off a messenger
to see if his own horse is near at hand, in order that I may not be
detained by waiting for one at the neighbouring station, Fahret. But
the pony is somewhere in the forest, so that his benevolent designs
cannot be realized. Altogether, I have never visited any house in
Norway where intelligence, manliness, and good-nature seemed so
thoroughly at home as at the Foged’s.

The station-master, Ole Gundarson Fahret, manages to get me a relay in
one hour; in the interval we have a palaver.

“There was once an Englishman here,” said he, “who went out
bear-hunting with the greatest bear-shooter of these parts, Nils Olsen
Breistöl; but they did not happen on one. Breistöl has shot fifteen
bears.”

“How does he manage to find them in the trackless forest?”

“Why he is continually about, and he knows of a great many bears’
winter-lairs (Björn-hi); and when the bear is asleep, he goes and pokes
him out.”

“But is it not dangerous?”

“Sometimes. There was a great bear who was well known for fifty miles
round, for he was as grey as a wolf, and lame of one leg, having
been injured, it was thought, in a fight with a stallion. He killed
a number of horses; and great rewards were offered to the killer of
him. The people in Mandal, to the west, offered thirty dollars; he had
been very destructive down there. Well, Breistöl found out where he
lay one winter, and went up with another man. Out he comes, and tries
to make off. They are always ræd (frightened) at first, when they are
surprised in their lair. But Breistöl sent a ball into him (this Norsk
Mudjekeewis, by-the-bye, makes his own rifles), and the bear stopped
short, and rushed at him. Just at this moment, however, he got another
bullet from the other man, which stopped him. After waiting for a
moment, he turned round, and charged at the new aggressor, who dodged
behind a tree; meanwhile, Breistöl had loaded, and gave him another
ball; and so they kept firing and dodging; and it actually took fifteen
balls to kill him, he was so big and strong. The last time they fired,
they came close to him, and shot two bullets into his head, only making
one hole; then he died. The usual reward from the Government is five
dollars, but Breistöl got fifteen. The Mandal people, when they heard
the great grey bear was dead, gave him nothing. Fand (fiend)! but he
was immensely big (uhyr stor), so fat and fleshy.”

“And how long does the bear sleep in winter?” I inquired.

“He goes in about Sanct Michael’s-tid, and comes out at the beginning
of April.”

“And how many bears are there in one hole?”

“Only one; unless the female has young late in the autumn. A man in
these parts once found an old he-bear (Manden), with a she-bear, and
three young cubs, all in one hole. I think there are as many bears
as ever there were in the country. There was a lad up in the forest,
five years ago; a bear struck at him, but missed him, only getting
his cap, which stuck on the end of his claws. This seemed to frighten
the brute, and he made off. The little boy didn’t know what a danger
he had escaped; he began to cry for the loss of his cap, and wanted
to go after it. Now that did not happen by chance. V Herre Gud har
Hannd i slig (God our master has a hand in such like things). We have a
proverb, that the bear has ten men’s strength, and the wit of twelve;
but that’s neither here nor there. Björnen kan vaere meget staerk, men
han faa ikke Magt at draebe mennesker, Mnaar Han ikke tillade det. (The
bear may be very strong, but he has not the power to kill men unless He
permits it.”)

In which proper sentiment I of course acquiesced, and took leave of the
intelligent Schusskaffer.

My attendant on the next stage, Ole Michelsen Vennefoss, derived his
last name from the great cataract on the Otterelv, near which he lives.
It is now choked up with timber. But all this, he tells me, will move
in the autumn, when the water rises; although, in the north of the
country, the rivers at that time get smaller and smaller, and, in
winter time, with the ice that covers them, occupy but a small part of
the accustomed bed.

A few years ago, a friend of his had a narrow escape at these falls:
the boat he was in turned over just above the descent, and he
disappeared from view; down hurried the boat, and providentially was
not smashed to pieces. At the bottom of the fall it caught against a
rock, and righted again, and up bobbed the drowned man, having been
under the boat all the time. His friends managed to save him.

On the road we overtake a man driving, who offers me schnaps in an
excited manner.

“Ah,” said Ole, mournfully, “he has been to the By, and bought some
brantviin; they never can resist the temptation. When he gets home,
there will be a Selskab (party). People for miles round know where he
has been, and they will come and hear the news, and drink themselves
drunk.”

Ole is one of the so-called Lesere, or Norwegian Methodists, disciples
of Hauge, whose son is the clergyman of a parish near here. They may
often be detected by their drawling way of speaking.

“Well, Ole,” said I, “did you ever see any of these bears they talk so
much about?”

“Yes, that I have. I saw the old lame bear that Breistöl shot. I was
up at the stöl (châlet) four years ago come next week, with my two
sisters. We were sitting outside the building, just about this time of
the evening, when it was getting dusk; all of a sudden, the horse came
galloping to us as hard as ever he could tear. I knew at once it was a
bear; and, sure enough, close behind him, came the beast rushing out of
the wood. We all raised a great noise and shouting, on which the bear
stopped, and ran away. Poor blacky had a narrow escape; he bears the
marks of the bear’s claws on his hind quarters. I could put my four
fingers in them.”

Quite so, hummed I--

    The sable score of fingers four
    Remain on that _horse_ impressed.

“But what do the bears eat, when they can’t get cattle?”

“Grass, and berries, and ants (myren).”

“But don’t the ants sting him?”

“Oh! no; no such thing. A friend of mine saw a bear come to one of
those great ant-hills you have passed in the woods. He put out his
tongue, and laid it on the ant-hill till it was covered with ants, and
then slipped it back into his mouth. They can’t hurt him, his tongue
is too thick-skinned for that.”

“Does the bear eat anything in winter?”

“Nothing, I believe. I have seen one or two that were killed then;
their stomach was as empty as empty--wanted no cleaning at all. I think
that’s the reason they are such cowards then. I have always more pluck
when my stomach is full. Hav’n’t you?”

It struck me that there are many others besides the artless Norwegian
who, if they chose, must confess to a similar weakness.

“But the wolves (ulven) don’t go to sleep in winter; what do they eat?”

“Ulven?--what’s that?”

“I mean Graa-been (grey-legs).”

“Ah! you mean Skrüb.[5] In winter they steal what they can, and, when
hard pressed, they devour a particular sort of clay. That’s well
known; it’s plain to see from their skarn (dung.)”

Ole further tells me that a pair of eagles build in a tall tree about a
mile from his house. The young ones have just flown; he had not time
to take them, although there is a reward of half-a-dollar a-head. Fancy
a native of the British Isles suffering an eagle to hatch, and fly off
with its brood in quiet.

“Hvor skal de ligge inat?” (where shall you lie to-night?) he inquired,
as we proceeded.

“I don’t think I shall go further than Guldsmedoen, to-night,” I
replied.

“There is no accommodation at all at the station,” he said; “but at
Senum, close by, you can get a night’s lodging.”

It was dark when we arrived at Senum, which lay down a break-neck
side-path, where the man had to lead the horse. On our tapping at the
door, a female popped her head out of a window, but said nothing. After
a pause, my man says “Quells,” literally, whiling, or resting-time.
This was an abbreviation for “godt quell” (good evening). “Quells” was
the monosyllabic reply of the still small voice at the porthole.

“Tak for senast” (thanks for the last), was my guide’s next observation.

“Tak for senast,” the other responded from above.

The ice being now somewhat broken, the treble of “the two voices”
inquired--

“What man is that with you?”

“A foreigner, who wants a night’s lodging.”

Before long, the farmer and his wife were busy upstairs preparing a
couch for me, with the greatest possible goodwill; nor would they
hear of Ole returning home that night, so he, too, obtained sleeping
quarters somewhere in the establishment.

I find, what the darkness had prevented me from seeing, that this house
is situated at the southern end of the Aarfjord, a lake of nearly forty
miles in length. Mine host has this evening caught a lot of fine trout
in the lake with the nets. They are already in salt--everything is
salted in this country--but I order two or three fat fellows out of the
brine, and into some fresh water against the morning, when they prove
excellent. So red and fat! The people here say they are better than
salmon.

Rain being the order of the next day, I post up my journal. In the
afternoon I resume my journey by the road on the further side of the
lake. Until very lately a carriage road was unknown here. The Fogderi,
or Bailewick, in which we now are, is called Robygd: a reminiscence,
it is said, of the days not long since over, when the sole means of
locomotion up the valley (bygd) was to row (roe). The vehicle being a
common cart, with no seat, a bag is stuffed with heather for me to sit
on; and this acts as a buffer to break the force of the bumps which the
new-made road and the springless cart kept giving each other, while,
in reality, it was I that came in for the brunt of the pommelling. The
Norwegian driver sat on the hard edge of the cart, regardless of the
shocks, and as tough apparently as the birch-wood of which the latter
was composed. It won’t do for a person who is at all _made-up_ to risk
a journey in Sætersdal: he would infallibly go to pieces, and the
false teeth be strewed about the path after the manner of those of the
serpent or dragon sown by Jason on the Champ de Mars. Armed men rose
from the earth on that occasion, and something of the kind took place
now. Don’t start, reader, it was only in story.

“Look at that hole,” said my attendant, pointing to an opening half-way
up the limestone cliff, surrounded by trees and bushes. “That is
the----”

“Cave of the Dragon?” interrupted I, abstractedly.

“The Tyve Helle (thieves’ cave), which goes in one hundred feet deep.
For a long time they were the terror of all Sætersdal. The only way
to the platform in front of the cave was by a ladder. One of their
band, who pretended to be a Tulling (idiot), used to go begging at the
farm-houses, and spying how the ground lay.

“On one occasion they carried off along with some cattle the girl who
tended them. Poor soul! she could not escape, they kept such a sharp
watch on her. The captain of the band meanwhile wanted to marry her;
she pretended to like the idea, and the day before that fixed for
the wedding asked leave just to go down to the farm where she used
to live and steal the silver Brudestads (bridal ornaments), which
were kept there. The thieves gave her leave;--they could dispense
with the parson, but not with this. But first they made her swear she
would not speak to a soul at the house. At midnight, Asjer, as she was
called, arrived at her former home, to the astonishment of the good
folks. She at once proceeded to take a piece of white linen, a scrap
of red home-spun cloth, and a pair of shears. This done, she went to
the chimney-corner and told the pinewood-beam, ‘I have been stolen by
robbers; they live in a cave in the forest, I will cut little bits
of red cloth on the road to it; to-morrow the captain marries me.
To-night, when they are all drunk and asleep, I will hang out the piece
of white cloth.’ Without exchanging a word with the inmates, she then
set off back. The master of the house and a few friends collected, and
followed her track. At night-fall they saw the flag waved from the
mouth of the cave. In they rushed upon the thieves, who, unable to
escape, threw themselves over the precipice. The captain, suspecting
her to be the author of the surprise, seized her by the apron as he
dashed over the ledge, determined that she should die with him. But
the leader of the bonders, a ready-witted fellow, cut her apron-strings
with his knife, just in the nick of time, so that she was saved; and
the robber, in his fall, took nothing with him but her apron.”




CHAPTER VII.

    A wolf trap--The heather--Game and game-preserves--An
    optical delusion--Sumptuous entertainment--Visit to a
    Norwegian store-room--Petticoats--Curious picture of
    the Crucifixion--Fjord scenery--How the priest Brun was
    lost--A Sætersdal manse--Frightfully hospitable--Eider-down
    quilts--Costume of a Norwegian waiting-maid--The tartan in
    Norway--An ethnological inquiry--Personal characteristics--The
    sect of the Haugians--Nomad life in the far Norwegian
    valleys--Trug--Memorials of the Vikings--Female Bruin in a
    rage--How bears dispose of intruders--Mercantile marine of
    Norway--The Bad-hus--How to cook brigands--Winter clothing.


Close by Langerack we pass a wolf-trap (baas), formed on the principle
of our box-trap, for catching rats, only that the material is thick
pine-boles fastened side by side. More than one wolf and lynx have been
caged here.

The heather still continues plentiful; I particularly note this, as in
the more northerly parts of the country, _e.g._, about Jerkin, this
beautiful vestiture of the rocks and moors is seldom seen, except in
very little bits. What a pity that none of our British grouse proper
(_Tetrao Scoticus_) return the visit of the Norwegian ptarmigan to
Scotland, and found a colony in these parts; they would escape at
all events those systematic traffickers in ornithological blood, by
whom these unfortunates are bought and sold as per advertisement.
Blackcock and capercailzie, as usual, are to be found in the lower
woods, and ptarmigan higher up. About here there are no trees of large
size remaining; the best have long since been cut down and floated
to the sea. It would do a nurseryman’s heart good to see the groups
of hardy little firs, self-sown, sprouting up in every crevice with
an exuberance of health and strength, and asserting their right to a
hearing among the soughing branches of their taller neighbours, who
rise patronizingly above them. The seed falling upon stony ground
does not fail to come up, notwithstanding, and bring forth fruit a
hundred-fold and more.

The valley here, which has been opening ever since I left Vennefoss,
continues to improve in looks; it is now almost filled by the Fjord,
and appears to come to an end some distance higher up, by the
intervention of a block of mountains; but if there be any truth in
the map, this is an optical delusion, the valley running up direct
northward, nearly one hundred and fifty miles from Christiansand, and
reaching a height at Bykle of nearly two thousand feet above the sea.

At the clean and comfortable station of Langerack I light upon a
treasure in the shape of a dozen or two of hens’ eggs; very small
indeed, it is true, as they were not quite so big as a bantam’s. Six
of these I immediately take, and an old lady, with exceedingly short
petticoats, commences frying them, while I grind the coffee which she
has just roasted.

After a goodly entertainment, for part of which I was indebted to my
own wallet, I go with her to the Stabur, or store-room, where, with
evident pride and pleasure, she shows me all her valuables; conspicuous
among these was a full set of bridal costume, minus the crown, which
was let out. The bridal belt was of yellow leather, and covered with
silver-gilt ornaments, all of the same pattern, to each of which is
suspended a small bracteate of the same metal, which jingles with every
step of the bride. What particularly attracted my attention were the
three woollen petticoats worn by the bride one over the other. The
first is of a dingy white colour, and is, in fact, the same as the
every-day dress of the females. The second is of blue cloth, with red
and green stripes round the bottom. The third, which is worn outermost,
is of scarlet, with gold and green edging. Of course if these were all
of the same length the under-ones would not be visible; and thus the
object of wearing such a heap of clothes--love of display--would be
defeated; so, while the undermost is long, the next is less so, and
the next shorter still. Each one is very heavy, so the weight of the
three together must be great indeed. The whole reminds one of harlequin
at a country fair. But, while he comes on unwieldily and shabbily
dressed, and as he takes off one coat and waistcoat after another grows
smarter and smarter, and at last fines down into a gay harlequin, the
Norwegian bride, by a contrary process, grows smarter and smarter with
each article of clothing that she assumes.

The most remarkable thing about these bridal petticoats is the skirt
behind, which is divided by plaits like the flutings of a Doric column;
while these, towards the bottom or base bulge out into two or three
rounded folds, which stick out considerably from the person. Hear this,
ye Miss Weazels, who condemn crinoline as a new-fangled institution,
whereas in fact the idea is evidently taken from the primæval customs
of Sætersdal. The support of this dead weight of clothing are not,
as might be expected, the hips, for the whole system of integuments
comes right up over the bosom, and is upheld by a couple of very short
braces or shoulder-straps. A jacket under these circumstances is almost
superfluous. It is of blue cloth with gold edging, and only reaches
down to the arm-holes.

These vestments are no doubt of very ancient cut. In the district of
Lom another sort of dress was once the fashion. The coat was of white
wadmel, with dark  embroidery, and silver buttons as big as
a dollar. The collar stood up. The waistcoat was scarlet, and also
embroidered. White knee-breeches of wash-leather, garters of 
thread, and shoes adorned with large silver buckles, set off the lower
man. This dress went out at the beginning of the century. In Romerike,
and elsewhere, there was on the back of the coat a quaint piece of
embroidery pointing up like the spire of a church, and green, red, or
blue, according to the parish of the wearer. At the public masquerades
in Christiania, these dresses may still be seen.

But I had forgotten the old lady in the contemplation of the wardrobe.
She appears to think she shall make me understand her jargon better
by shouting in my ears--a common mistake--and while she does so, she
skips about the chamber with all the agility of the old she-goat before
the door. The proverb says, “Need makes the old wife run,” but she ran
without any apparent cause. Finally, in her enthusiasm, she goes the
length of putting one of these petticoats on--don’t be alarmed, fair
reader--_over_ her own, to show me how it looks. Besides the above
state apparel, mutton and pork-hams, with other comestibles, find a
secure place in the store-room.

In the sitting-room of the house is a remarkable picture of our Saviour
on the cross, with various quaint devices round it. It is known to
be more than three hundred years old, and no doubt dates from the
Roman Catholic times. Like most of the peasants, who are exceedingly
tenacious of these “Old-sager” (old-world articles), the master of the
house won’t part with the picture for any consideration.

As a boat is procurable, I determine to vary the mode of travelling by
going by water to the station ----, and the more so as this will enable
me to try for a trout while I am resting my shaken limbs. There being
no wind to ruffle the water, I only took one or two trout. A man on the
lake, who was trailing a rough-looking fly, was not a little astonished
at my artificial minnow. The Fjord is very fine. Pretty bays, nestling
under the bare lofty mountains, and here and there a beach of yellow
sand, fringing a grassy <DW72>, while behind these, Scotch fir, birch,
and aspen throw their shadows over the water.

“You see that odde (point),” says my old waterman; “that is Lobdal
point. It was just there that Priest Brun had the misfortune to be
lost, twenty years ago come Yule. He had been preaching down below, at
one of his four churches, and was sleighing home again on the ice. The
Glocker (precentor) was driving behind him, when he saw him suddenly
disappear, horse and all. It was a weak place in the ice, and, there
being snee-dicke (snow-thickness) at the time, the priest had not seen
any symptoms of danger. Poor man, I knew him well; he was a very good
person. He never received Christian burial, for his body was never
found.” Such are the incidents that checquer the life of a Norwegian
parson.

It was so nearly dark when we arrived at ----, that we had a difficulty
in finding the landing-place, to which, however, we were guided by
something that looked like a house in the gloaming.

“And where am I to lodge?” asked I of the boatman. “Is the station far
off?”

“Yes, a good distance. You had best lie at Priest ----’s, there.”

“But I have not the pleasure of his acquaintance.”

“That does not matter the least. He is forfaerdelig gjestfri
(frightfully hospitable) og meget snil (and very good).”

So I make bold to grope my way to the house, and, finding the door,
tap at it. It is opened by a short, good-humoured looking person, the
clergyman himself, who quiets the big dog that I had kept at bay with
my fishing-rod, asks me who I am, and bids me come in and be welcome,
as if he had known me all the days of my life. Few minutes elapse
before I am eating cold meat and drinking ale; during the repast
chatting with my host on all sorts of matters. Supper ended, he shows
me to the best chamber, or stranger’s room, where I am soon reposing
luxuriously under an eider-down coverlet. This I kicked off in my
slumbers, it being evidently too hot for an Englishman in summer time,
even in Norway. What delightful things these eider-downs must be in the
cold of a northern winter.

A young female servant, Helvig by name, brings my boots in the morning.
She was clad in the working-day dress of the country maidens. To begin
with the beginning, or her head. It is covered with a  cotton
couvrechef. Her masculine chemise is fastened at the throat by two
enormous studs of silver filigree, bullet shaped, and is, below this,
further confined by a silver brooch (Norwegicè “ring”), shaped like a
heart. Her petticoat, which covers very little of her black worsted
stockings, makes up for its shortcomings in that direction, by reaching
right up above her bosom. It is of a dingy white wool, and is edged
with three broad stripes of black. On Sunday her petticoat is black,
with red or blue edging.

She brings me her tartan of red wool with white stripes for my
inspection. It is called “kjell,” a word which occurs in the old ballad
of “The Gay Goss Hawk.”

    Then up and got her seven sisters,
    And sewed to her a kell.

There it means pall, but the Norwegian word is also used of any
coverlet. The maidens wear it just like a Parisian lady would her
shawl, _i.e._, below the shoulders, and tight over the elbows. The
married women, however, carry it like the Scotch plaid, over one
shoulder and under the other arm, with their baby in the kolpos, or
sinus, in front.

This article of dress, which is sometimes white, striped with red--the
stripes being most frequent at the ends--and also the above manner of
wearing it, are thought to corroborate the tradition that these people
are a Scotch colony. The language, too, contains many words not known
elsewhere in Norway, but used in England. Instead of “skee,” they say
“spon,” which is nothing but the Icelandic “spónn,” and our “spoon.”
In the words kniv (knife), and knap (button), the k is silent before
n; whereas, elsewhere in Norway, it is pronounced. L, too, is silent
before d, as with us; “skulde” (should) being pronounced “skud,” or
“shud.” The common word for a river in Norway is “elv;” here it is
“aas,” pronounced “ose,” which is nothing but the frequent “ooze” of
England, meaning, in fact, “a stream generally.”

“What sort of people are the peasants about here?” I asked of the
priest.

“They have many peculiarities. Formerly, they were looked upon by
the rest of Norway as a kind of Abderites, stupid fellows; but they
are not so much stupid, far from it, as quaint and comical. Indeed,
their dress makes them look odd and simple. You must know that ten
years ago the only road up the valley was by water, and about the only
travellers the priest and a merchant or two. These Westland people
are very different from the Eastlanders; for, whereas the latter are
more ‘alvorlig’ (serious), and ‘modig’ (plucky), these are more ‘blid’
(gentle), more ‘dorsk’ and ‘doven’ (lazy and indolent), and fond of
sleeping three times a day. Formerly they were inveterate fatalists, so
much so that for a long time they would not hear of going to a doctor,
if they were ill, or an accident happened. They used also to believe in
Trolls (fairies), but that is fast exploding hereabouts. Yet they are
still impressed with a belief in ‘giengângere’ (wraiths), and that the
powers of evil are supernaturally at work around us. This makes them so
fearful of going out after dark. Of late years a great change has been
wrought among many of them, since the sect of the Lesere, or Haugians,
began to prevail. They have forsworn Snorro Sturleson’s Chronicle and
the historical Sagas of the country, which the Norwegian bonder used
to be fond of reading, and in their cottages you will find nothing but
the Bible and books of devotion. To read anything else they consider
sinful, as being liable to turn away their minds from spiritual
objects.”

“And do you think that, practically, they are better Christians?”

“Undoubtedly some of them are God-fearing persons, while others only
adopt this tone from motives of self-interest.”

“How comes it that there are so few people about?”

“Ah! I must tell you. There is one remarkable custom in the
valley--indeed, it is not impossible that it derives its name,
Sætersdal (Valley of Sæters), from it.[6] During the summer the sæter
is not inhabited by a single girl with her cows, as elsewhere in
Norway, but by the whole of the farmer’s family. At such times I have
no parishioners. They are all off. For the last three Sundays I have
had no service. Each farmer possesses two or three of these sæters or
stöls, and when they have cut the grass, and the cattle has eaten up
the alpine shrubs at one spot, they move to another. It is a regular
nomadic life as long as it lasts, which is the best part of the summer.

“In the winter, the hay made in the summer is brought down from the
mountain on sledges. The snow being very deep, the ponies would
sink in but for a contrivance called ‘trug,’ which is peculiar to
these parts of Norway. Here is one,” said he, as Helvig, with great
alacrity, brought in the apparatus in question. It was a strong hoop
of birch-wood, about a foot in diameter. From its sides ran four iron
chains, of two or three links each, to a ring in the centre. Attached
to the hoop was some wicker-work. Into this basket the pony’s foot is
inserted, and the wicker secured to the fetlock, while the shoe rests
on the iron ring and chains. Armed with this anti-sinking machine, the
horse keeps on the surface, and can travel with tolerable expedition.
Men wear a similar contrivance, but smaller.

“Are there any bauta-stones, or such-like reminiscences of olden times
in this part of the valley?”

“Very few. From its secluded position it never was of any great
historical note. It is near the sea that the Vikings were most at home,
and left behind them memorials. Here is an old cross-bow and an axe,
such as the bonders used to carry.”

These axes were called “hand-axes,” from the fact that, when not
otherwise used, the wearer took the iron in his hand, and used the
weapon as a walking-stick. Sometimes they were even taken to church
(see _Oxonian in Norway_, 2nd edition, p. 336). This one had the date
1651 inscribed upon it, and, together with the handle, was adorned with
figuring. In the passage I also saw a halbert and a spear, and a round
spoon, on which was inscribed the date 1614, and the legend, “Mit haab
til Gud” (My hope in God).

“Have you a good breed of cattle here?”

“Not particularly. We get all ours from Fyrrisdal, four Norsk miles to
the east of this. The best ‘qvaeg-răcĕ’ in all Norway is to be found
there.”

“I see all your horses are stallions. They must be very troublesome. I
drove two or three marked with severe bites.”

“That may be; but the bonders here, most of whom have only one horse,
find them answer their purpose best. The stallion is never off his
feed, even after the hardest work, and will eat anything. Besides
which, he is much more enduring, and can manage to drive off a wolf,
provided he is not hobbled.”

“Are there many bears about this summer?”

“Yes, indeed. A man called Herjus, of Hyllestad, which you will pass,
has been some weeks in our doctor’s hands from wounds received from
a bear. He and another were in the forest, when they fell in with a
young bear, which immediately climbed up a tree. The other man went to
cut a stick, while Herjus threw stones at the cub. Suddenly he hears
a terrific growl, and at the same moment receives a tremendous blow
on the head. It was the female bear, who, like all female bears in a
passion, had walked up to him, biped fashion, and, with a ‘take that
for meddling with my bairn,’ felled him to the ground. Over him,”
continued the parson, “fell the bear, so blinded with rage, that she
struck two or three blows beyond him. His companion had made a clean
pair of heels of it. The bear next seized the unfortunate wight in
her arms, and dragged him to a precipice for the purpose of hurling
him over. Herjus at once feigned to be dead, that he might not become
so. The bear perceiving this, and thinking it no use to give herself
any more trouble about a dead man, left him. Fearful lest she should
return, he scrambled down the steep, and got over a stream below. It
is said that the bears, like witches, don’t like to cross a running
stream; that was the reason of his movement. It was lucky he did so,
for no sooner was he over than the bear came back to see that all was
right, and perceived that she had been hoaxed, but did not attempt to
follow.”

“But do the bears really drag people over precipices?”[7]

“It is said so. Near Stavanger a poor fellow was attacked by a bear,
who skinned his face from scalp to chin, and then dragged him through
the trees to a precipice. At this horrible instant the poor wretch
clutched a tree, and hung to it with such desperation, that the bear,
who heard help coming, left him, and retreated. The king has given him
a pension of thirty-five dollars a-year.”

“And the wolves?” asked I.

“There are plenty of them. I caught one not long ago with strychnine.
The doctor, who has lately left, caught a great many one winter.
Brun, my predecessor, who was drowned, took seven wolves in one night
with poison, close by the parsonage. They are also taken in the baas
(_i.e._, such a trap as I described above). Some winters there are very
few, while at other times they abound. A fjeld-frass (glutton) was
not long ago taken in a trap. We have also lynxes of two sorts--the
katte-gaupe (cat-lynx), which is yellow, with dark spots; and the
skrübb-gaupe (wolf-lynx), which is wolf-.”

The church, like all modern Norwegian churches, is neat, but nothing
more. Its very ancient predecessor, which was pulled down a short time
ago, abounded, like most of those built in Roman Catholic times, with
beautiful wood-carving. Near the church is a fine sycamore, two hundred
years old, and three picturesque weeping birches. Oaks, I find, ceased
at Guldsmedoen.

“Ah!” said the priest, in the course of conversation, “this is a
marvellous country, when you consider its peculiar nature--more barren
rock by far than anything else. And yet our opkomst (progress) is
wonderful since we became a free nation. With a population of less than
a million and a half, we have a mercantile marine second only to that
of England. We have as much freedom as is consistent with safety; the
taxes are light, and the overplus, after paying the expenses of the
Government, is devoted to internal improvements. None of it goes to
Sweden, as it did formerly to Denmark; it is all spent on the country.
Yes, sir, everything thrives better in a free country; the air is
healthier, the very trees grow better.”

Sentiments like these, which are breathed by every Norskman, of course
found a cordial response from an Englishman. I only hope that Norway
will be suffered to go on progressing uninterruptedly.

Never having seen the interior of what is called the Bad-hus
(bath-house), I go with my host to see this regular appendage to all
country-houses. The traveller in Norway has no doubt often seen at some
distance from the main house a log-hut, round the door of which the
logs are blackened by smoke. This is the bad-hus. The millstones in
this country are so indifferent, that it is found necessary to bake the
corn previous to grinding it. It is thus performed. In the centre of
the log-house, which is nearly air-proof, is a huge stone oven heaped
over with large stones. Near the roof within are shelves on which the
grain is placed; a wood fire is then lit in the oven, the door of the
but is closed, and the temperature inside soon becomes nearly equal to
that of the oven itself, and the corn speedily dries.

It is said that this name, “bad-hus,” is derived from a custom which
formerly prevailed among the people of using this receptacle in
winter time as a kind of hot-air bath. The peasant, also, put it to
another use. Not being the cleanliest people in the world, their
bed-clothes become at times densely inhabited. When the colony becomes
overstocked, the clothes are brought hither, and a short spell of the
infernal temperature proves too much for the small animals, as they
are not blessed with the heat-enduring capabilities of the cricket or
salamander. In fact, the clothes become literally too hot to hold them,
and they share the fate of Higginbottom.

This reminds me of an old tale concerning one Staale, of Aasheim, not
very far from here. This man had murdered his brother about two hundred
and fifty years ago. His life was spared on condition that he would
rid the country of seven outlaws who harried the country and defied
every attempt to take them. Staale, who was a daredevil villain, having
discovered their retreat, went thither in rags, and showing them that
he was a bird of similar plumage, proposed forgathering with them. The
robbers were charmed at the idea of such an accession to their number.
Meanwhile, Staale complained that his rags were full of parasites, and
at his request a huge kettle was hung over the fire for the purpose of
boiling the creatures out. As soon as the water boiled Staale dashed
the fluid into the faces of the robbers who lay asleep on the floor,
not expecting so warm a reception. Thus reduced, for the moment at
least, to a condition like that of that precious brigand, Polyphemus,
they fell an easy prey to Staale, who dashed their brains out with a
crow-bar. He was, however, near being overmastered by an old woman who
ministered to the wants of the robbers, like the delicate Leonarda in
_Gil Blas_, and had escaped the baptism that had been administered to
the rest. After a hard struggle, however, he overcame the virago, and
thus obtained his life and freedom, which had been forfeited for his
misdeeds.

In the bad-hus were also suspended the winter cloak of his Reverence,
composed of six beautiful wolf-skins; the sledge-apron, made of a
huge black bear-skin, with the fur leggings and gloves, also used to
keep out the cold in driving. These articles are generally hung up in
another part of the premises, the ammoniacal vapours of which are much
disliked and avoided by moths and other fur-destroyers.




CHAPTER VIII.

    Peculiar livery--Bleke--A hint to Lord Breadalbane--Enormous
    trout--Trap for timber logs--Exciting scene--Melancholy
    Jacques in Norway--The new church of Sannes--A clergyman’s
    Midsummer-day dream--Things in general at Froisnaes--Pleasing
    intelligence--Luxurious magpies--A church without a
    congregation--The valley of the shadow of death--Mouse
    Grange--A tradition of Findal--Fable and feeling--A Highland
    costume in Norway--Ancestral pride--Grand old names prevalent
    in Sætersdal--Ropes made of the bark of the lime-tree--Carraway
    shrub--Government schools of agriculture--A case for a London
    magistrate--Trout fishing in the Högvand--Cribbed, cabined,
    and confined--A disappointment--The original outrigger--The
    cat-lynx--A wealthy Norwegian farmer--Bear-talk--The
    consequence of taking a drop too much--Story of a Thuss--Cattle
    conscious of the presence of the hill people--Fairy music.


Taking leave with many thanks of my worthy host and the young lady who
is presiding in the absence of his wife, both of whom had shown me no
small kindness, I start by boat up the lake. The priest has no less
than fourteen Huusmaend (see _Oxonian in Norway_, p. 8), and one of
them, Knut, undertakes to row me up to Froisnaes. His dress is that of
the country. Trousers up to the neck-hole of grey wadmel, striped at
the sides with a streak of black, and fastened with four buttons at the
ankles--the button-holes worked with green worsted ending in red.

As usual, I killed two birds with one stone--advancing northward,
and catching trout at the same time. I had flies as well as a minnow
trailing behind, and took fish with both, the biggest about a pound
weight.

“That’s not a trout; that’s a Bleke,” exclaimed Knut, as I hauled in a
fish of about the same weight, but which pulled with a strength beyond
his size. They are much fatter and of finer flavour than the trout.
By subsequent experience I found Knut to be right. Such a fish at the
_Trois Frères_ would fetch its weight in silver. The flesh was paler
than that of the trout. Externally, it was of a beautiful dark green
on the back, while the sides were whitish, but shaded with a light
green. The spots were more purple than those of the trout, while the
head and extremity of the body before the tail tapered beautifully. It
somewhat resembled a herring in shape: Knut compared it to a mackerel.
They never, he said, exceed a pound in weight, but are stronger than a
trout of equal size. Here, then, was a species of fish totally unknown
to Great Britain. Indeed, there are many fish in Scandinavia which it
would be worth while to try and naturalize among us. The cross, for
instance, between a Jack and a Perch to be found in the Swedish lakes,
and better than either; why does not Lord Breadalbane, the second
introducer of capercailzie into Scotland, or some other patriot, apply
his mind and resources to this subject?

The trout in this lake run to an enormous size. They have been seen
two or three ells long. These large fish are seldom visible, generally
frequenting the deeps. In all these waters the saying is, “we catch
most fish in the autumn” (til Hösten, Scoticè, ha’st): _i.e._, when the
fish approach the shallows to spawn.

The waters of the lake, which were in some places from one to two miles
broad, and studded with wooded islands, now contract, and separate
into two narrow channels. Advantage is taken of the situation to set
up a log-trap below--_i.e._, a circle of logs fastened end to end with
birchen ropes rove through eye-holes. In this pound are caught the
timbers that have been floated down from above. Hundreds of prisoners
are thus caged without any further fastening; but escape is impossible,
unless they leap over the barrier, or dive beneath it, both which are
forbidden by the laws of gravity. If they were not thus formed into
gangs they would get playing the truant, and lounging in the various
bays, or become fixed fast on shore. When the circle is full, advantage
is taken of the north wind which prevails, and off the whole convoy is
started down south without any human attendants.

Before long we reach a very striking spot. The lake, which had again
widened, now narrows suddenly, and the vast body of limpid water rushes
with tremendous rapidity through a deep groove, about thirty feet
wide, cut by Nature through smooth sloping rocks. Ever and anon a log,
which has been floating lazily from above, and has, all on a sudden,
found itself in this hurly-burly, comes shooting through in a state of
the utmost agitation, occasionally charging, like a battering-ram, at
a projecting angle of the wall; while others, with no less impetuous
eagerness, race through the passage a dozen abreast; the outsiders,
however, get caught in the eternal backstream below, and go bumping,
shoving, and jostling each other for hours before they can again escape
from the magic eddy.

The stream being too strong to admit of our getting the parson’s
boat up this defile--let alone the perfect certainty of a smash if
we attempt to run the gauntlet through this band of Malays running
amuck--the boatman starts off with some of my luggage on his shoulders
to engage a boat at the ferryman’s, lying through the pine grove.

While he is gone, I amuse myself with watching the logs; and had I been
gifted with the moralizing powers of the melancholy Jacques, I might
easily have set down in the journal some apt comparisons about the
people of this world racing each other in the battle of life, pushing,
scrambling, dashing other people out of their road. “If a man gets in
your way, stamp on him,” says one of Thackeray’s people; and some of
them suddenly brought up all of a heap in the dark inexorable round of
one of life’s backstreams. The Storthing has, I hear, at length decided
that there shall be a bridge thrown across this gully; the only wonder
is that it has not been done long ago, as it might be built at a very
trifling expense, and the foundations are all ready to hand.

Above the lone hut of the ferryman, who is a famous wood-carver, lies
the new church of Sannes, rising on some flat meadow land. What a
contrast that pure white image of it, reflected athwart the waters,
presents to the huge, dreary, threatening shadows projected by yonder
dark, weather-stained masses of everlasting mountains. And yet, when
the rocks and mountains shall fall in universal ruin from their lofty
estate, that humble spire,--although, perhaps, originally suggested by
the towering Igdrasil of Scandinavian Pagan mythology,--shall rise
still higher and higher, and pierce the clouds, and the small, and
seemingly perishable fane, expand into the vast imperishable temple of
the God above.

From its various associations, such a sight as that is very pleasing
to the traveller in a lone country like this, where Nature’s brow is
almost always contracted, frowning in gloomy, uncompromising grandeur.
No larks carolling blithely up aloft; but instead, the scream of some
bird of prey, the grating croak of the raven, the demon screech of the
lom, or the hoarse murmur of the angry waterfall.

At Froisnaes I spend the night, intending next day to cross the lake,
and walk over the mountains opposite to another lake, called the
Högvand, the trout of which are renowned throughout the valley. After
undergoing the usual artillery of questions and staring, I fall to
discussing my frugal meal of trout and potatoes, while the good woman
fills the bedstead with fresh straw. In this she is assisted by one of
her sons, whose trousers rise up to his gullet, and are actually kept
up by the silver studs of his shirt collar. These, with a brooch, are
the lad’s own handiwork, he having learned the art of the silversmith
from a travelling descendant of Tubal Cain. He is very anxious to buy
a gold coin from me, and brings half an old gold piece, and asks the
value of it. By poising it in the balance against half a sovereign, I
am enabled to guide him respecting its true worth.

“Now then,” said the landlady, “the bed is quite clear of fleas, though
I won’t say there are not some on the floor.”

Having no cream, she brings me her only egg, which, after a sound
drubbing, I force to do duty as cream to my coffee. She laments that
she has no more eggs. All the family has been away at the Stöl, and
have only just returned, and the thieving magpies took the opportunity,
in lieu, I suppose of the good luck which they bring to the household,
to suck the eggs as fast as the hen laid them. Guardian angels of this
description come expensive.

The gude-man of the house, whose hair is cut as short as Oliver
Twist’s--probably for similar reasons--with the exception of a scalping
lock on his forehead, now comes up the steep, unbanistered stair to
have a chat. The trout, he says, bite best a week after St. Johann’s
tid (June 21), that being, no doubt, the time when the first flies
appear.

Among other things, he tells me that about four miles to the west of
this, in a mountain valley called Skomedal, there are the remains of
an ancient church, at a spot named Morstöl, _i.e._, the chalêt on the
moors. Underneath it is a sort of crypt. The graves, too, are plain to
see. According to the country side tradition, which is no doubt true
(for there never was such a country as this for preserving traditions,
as well as customs, unimpaired), all the church-goers were exterminated
by the black death in the middle of the fourteenth century. The people
have not dared, says the man, to build any fixed habitation there
since, and the place is only used as a summer pasture. More courage has
been shown elsewhere, as the following story will show; but perhaps the
real reason is, that in this valley it would not pay to build a gaard,
the site being very elevated and cold.

Where the great Gaard (Garth) of Mustad now stands, there used, once
on a time, to be a farmstead called Framstad, the finest property in
all Vardal. But when “the great manqueller” visited these parts, all
the inhabitants of the valley, those of Framstad among the number,
were swept away, and a century later it was only known in tradition
that the westernmost part of the valley had ever been inhabited. One
day a hunter lost himself in the interminable forest which covered
the district. In vain he looked for any symptom of human dwellings.
After wandering about for a length of time in a state of hopeless
bewilderment, he suddenly descried what looked like a house through the
trees, which were of immense age. All around was so dreary and deserted
that it was not without a secret shudder he ventured into the building.
A strange sight met his eyes as he entered. On the hearth was a kettle,
half consumed by rust, and some pieces of charcoal. On one of the
heavy benches which surrounded the fireplace lay a distaff, and some
balls of rotten thread, with other traces of female industry. Against
the wall hung a cross-bow, and some other weapons; but everything was
covered with the dust of centuries. Surely there must be some more
vestiges of the former occupants, thought he, as he clambered up into
the loft by the steep ladder. And sure enough there were two great
bedsteads, the solid timbers of which were let into the end walls of
the room. In each of these were the mouldering skeletons of two or more
human beings.

Over these a number of mice were running, who, frightened at his
approach, hurried off in all directions.

He now remembered the tradition of the black death. This must have
been the dwelling of some of the victims, left just in the state it
was when the hand of the Destroyer was suddenly laid upon them. Being
a shrewd fellow, he at once perceived the value of his discovery, and
with his axe marked his name and the day of the month on the wall of
the building. As the day was far spent, he kept watch and ward in the
weird abode, and next day started eastward, where he knew his home
must lie, taking care to blaze the trees on his road, as a clue to
the spot. He managed to get home safely, and before long returning to
the place with others, he soon cleared the forest, and brought the
old enclosures into cultivation. In memory of his discovery he called
his new abode Mustad (Mouse Grange), the very name by which it still
goes; nay, his descendants are said to be its present occupiers. In the
eastern and western walls of the garret the mortice holes of the old
bed-timbers are still visible. The date is also distinguishable on one
of the outside fir-timbers, which are so intensely hard as almost to
defy the stroke of an axe.

A little higher up the main valley along which I am travelling, and a
little to the east of it, there is another, called Findal, which is
the scene of the following curious legend. The plague only spared two
persons in this sequestered spot, a man and his wife, Knut and Thore
by name. They were frightfully lonely, but still years rolled on, and
they never thought of quitting their ancient habitation. The only thing
that plagued them was, how to count time, and at last they lost their
reckoning, and did not feel certain when the great winter festival of
Yule came round. It was agreed, therefore, when the winter was at hand,
and the days rapidly shortening, that the old lady should start off on
foot, and go straight forward until she found people to tell her the
day of the month. She went some distance, but the snow was so deep that
her knees got quite tired, and she sat down on the Fond (snow-field),
when suddenly, to her astonishment, she heard the following words sung
in a clear quaint tone, by a voice under the snow.

    Deka deka Thole,
    Bake du brouv te Jole:
    Note ei,
    Aa Dagana tvaei,
    So laenge ae de ti Jole.

    You there, my good Thole,
    Bake you bread for Jule:
    Nights one,
    And days two,
    So long it is to Jule.

The old lady hurried back at once to her John Anderson, and they kept
the festival on the day signified, which they felt sure was the right
one, as it afterwards turned out to be.

Bishop Ullathorne and the other miracle-mongers will, no doubt, fasten
upon this legend as one to be embodied in their next catalogue of
supernatural interventions in support of the Romish faith, alongside
of “Our Lady of Sallette,” and other pretty stories. One might as well
religiously believe in those charming inventions of Ovid, to which
the imagination clings with such fondness, so thoroughly are they
intertwined with human sympathies.

But let us get nearer our own time. Four years ago, I hear, the people
of the valley were terrified by the apparition of a Scotchman, who
had taken it into his head to walk through Norway in full Highland
costume, armed with a hanger and a pair of pistols. A man who saw
him close to this took him for the foul fiend, and made off into the
wood. Others, who were less alarmed, considered him to be mad (gal).
After a good deal of difficulty he brought the folks to a parley, and
not knowing a word of Norsk, but being thirsty, he asked for grog.
The sailors on board the _Reine Hortense_ might have understood these
four letters, when signalled in Arctic waters by the aristocratic
owner of _The Foam_. Not so the Sætersdal people. They thought he said
“gröd,” and brought him a lump of porridge. He then asked for “water,”
when they brought him a pair of large worsted gloves (vanter), here
pronounced vorter. This reminds me of a friend of mine who arrived at
a station-house in a great state of hunger. He could speak enough of
the language to inquire for provisions. “Porridge,” was the reply.
“Anything else?” “Beeren?” “Yes, by all means,” exclaimed he, revelling
in imagination on bear-collops. The dame presently entered with a dish
of beeren, which consisted of--wild strawberries!--a nice dessert, but
not fitted for a _pièce de résistance_.

Perhaps the reader will not object to be introduced to some of the
folks here nominally. Many of the grand old names current in Sætersdal
don’t exist elsewhere in Norway, but are to be found in the Sagas;
and this is another proof of the tenacity with which this part of the
country adheres to everything belonging to its forefathers. Instead
of such names as Jacob or Peder, we have Bjorgulv, Torgrim, Torkil,
Tallak, Gunstein, Herjus, Tjöstolf, Tarjei, Osuf, Aamund, Aanund,
Grunde; while the women answer to such Christian names as Durdei,
Gjellaug, Svalaug, Aslaug (feminine of Aslack), Asbjorg (feminine of
Asbjörn), Sigrid (feminine of Sigur), and Gunvor. The dog, even, who
comes up into the loft, and seems anxious to make my acquaintance, is
called Storm.

As the next morning is rainy, I look about the premises for anything
noteworthy. In one corner is a bundle of thin strips of bark. These are
taken from the branches of the linden-tree, and steeped in water from
spring to autumn. They are then separated into shreds, and woven by
the peasants into ropes, which are not so durable, however, as those
of hemp. A bunch of carraway shrub is hanging up to dry. It grows all
about here. The seeds are mixed with all kinds of food.

“Friske smag har det,” remarks the old lady. “It has a fresh taste with
it.”

Outside the house there are two or three lysters, and some split
pine-roots for “burning the water.” In the dark, still nights of
autumn, the trout and bleke which approach the shore are speared by
the men.

In the passage is suspended a notice to the effect that instruction
in agriculture is offered by the Government gratis, at a school down
the valley, to all young men who bring a certificate of baptism,
vaccination, and also a testimonial of good moral conduct from the
clergyman.

While I am reading this notice, a desolate-looking young female, with
dishevelled black hair, comes staring at me through the open door, with
a most wobegone aspect. Her husband, I find, is a drinker of brantviin.
On one occasion he went down to Christiansand, drank tremendously, and
returned quite rabid. For some time he was chained leg to leg. He is
better now, but beats the unfortunate creature, his wife, who does not
complain. I recommended the people, the next time he did it, to chain
him again, and pay the bully back in some of his own coin--hard knocks.

Hearing so much of the trouts of the Högvand, _i.e._, High-water (the
people here call it Högvatn, reminding me of the Crummack-_waters_,
and Derwent-waters, of the North of England), I take Tallak, one of the
sons, across the lake. On the further shore stood a man, with his young
wife and child. They had a small boat, but it could not have lived
in the swell now on the loch; so they borrowed ours for the transit.
Threading our way through some birch scrub, we emerge upon the old
smelting-house, where the copper-ore brought from the Valle copper-mine
used to be prepared. But it is now at a stand-still, and the beck close
by rushes down with useless and unemployed energy. This stream comes
down from the lake to which we are going.

On the way we pass a small shanty, of about eight feet square. I peep
in through the open door. On the floor sits a young woman, with her
three children. Their sleeping berths are just overhead, let into
the wall. After a stiff ascent, we reach the High-water. Launched
on the lake, I expected great things, as the rain, which still
poured when we started, had ceased, and a fine ripple curled the
waters, which glistened smilingly as they caught sight of the sun’s
cheerful countenance emerging from behind the heavy clouds. But my
hopes were doomed to disappointment. Tallak said it was torden-veir
(thunder-weather), and unpropitious. Nevertheless, a banging fish took
one of my flies, but carried the whole tackle away.

I then tried the triangles, and a four-pounder, at least, golden and
plump, dashed at me, but by a clever plunge out of his own element, he
managed to get clear again. After this I had not another chance; but
I have no doubt, that if I had given a day to the lake, instead of an
hour or two, I should have succeeded in developing its capabilities.
The boat, or pram as it is called in these parts, is flat-bottomed and
oblong. The rowing appliances are very peculiar. Two narrow boards,
about three feet apart, were placed about midships, at right angles
to the boat’s length, and extending over the gunwale about a foot;
two more similar pieces of wood were laid parallel to each other over
the ends of the first two pieces, to which they were tied by birchen
thongs, so as to form a square framework lying on the boat’s gunwale.
Two thole-pins were stuck into each of the side pieces. Here, then, in
the mountains of Thelemarken, we find the original outrigger, centuries
old, the predecessor of the Claspers’ invention, now so commonly used
in England. On one of the cross-boards I sat, on the other the rower,
thus keeping the frame firm by our own weight, it being secured to the
body of the boat by birch-ties only. There was not a particle of iron
about the whole affair; it was the simplest contrivance for crossing
water I ever saw.

On our walk homeward Tallak tells me that he has seen the cat-lynx
down in the valley, but that they generally keep up among the broken
rocks (Urden). The wind was now so high that the passage of the Fjord
was somewhat difficult. At times, I hear, it is so lashed by sudden
tempests from the storm-engendering mountains, that the water leaves
its bed, and fills the air with spray and foam.

Old Mr. Skomedal, who schusses me up this evening to Langeid, is a
rich man in his way, owning three farms, not to mention a quantity of
“arvegods” (heirlooms) on his wife’s side, in the shape of halberds,
helmets, swords, apostle-spoons, and “oldtids aeld-gammle sager”
(ancient curiosities).

He asked if I knew a cure for his gicht (rheumatism). Many years ago
he was at a bryllup (wedding), when he got fuul (Scoticè fou = drunk);
indeed everybody was fuul. But unfortunately he got wet outside as
well as in, and fell asleep in his wet clothes, since when he has been
troubled with aching pains.

The bears have killed two of his horses. The one he is driving he
bought out of a drove from the Hardanger. It is only two years old,
and shies alarmingly in the dusk[8] at some huge stones which have
been placed by the roadside at intervals, battlement fashion, to keep
travellers from going over the precipice, though the embrasures are
like an act of parliament, and would admit of a coach and four being
driven between them. “I thought it was a bear,” said Skomedal, as he
made out the stones.

Becoming quite conversational and familiar, he offers me a pinch of
snuff (snuus), whence the Scotch, “sneeshing.” It was excellent “high
dried,” and, to my astonishment, of home manufacture, he buying the
tobacco-leaf and the necessary flavouring fluid at the town. The rain
having been very heavy, the valley is alive with falling waters. We
pass a splendid fall close by the road, the white rage of which gleamed
distinctly through the darkness, rendering that part of the road
lighter than the rest. Imagine the way being lighted with cascades. Who
would care for a row of gas-lamps under such circumstances?

This fall, Skomedal tells me, was once drawn by a Frenchman; but I
doubt much one of that nation ever venturing into these parts. “Well,
Skomedal, can’t you tell me some tales about the trolls?” said I,
thinking the hour and the scene were admirably adapted for that sort of
amusement.

“Let me see, ah! yes. There was a woman up at my stöl in
Skomedal--that’s where the tomt (site) of the old church is to be
seen. She was all alone one Thorsdags qveld (Thursday evening), her
companion having come down to the gaard for mad (food). Looking out
she sees what she supposes is Sigrid coming back up the mountain with
a great box of provisions. But when the figure gets alongside of an
abrupt rock just below, it suddenly disappears. Gunvor knew then that
it was a Thus.”

“Nonsense,” replied I.

“Oh! it’s all very well to say nonsense, but why do the cattle always
get shy and urolig (unruly), when they pass that spot. We never could
make out before why this was, but it was plain now, they could tell by
their instinct there was something uncanny close by.”

“Very good; do you know another tale?” said I, our pace well admitting
of this diversion, as it was very slow in the dark wood, into which our
road had now entered.

“Yes, that same woman, Gunvor’s husband, was the best fiddler in the
valley. One day, when she was all alone, she heard near her a beautiful
tune (vaene slot) played on a violin. She could see nobody, though
she looked all over. That must have been a Troll underground. She
remembered the tune, and taught it her husband. It was called (the name
has slipped my recollection.) Nothing so beautiful as that slot was
ever heard in the valley.

“But he is dead now, and there is nobody who can play as he did.”[9]




CHAPTER IX.

    Langeid--Up the mountain--Vanity of vanity--Forest
    perfumes--The glad thrill of adventure--An ancient
    beacon--Rough fellows--Daring pine-trees--Quaint old
    powder-horn--Curiosities for sale--Sketch of a group of
    giants--Information for _Le Follet_--Rather cool--Rural
    dainties and delights--The great miracle--An odd name--The
    wedding garment--Ivar Aasen--The Study of Words--Philological
    lucubrations--A slagsmal--Nice subject for a spasmodic
    poet--Smoking rooms--The lady of the house--A Simon Svipu--A
    professional story-teller--Always about Yule-tide--The
    supernatural turns out to be very natural--What happened to an
    old woman--Killing the whirlwind--Hearing is believing--Mr.
    Parsonage corroborates Mr. Salomon--The grey horse at
    Roysland--There can be no doubt about it--Theological argument
    between a fairy and a clergyman--Adam’s first wife, Lileth.


At Langeid station, where we arrived late at night, there was great
difficulty in finding anybody at home. At last we ferreted out an old
man in one of the multifarious buildings, which, as usual, formed the
establishment. All the rest of the family are paa hoien (up on the
mountain). That Langeid was a horrid place. As there was no wash-basin
to be found, I laid hands upon a quaint brass mortar, which the old man
informed me was “manifold hundred years old.” In the travellers’ book
I see a German has been informing the people that he is a Ph.D. But
then I have seen elsewhere, in this country, an Englishman’s name in
the book with M.P. attached to it. But he went down, poor man, with the
steamer _Ercolano_, so we must leave him alone.

What a lovely morning after the rain. The spines of the fir-trees, and
the hairy lichen (_alectoria jubata_) festooning the branches, frosted
over with the moisture which still adheres to them, and is not yet
sucked up by the sun that is just rising over the high mountains. What
refreshing odours they shed abroad, seconded by the lowlier “pors,”
with its delicious aromatic perfume.

What an intense pleasure it is thus to travel through an unknown
country, not knowing where one is to be at the day’s end, and looking
at the map to find out where in the world one is. Give me this rather
than a journey in Switzerland, and all the first-rate hotels in the
world.

“Up yonder,” said my attendant, “a bear used to harbour. The man in the
gaard above shot him not long ago. He was very large. That’s a ‘Vitr’
(warning) yonder, on the top of that mountain to the east. There are a
great many dozen of pine-logs piled up there from the olden times.”

I discovered that this was a beacon-hill, formerly used to give notice
of the approach of foes on the coast. The next beacon was at Lobdal,
a great many miles down the valley. The establishment of beacons from
Naes to Helgeland, is attributed, by Snorro, to Hacon the Good. A
slower way of conveying intelligence of the descent of an enemy on the
coast, was the split arrow (haeror), equivalent to the fiery cross of
Scotland.

“Are not you frightened to travel all alone?” said the little fellow,
looking curiously into my face. “You might be injured.”

“Not I,” replied I.

“Oh! yes, we Norwegians are good people, except in Hallingdal--they
are rare rough fellows there, terrible fighters.”

To the left of the road, high on the hill, is the abode of Herjus,
the bear-victim mentioned above, who is gradually recovering from his
wounds.

The scenery becomes grander as we advance. What would you think of
trees growing on the side of a precipice, apparently as steep as
Flamboro’ Head, and ten times as high? They seem determined to get into
places where the axe cannot reach them. But they are not safe for all
that. Now and then the mountain side will crack, and some of it comes
down. Look at that vast stone, which would throw all your Borrowdale
boulder stones into the shade; it has come down in this manner.
Advantage has been taken of its overhanging top to stow away under it a
lot of agricultural instruments, among which I see a primitive harrow
of wood.

At Ryssestad station I find a quaint old powder-horn, more than two
hundred years old, on which Daniel in the lion’s den, Roland, Adam and
Eve, Samson and Delilah, figure in marvellous guise. I note this, as
I afterwards saw almost the facsimile of it in the Bergen Museum. The
owners declined to part with it.

There was also a wolf’s skin, price five dollars. The station-master
shot him from one of the windows last winter, while prowling about the
premises. One Sigur Sannes offers for sale a curious old “hand-axe,”
date 1622, but I did not wish to add to my luggage.

What a set of giants surrounded me while I was drinking coffee! and
such names--Bjug, Salvi, Jermund, Gundar! Imagine all these long-legged
fellows standing in trousers reaching to their very shoulders and neck,
and supported by shoulder-straps decked in brass ornaments, while below
they are secured by nine buttons above the ankle. What may be seen of
their shirts is confined by two immense silver bullet studs, and then
a silver brooch an inch and a half wide. The hats, of felt, are made
in the valley. The brim is very small, and the crown narrows half way
up, and then swells out again. A silver chain is passed round it two or
three times, and confined in front by a broad silver clasp, to which
is suspended a cross. A figured velvet band likewise goes twice round
it.

The dress of the women is the black or white skirt, already
mentioned, swelling into enormous folds behind, and so short as to
permit the garters with silver clasps to be seen. The stockings
bulge out immensely at the calf--indeed, are much fuller than is
necessary--giving the legs a most plethoric appearance, and, as in
the Tyrol, they often only reach to the ankle. Occasionally, when the
women wish to look very smart, a pair of white socks are drawn over the
foot, which oddly contrasts with the black stocking. The shoes, which
are home-made, are pointed, and fit remarkably well. On the bosom is a
saucer-sized brooch of silver, besides bullet-studs at the collar and
wristband. I see also women carrying their babies in the kjell or plaid.

Beyond the station, we have to diverge from the regular road, and
take an improvised one, the bridge having been carried away by a
flom (freshet). At a ferry above, where the river opens into a lake,
the ferrywoman, after presenting to me her mull of home-made snuff,
inquires if I am married. This provokes a similar query from me.

“No,” is the reply; “but I have a grown-up son.”

The custom of Nattefrieri, to which I have alluded elsewhere, will
account for things of this kind.

Beyond the ferry there has been a recent fall of rocks from the cliffs
above. In the cool recesses of the rocks grow numbers of strawberries
and raspberries, which my man obligingly gathers and presents to me.
A black and white woodpecker, with red head and rump, perches on a
pine-tree close by.

A little above is the finest fall on the river, except that near
Vigeland. All around the smooth scarped cliffs converge down to the
water at a considerable angle, the cleavage being parallel to their
surface.

At one spot my chatty little post-boy, who, boy as he was, rejoiced in
a wife and child, stops to talk with a mighty tall fellow, one Björn
Tvester, who offers to take me up some high mountain near to see a fine
view. A woman close by, who is unfortunately absent on the hills,
possesses an ancient silver cross, of great size and fine workmanship.
This used, in former times, to be used by the bridegroom at a wedding.

A smiling plain now opens before us, in the centre of which stands the
parish church. While I stop to enjoy the prospect, a crowd of men and
women collect around me. One of the fair sex, who rejoiced in the name
of Mari Björnsdatter, I endeavour to sketch, to her great delight.

“Stor mirakel!” (great miracle) shouted the peasants, looking over my
shoulder. “Aldrig seet maken[10] (never saw the like)”!

“And what’s your name?” I asked of a red-headed urchin, of miserable
appearance. The answer, “Thor,” made me smile, and produced a roar
from the masculines, Folke, Orm, Od (a very odd name, indeed), Dreng,
Sigbjörn, and a titter from the feminines ditto, all of whom saw the
joke at once.

Putting up at the station-master’s at Rige, I sally out and meet with
an intelligent fellow, Arne Bjugson by name, formerly a schoolmaster,
now a pedlar. He tells me there is an ancient bridal dress at one of
the houses, and he it was who put this on, and sat to Tidemann for his
sketch of the Sætersdal Bridegroom.

We forthwith go to inspect it. The bridegroom’s jacket is of blue, over
which came another of red. His knee-breeches are black, and crimped or
plaited; his blue stockings were wound round with ribands; his hat was
swathed in a white cloth, round which a silver chain was twisted. In
his hand he held a naked sword; around his waist was a brass belt, and
on his neck a silver chain with medals. The bride’s dress consisted of
two black woollen petticoats, plaited or folded; above these a blue
one, and over all a red one. Then came a black apron, and above that a
white linen one, and round her waist three silver belts. Her jacket was
black, with a small red collar, ornamented with a profusion of buckles,
hooks, fibulas, and chains. On her head was a silver-gilt crown, and
around her neck a pearl necklace, to which a medal, called “Agnus Dei,”
was suspended.

Arne has read _Snorro’s Chronicle_, which he borrowed from the parson.
Ivar Aasen, the author of several works on the old Norsk language,
has been more than once up here examining into the dialect. Those
interested in the sources of the English language, and in ascertaining
how much of it is due to the old Norsk, have ample room for amusement
and instruction here. Many English words, unknown in the modern
Norwegian, are to be found in use in these secluded parts, though
driven from the rest of the country, just in the same way as the Norsk
language was talked at Bayeux a long time after it had become obsolete
at Rouen and other parts of Normandy. Our “noon” reappears in “noni;”
“game,” in “gama,” a word not known away from this. “To prate,” is
“prata;” “to die,” is “doi;” “two,” is “twi,” not “to,” as elsewhere;
indeed, all the numerals differ from those used elsewhere. The people
pronounce “way,” “plough,” and “net,” just like an Englishman. To
“neigh,” is “neja,” not “vrinska.” A stocking is “sock,” not “strömpe;”
eg = edge; skafe = safe or cupboard; “kvik” corresponds in all its
meanings to our word “quick.” The old Icelandic “gildr” is used as an
eulogistic epithet, = excellent. Their word for “wheel” sounds like our
English, and is not “eule,” as elsewhere; “stubbe” is our “stub,” or
little bit; “I” is “oi,” not “Ieg;” “fir” is pronounced “fir;” “spon”
has been already mentioned: “snow,” “mile,” “cross,” re-occur here,
whereas elsewhere they differ from the English.

While we are engaged in these philological lucubrations a man comes
up, a piece of whose lower-lip has gone, interfering with his speech.
This occurred at a wedding. He and another had a trial of strength, in
which he proved the strongest. The vanquished man, assisted by his two
brothers, then set upon him, and bit him like a dog. As aforesaid, the
people of the valley are ordinarily good-natured and peaceable enough;
but let them only get at the ale or brandy, and they become horribly
brutal and ferocious, and a slagsmal (fight) is sure to ensue. One
method of attack on these occasions is by gouging the eye out, spone i
ovgo (literally to spoon out the eye). Sometimes the combatants place
some hard substance in the hand, as a stone or piece of wood. This
they call “a hand-devil,” the “knuckle-duster” of English ruffians. At
Omlid, several miles over the mountains to the east of this, the people
even when sober are said to be anything but snil (good). So disastrous
was the effect of drink at a bridal (_i.e._, bride-ale or wedding
festival),[11] that the bride, it is said, frequently used to bring
with her a funeral shirt for fear that she might have to carry home her
husband dead. In any case she was provided with bandages wherewith to
dress his wounds.

I picked up another very intelligent Cicerone in Mr. Sunsdal, the
Lehnsman of the district.

“You would, perhaps, like to see one of the old original dwellings of
our forefathers,” said he; “there are still many of them in this part
of Norway. The name is Rogstue, _i.e._, smoke-room.”

We accordingly entered one of these pristine abodes, such as were the
fashion among the highest of the land many hundred years ago. The house
was built of great logs, and its chief and almost only sitting-room had
no windows, the light being admitted from above by an orifice (ljaaren)
in the centre of the roof, over which fitted a lid fastened to a pole.
Through this the smoke escaped from the great square fireplace (aaren)
in the middle of the floor, enclosed by hewn stones. Round this ran
heavy benches, the backs of which were carved with various devices.
A huge wooden crane, rudely carved into the figure of a head, and
blackened with smoke, projected from a side wall to a point half-way
between the hearth and chimney-hole. From this the great porridge-pot
(Gryd-hodden) was suspended. Kettle is “hodden” in old English.

On this smoke-blackened crane I discerned two or three deep scars,
indicative of a custom now obsolete. On the occasion of a wedding, the
bridegroom used to strike his axe into this as he entered, which was as
much as to say that peace should be the order of the day; an omen, be
it said, which seldom came true in practice.

One side of this pristine apartment was taken up by the two beds
(kvillunne) fixed against the wall, according to the custom of the
country, and in shape resembling the berths on board ship. Between
them was the safe or cupboard (skape). On the opposite side of the
wall was a wooden dresser of massive workmanship, while round the room
were shelves with cheeses upon them. They were placed just within the
smoke line, as I shall call it. The smoke, in fact, not having draught
enough, descends about half-way down the walls, rendering that portion
of them which came within the lowest smoke-mark of the sooty vapour as
black as the fifty wives of the King of the Cannibal Islands; while the
great beams below this preserved their original wood colour.

The lady of the house, Sigrid Halvorsdatter, took a particular pride
in showing the interior of her abode. Good-nature was written on her
physiognomy, and the writing was not counterfeit. When we arrived,
she was just on the point of going up the mountain with a light
wooden-frame (meiss) on her shoulders, on which was bound a heavy
milk-pail; but she immediately deposited her burden on a great stone
at the door, took a piece of wood from under the eaves and unfastened
the door. Subsequently, I find that this is the identical dame, and
Rogstue, painted by Tidemann, and published among his illustrations of
Norwegian customs.

Taking leave of her with many thanks, we proceeded to another house,
where the woman said we should see a “Simon Svipu.”

“A Simon Svipu!” ejaculates the reader, “what on earth is that?”
Thereby hangs a tale, or a tail, if you will. The nightmare plagued
these people before she visited England.

The people of this valley call her “Muro,” and they have the following
effectual remedy against her. They first take a knife, wrap it up in a
kerchief, and pass it three times round the body; a pair of scissors
are also called into requisition, and, lastly, a “Simon Svipu,” which
is the clump or excrescence found on the branches of the birch-tree,
and out of which grow a number of small twigs. This last is hung up in
the stable over the horses’ heads, or fixed in one of the rafters, and
also over their own bed.

This exorcism is then pronounced--

    Muro, Muro, cursed jade,
      If you’re in, then you must out;
    Here are Simon Svipu, scissors, blade,
      Will put you to the right about.

The birchen charm may remind one of the slips of yew “shivered in the
moon’s eclipse,” in _Macbeth_.

The term “svipu” is used in parts of the country for whip, instead of
the real word “svöbe.” And I have no doubt this is the signification of
it here--viz., a means of driving away the mare.[12]

But to return to the real Simon Pure--I mean Svipu. Unfortunately,
I could not get a sight of it. The good folks either could not, or
would not, find the wonderful instrument. I believe, though still in
their heart clinging to the ancient superstition, they were averse to
confessing it to others.

“But here comes a man,” said the Lehnsman, “who will tell us some
curious anecdotes; his name is Solomon Larsen Haugebirke. He is a
silversmith and blacksmith by trade, and having been servant to
half-a-dozen priests here, he has become waked up, and having a
tenacious memory, he can throw a good deal of light on the ancient
customs of the valley. Gesegnet arbeid (blessed labour) to you,
Solomon.”

“Good day, Mr. Lehnsman. You have got a stranger with you, I see. Is he
a Tüsker (German)?”

The old gentleman was soon down on the grass, under the shadow of
an outbuilding, the sun being intensely hot, and whiffing his pipe,
stopped with my tobacco, while he folded his hands in deep thought.

“Well, really, Lehnsman, I can’t mind anything just on the moment.
Landstad and Bugge[13] were both here, and got all my stories and
songs.”

“But can’t you remember something about Aasgardsreia?”

After pausing for a minute or two, Solomon said--

“Well, sir, you know it was always about Yule-tide, when we were just
laid down in bed, that they came by. They never halted till they came
to a house where something was going to happen. They used to stop at
the door, and dash their saddles against the wall or roof, making the
whole house shake, and the great iron pot rattle again.”

“But do you really believe in it, Solomon?” said I, putting some more
tobacco in his pipe.

“When I was a lad I did, but now I don’t think I do. Still there was
something very strange about it, wasn’t there, sir? The horses in the
stable used to be all of a sweat, as if they heard the noise, and were
frightened. _They_ could not have fancied it, whatever _we_ did.”

“But are you certain they did sweat?”

“I believe you; I’ve gone into the stable, and found them as wet as if
they had been dragged through the river.”[14]

“Ah! but I can easily explain that,” said the Lehnsman. “When I first
came here, some years ago, the young men were a very lawless lot; they
thought nothing of taking the neighbours’ horses at night, and riding
them about the country, visiting the jenter (girls); and it is my firm
belief that they took advantage of the old superstition about the
Aasgaardsreia coming by, and making the horses sweat, to carry on their
own frolic with impunity. It was they that made the horses sweat, by
bringing them back all of a heat, and not these sprites that you talk
of.”

I felt inclined to take the Lehnsman’s view of the case; but the old
man shook his head doubtingly.

“Ride, sir! why, at the time I speak of, you could not possibly ride,
the snow was so deep that the roads were impassable. But now we are
talking about it, it strikes me there may have been another cause. The
horses used to get so much extra food just then, in honour of Yule, and
the stalls are so small and close, that perhaps it made them break out
in a sweat. Be that as it may, we used all to be terribly frightened
when we heard the Aasgaardsreia.”

“It was merely the rush of the night wind,” said I, “beating against
the house sides.”

“Would the night wind carry people clean away?” rejoined Solomon,
returning to the charge. “Once, when they came riding by, there was
a woman living at that gaard yonder, who fell into a besvömmelse
(swoon); and in that state she was carried along with them right away
to Toftelien, five old miles to the eastward.[15] And more by token,
though she had never been there before, she gave a most accurate
description of the place. I was by, and heard her. What do you think
of that, Herr Lehnsman?” concluded Solomon, who was evidently halting
between two antagonistic feelings, his superior enlightenment and his
old deep-rooted boyish superstitions.

“I don’t believe it at all,” was the incredulous functionary’s reply;
“it was, no doubt, the power of imagination, and the woman had heard
from somebody, though she might have forgotten it, what Toftelien
looked like.”

“You talked about the night-wind,” continued Solomon, turning to me. “I
remember well when I was a lad, if there was a virvel-vind (whirlwind),
I used to throw my toll-knife right into it. We all believed that it
was the sprites that caused it, and that we should break the charm in
that way.”

“Of course you believed in the underground people generally?”

“Well, yes, we did. I know a man up yonder, at Bykle, who, whenever he
went up to the Stöl, used, directly he got there, and had opened the
door, to kneel down, and pray them not to disturb him for four weeks;
and afterwards they might come to the place, and welcome, till the next
summer.”

“But did you ever see any of these people?” said I, resolved on probing
Solomon with a home question.

“No, I’ve never _seen_ them, but I have heard them, as sure as I sit on
this stone.”

“Indeed, and how was that?”

“Well, you must know, I was up in the Fjeld to the eastward at a
fiskevatn (lake with fish in). Suddenly I heard a noise close by me,
just behind some rocks, and I thought it was other folks come up to
fish. They were talking very loudly and merrily; so I called out to let
them know I was there, as I wished to have selskab (company). Directly
I called, it was all still. This puzzled me; so I went round the rocks,
but not a creature could I see, so I returned to my fishing. Presently
the noise began again, and I distinctly heard folks talking.”

“And what sort of talk was it?”

“Oh! baade fiint o gruft (both fine and coarse, _i.e._, good and
bad words), accuratè som paa en bryllup (just like at a wedding). I
called out again, on which the noise suddenly stopped. Presently they
began afresh, and I could make out it was folks dancing. Then I felt
convinced that it must be a thuss[16]-bryllup (elf-wedding).”

“Had you slept well the night before?”

“Never better.”

“You had been drinking, then?”

“Langt ifra (far from it); I was as ædru (sober) and clear-headed as a
man could be who had taken nothing but coffee and milk for weeks.”

“And how long did this noise continue?”

“Two hours at least. Every time I cried out they stopped, and after a
space began again. I examined all around very carefully, as I was not
a bit afraid; but I could see no hole or anything, nothing but bare
rocks. Now what could it be?” asked the old man, solemnly.

There are more things in heaven and earth, thought I, than we dream of.

“Besides,” continued Solomon, “there was another man I afterwards found
fishing at another part of the water, who heard the same noise.”

“Who was that?” said the Lehnsman.

“Olsen Prestergaard,” (_i.e._, Olsen Parsonage, so called because he
was born on the parsonage farm).

“But he is as deaf as a post,” retorted the other.

“He is _now_, but he was not then. He has been deaf only since he got
that cold five years ago; and this that I am talking of happened six,
come Martinsmass.”

It may be as well to state that we met Mr. Parsonage subsequently
making hay, and, after a vast deal of hammering, he was made to
understand us, when, with a most earnest expression of countenance he
confirmed Solomon’s account exactly.

“Can’t you tell us some more of your tales?” said the Lehnsman; “one of
those will do you told to Landstad and Moe, or to Bugge last summer.”

“How long does the stranger stop?” asked Solomon; “I will endeavour to
recollect one or two.”

“Oh! I shall be off to-morrow,” said I.

“Why so early? Well, let me see. There was the grey fole (horse) at
Roysland. I’ll tell you about that. You must know, then, sir, we used
many years ago to have a horse-race (skei) on the flat, just beyond
the church yonder, at the end of August-month each year. There was a
man living up at Roysland, an old mile from here, up on the north
side of the Elv. He was a strange sort of a fellow, nobody could make
him out; Laiv Roysland, they called him. One August, on the morning
of the race, a grey horse came down to his gaard and neighed. He went
and put the halter on him, and seeing he was a likely sort of a nag,
thought he would take him down and run him, without asking anybody any
questions. And sure enough he came. The horse--he was a stallion--beat
all the rest easily. Laiv carried off all the prizes and returned home.
When he got there he let the horse loose, and it immediately took up
to the hills, and was not heard of or seen for twelve months. When the
race-day came round, a neigh was heard (han nejade), Laiv went out of
the door, and found the same horse. He put the halter on his head, and
brought him down to the races just as before. He won everything. There
never was the likes of him whether in biting or running (bitast eller
springast). He was always the best. At last people began to talk, and
said it must be the fand sjel (the fiend himself). The third year the
horse ran it lost. What a rage Laiv was in. When he got home he hit
the horse a tremendous thwack with his whip, and cursed a loud oath.
It struck out, and killed him on the spot. Next year a neigh was heard
as usual outside the house, early on the morning of the race-day, but
nobody dared go out. They were not such dare-devils as Laiv. It neighed
a second time, but the people would not venture, and from that time to
this it has never been heard of or seen.”

“A strange wild tale,” said I; “ what do you really think it was?”

“Well, I suppose it was _He_. I never told that story,” continued
Solomon, “to any one before.”

“Yes, there can be no doubt about it,” said Solomon, after a long
pause; “so many people have seen these underground people that there
must be some truth in it. Besides which, is not there something about
it in Holy Writ: ‘Every knee shall bow, both of things that are in
heaven, and in earth, and under the earth,’ and who can be under the
earth but the underground people?”

“Well, Solomon, have you no more tales?”

“Not of the valley here, but I can tell you one of the country up
north.”

“Oh, yes, that will do.”

“Well, you must know, there was a man at a gaard up there--let me see,
I can’t rightly mind the name of it. He was good friends with a Tuss;
used, in fact, to worship him (dyrkes). The priest got to hear of
this, and warned him that it was wrong. The man made no secret of the
fact, but persisted that there was no harm in it. Indeed, he derived a
mint of good from the acquaintance. His crops were a vast deal finer,
and he really could not give up his friend on any consideration.[17]
The man spoke with such apparent earnestness and conviction, that the
priest was seized with a desire to see the Tuss. ‘That you shall, and
welcome,’ said the man; ‘I don’t anticipate any difficulty. I’ve lent
him two rolls of chew-tobacco, and he will be sure to return them
before long. No Christian can be more punctual than he is in matters of
business.’ The little gentleman put in an appearance soon after, and
honestly repaid the tobacco, with thanks for the loan of it (tak for
laane). ‘Bide a bit, my friend,’ said the farmer, ‘our parson wants to
have a snak (chat) with you.’ ‘Impossible,’ he replied; ‘I’ve no time;
but I’ve a brother that’s a parson. He’s just the man; besides, he has
more time than me. I’ll send him.’ The tuss-priest accordingly came,
and had a long dispute with the priest of this world about various
passages in the Bible. The latter was but a poor scholar, so he was
easily out-argued.

“At last they began to dispute about vor Frelser (our Redeemer).

“‘Frelser!’ exclaimed the goblin-priest, ‘I want no Frelser.’

“‘How so?’

“‘I’m descended from Adam’s first wife. When she brought forth the
child from which our people trace their descent, Adam had not sinned.’

“‘First wife?’ repeated the University man; ‘where do you find
anything about first wife in the five books of Moses? If you have found
any such like thing there, you have not read it right,’ said he.

“‘Don’t you remember,’ said the tuss, ‘the Bible has it, “This is _now_
bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh.” So he must have been married
before to somebody of a different nature.’

“The other, who was not so well read in the Bible as he ought to be--so
much of his time was taken up in farming and such like unaandelig
(un-spiritual) occupations--was not able to confute this argument.
Indeed, the tuss-priest beat the Lutheran priest hollow in every
argument, till at last they parted, and the latter was never known
again to express a wish to have any further controversy with so subtle
an antagonist.”




CHAPTER X.

    Scandinavian origin of Old English and Border ballads--Nursery
    rhymes--A sensible reason for saying “No”--Parish
    books--Osmund’s new boots--A St. Dunstan story--The
    short and simple annals of a Norwegian pastor--Peasant
    talk--Riddles--Traditional melodies--A story for William
    Allingham’s muse--The Tuss people receive notice to quit--The
    copper horse--Heirlooms--Stories in wood-carving--Morals and
    match-making.


It is well known that some of the old English and Border ballads,
_e.g._, “King Henrie,” “Kempion,” “the Douglas Tragedy,” the “Dæmon
Lover,” are, more or less Scandinavian in their origin. In the same
way, “Jack the Giant Killer,” and “Thomas Thumb,” derive many of their
features from the Northern Pantheon.

Mr. Halliwell, in his _Nursery Rhymes of England_, and _Popular
Rhymes_, quotes some Swedish facsimiles of our rhymes of this class,
and states, further, on the authority of Mr. Stephens, that the
English infants of the nineteenth century “have not deserted the
rhymes chanted so many ages since by their mothers in the North.”[18]
It struck me, therefore, that in this store-house of antiquities,
Sætersdal, I might be able to pick up some information corroborative
of the above hypothesis. It was some time, however, before I could
make Solomon understand what I meant by nursery rhymes. At last he hit
upon my meaning, and I discovered that the word here for a lullaby or
jingle, is “börne-süd.” Elsewhere, it is called Tull, or Lull-börn,
whence our Lullaby.

“What’s the use of such things?” said Solomon; “they are pure nonsense.”

But, on my entreaty, he and others recited a few, in a sort of simple
chant. The reader acquainted with that species of literature in England
will be able to trace some resemblance between it and the following
specimens, which have been in vogue in this out-of-the-way valley
several hundred years. The oldest people in it have inherited the same
from their forefathers, and they are in the old dialect, which is, in
a great measure, the old Norse. While what is very remarkable, like as
is the case with us and our nursery rhymes, the people in many cases
recited to me what appeared sheer nonsense, the meaning of which they
were themselves unable to explain.

    Börn lig i brondo,
    Brondo sig i haando;
    Kasler i krogje,
    Kiernet i kove,
    Hesten mi i heller fast,
    Jeita te mi i scaare fast,
    Saa mi spil langst noro Heio.

    Bairn it lies a burning,
    Burning itself in the hands;
    Kettle is on the crook,
    The churn is in a splutter,
    My horse is fast on the rocks,
    My goat is fast on the screes,
    My sheep play along the northern heights.

Here is another, which would remind us of a passage in “The Midsummer
Night’s Dream,” only that the squirrel is now reaper instead of
coach-maker:--

    Ekorne staa paa vaadden o’ slo
    Höre dei kaar dei snöre;
    Skjere laeste, kraaken dro,
    O, roisekattan han kjore.

    The squirrels they stand on the meadow and mow,
      Hear how they bustle the vermin;
    The magpie it loads, and who draws but the crow,
      And the waggoner, it is the ermine.

A similar one:--

    Reven sitte i lien,
    Hore börne grin,
    Kom börne mine, o gaer heim mi ma,
    Saa skal wi gama sja.
      Han traeske, hun maale,
      Kiessling knudde, kjette bake,
      Muse rödde mi rumpe si paa leiven.

    The fox, the fox, she sits on the lea,
    Hears her bairns a-crying:
    Come, bairns mine, and go home with me,
    What games you shall then be seeing.
    The fox he thrashed, the vixen she ground;
    The kitten kneads, the cat she bakes,
    The mouse with his tail he sprinkles the cakes.[19]

Another:--

    So ro ti krabbe skjar,
    Kaar mange fiske har du der?
    En o’ ei fiörde,
    Laxen den store;
    En ti far, en ti mor,
    En ti den som fisker dror.

    Sow row to the crab-skerrys,[20]
    How many fishes have you there?
    One, two, three, four,
    The salmon, the stour.
    One for father, for mother one;
    One for him the net who drew.

Now and then a different course of treatment is proposed for the
fractious baby, as in the following:--

    Bis, Bis, Beijo,
    Börn will ikke teio,
    Tak laeggen,
    Slo mod vaeggen,
    So vil börne teio.

    Bis, Bis, Beijo,
    Baby won’t be still, O,
    By the leg take it,
    ’Gainst the wall whack it,
    So will baby hush, O.

This reminds me of another:--

    Klappe, Klappe, söde,
    Büxerne skulle vi böte,
    Böte de med kjetteskind,
    Saa alle klorene vend te ind,
    I rumpen paa min söde.

    Clappa, Clappa, darlin’,
    Breeches they want patchin’,
    Patch them with a nice cat-skin,
    All the claws turned outside in,
    To tickle my little darlin’.

It being now noon (noni), or Solomon’s meal-time, he left me, promising
to give me a call in the evening.

“Yes, and you must take a glass of finkel with me; it will refresh your
mind as well as body.”

“Not a drop, thank you. If I begin, I can’t stop.”

“That’s the way with these bonders,” observed the Lehnsman to me, when
we were alone; “even the most intelligent of them, if they once get
hold of the liquor, go on drinking till they are furiously drunk.”

This then is pre-eminently the country for Father Mathews!

“By-the-bye,” said the Lehnsman, “our parson has left us, and his
successor is not yet arrived; but I think I can get the keys from
the clerk, and we will go to the vicarage, and look at the kald-bog
(call-book), a sort of record of all the notable things that have ever
happened at the kald (living).”

Presently we found ourselves seated in the priest’s chamber, with the
said book before us.

The following curious reminiscence of the second priest after the
Reformation is interesting:--

“One Sunday, when the priest was just going up into the pulpit
(praeke-stol), in strode the Lehnsman Wund (or ond = bad, violent),
Osmund Berge. He had on a pair of new boots, which creaked a good
deal, much to the scandal of the congregation, who looked upon this
sort of foot-covering as an abomination; shoes being the only wear of
the valley. The priest, who had a private feud with Osmund, foolishly
determined to take the opportunity of telling him a little bit of his
mind, and spoke out strongly on the impropriety of his coming in so
late, and with creaking boots, forsooth. Bad Osmund sat down, gulping
in his wrath, but when the sermon was ended, he waited at the door
till the priest came out of church, and in revenge struck him with his
knife, _after the custom of those days_. The priest fell dead, and the
congregation, in great wrath at the death of their pastor, set upon
the murderer, stoned him to death a few steps from the church, and
buried him where he fell. Until a few years ago, a cairn of stones, the
very implements, perhaps, of his lapidation, marked the spot of his
interment. After this tragical occurrence, the parish was without a
clergyman for three years; till at last another pastor was introduced
by a rich man of those parts, on the promise of the parishioners that
he should be protected from harm.”

I found, in the same book, a curious notice of one Erik Leganger,
another clergyman. When he came to the parish, not a person in it could
read or write. By his unremitting endeavours he wrought a great change
in this respect, and the people progressed in wisdom and knowledge.
This drew upon him the animosity of the Father of Evil himself. On one
occasion, when the priest was sledging to his other church, the foul
fiend met him in the way; a dire contest ensued, which ended in the
man of God overpowering his adversary, whom he treated like the witch
Sycorax did Ariel, confining him “into a cloven pine.”

A later annotator on this notable entry says, the only way of
explaining this affair is by the fact that the priest, although a good
man, had a screw loose in his head (skrue los i Hovedet). But this
Judæus Apella ought to have remembered the case of Doctor Luther, not
to mention Saint Dunstan.

The good Lehnsman, who entered with great enthusiasm into my desire for
information on all subjects, now commenced reading an entry made by a
former priest, with whom he had been acquainted, of his daily going
out and coming in during the period it had pleased God to set him over
that parish, with notices of his previous history. His father had been
drowned while he was a child, and his widowed mother was left with
three children, whom she brought up with great difficulty, owing to
her narrow means. Being put to school, he attracted the notice of the
master, who encouraged him to persevere in his studies. Finally, by the
assistance of friends, he got to the University, earning money for the
purpose by acting as tutor in private families during the vacations.
At last he passed his theological examination, but only as “baud
illaudabilis;” the reason for which meagre commendation he attributes
to his time being so taken up with private tuition. At the practical
examination he came out “laudabilis,” so that he had retrieved his
position. He then mentions how that he was married to the betrothed
of his boyhood and became a curate; till at length he was promoted to
this place, which he had now left for better preferment, expressing the
hope, in his own hand-writing, “that he had worked among his people not
without profit. Amen.”

At this moment, the good Lehnsman--whether it was that the heat or his
fatigue in my behalf was too much for him, or whether it was that he
was overcome by the simple and feeling record of his former pastor’s
early struggles--turned pale, and became deadly sick. Eventually he
recovered, and, in his politeness, sat down to dinner with me in his
own house.

In the evening I took my fly-rod, and went down to the river with a
retinue of forty rustics at my heels. The flies, however, having caught
hold of one boy’s cap, nearly breaking my rod, the crowd were alarmed
for their eyes, and kept a respectful distance, while I pulled out a
few trout; an exploit which drew from them many expressions of by no
means mute wonder.

After this I sat down on a stone, and had a chat with these fellows.
They had evidently got over the feeling so common among the peasantry
of being afraid at being laughed at by the stranger and by each other.
Many of them blurted out something. Riddles (Gaator or Gaade, allied to
our word “guess,”) were all the go. These are a very ancient national
pastime. They were, however, of no great merit. Here are specimens:--

    Rund som en egg,
    Länger end kirke-vægg.

    Round as an egg,
    Longer than a church-wall.

_Answer._ A roll of thread.

    Rund som solen, svart som jorde.

    Round as the sun, swart as the earth.

[_i.e._, the large round iron on which girdle-cake is baked.]

    Hvad er det som go rund o giore eg?

    What is that which goes round o’ gars eggs?

_Answer._ A grindstone. A _double entendre_ is contained in the word
egg; which means either “edge,” or “egg.”

    I know a wonderful tree,
    The roots stand up and the top is below,
    It grows in winter and lessens in summer.

_Answer._ A glacier.

    Four gang, four hang,
    Two show the way, two point to the sky,
    And one it dangles after.

_Answer._ Cow with her legs, teats, eyes, horns, and tail.

    What is that as high as the highest tree,
    But the sun never shines on it?

_Answer._ The pith.

    What goes from the fell to the shore
    And does not move?

_Answer._ A fence.

These country-people are not deficient in proverbs--_e.g._,

    Another man’s steed
    Has always speed.

Much of what they said was spoken in an outlandish dialect, and what
made it worse, when I asked for an explanation, they all cried out
together, like the boys in a Government school in India. Indeed, when
they were once fairly afloat it was difficult to curb the general
excitement.

Moe, a Norwegian writer, who has penetrated into many of the
out-of-the-way valleys of this part of the country and Thelemarken,
states that the peasants are provided with a large budget of
traditional melodies; but more than this, these genuine and
only representatives of the ancient “smoothers and polishers of
language” (scalds), not only use the very strophe of those ancient
improvisatores, but have also a knack of improvising songs on the spur
of the moment, or, at all events, of grafting bits of local colouring
into old catches.

The peasants around tipped me one or two of these staves. When the
company are all assembled, one sings a verse, and challenging another
to contend with him in song, another answers, and, after a few
alternate verses, the two voices chime in together. What I heard was
not extempore, but traditional in the valley.

One young fellow commenced a stave which seemed to be a great
favourite, for directly he began it, the others said, “To be sure, we
all know that; sing it, Thorkil.”

In the evening, true to his promise, old Solomon appeared. He had
called to mind a tale that would perhaps please me.

“There was once on a time a shooter looking for fowl on the heights
(heio) above Sætersdal. Well, on he went, doing nothing but looking
up into the tree-tops for the fowl, when, all of a sudden, he found
himself in a house he had never seen before. There were large chambers
all round, and long corridors, and so many doors he could not number
them. He went seeking about all over till he was tired. Folk he could
see none, nor could he find his way out. At last he came to one chamber
where he thought he could hear people, so he opened the door and looked
in; and there sat a lassie alone (eisemo); so he spoke to her, and
asked who lived there. So she answered they were Tuss folk, and that
the house was so placed that nobody could see it till they got into
it, and then one could not get out again. ‘That’s the way it went
with me,’ said she, mournfully; ‘I have been here a long time now, but
don’t think I shall ever get out again.’ The shooter on this got very
frightened, and asked her if she could not tell him some way of escape.
‘Well,’ answered the girl, ‘I’ll tell you how you can do it, but you
must first promise me to come back to the gaard and take me away.’ This
he promised at once to do without fail. ‘Now, then, follow me, and
open the door I point out. They are sitting at the board and eating
(aa eta), and he who sits at the top is the king, and he’s bigger and
brawer than all the others, so that you’ll know him directly. You must
take your rifle, and aim at the king--only aim, you mustn’t shoot.
They’ll be in such a fright they’ll drive you out directly you heave
up the gun; so you’ll be all safe, and then you must think of me. You
must come here next Thursday evening[21] as ever is, and the next, and
the third; and then I’ll follow you home--of that you may be certain.’
So she went and showed him the door, and he opened it and went in, and
saw them all eating and drinking, and he up with his gun and pointed
it at the one at the top of the table. Up they all jumped in alarm; he
sprung out, they after him, and so he got clean out and safe home. On
the first Thursday evening away he went to the Fell, and the second,
and talked each time with the girl; but the third Thursday, on which
all depended, he didn’t come. I don’t know why it was he did not keep
his promise. Perhaps he thought if he took her home he should have to
marry her. Anyhow it was base ingratitude. Some three or four years
after the shooter was on the heights again, when he heard a girl’s
voice greet (gret), and lament that she was so dowie (dauv) and lonely,
and could not get away to her home. He knew the voice at once--it was
the girl he had deserted. He looked round and round, and about on all
sides, but could see nothing but rocks and trees, and so nothing could
be done for the poor lassie.”

“Now I think of it,” continued Solomon, “there is a tuss story I’ve
heard about this Rigegaard where you are stopping.”

“Delightful!” thought I; “I never did yet sleep in a haunted house--it
will be a capital adventure for the journal.”

“It’s a long time ago since, though. The ‘hill-folks’ used to come
and take up their quarters here at Yule. It was every Yule the same;
they never missed. They did keep it up, I believe you, in grand style,
eating, and drinking, and clattering till they made the old house ring
again. At last, Arne--he lived here in those days--gave the underground
people notice to quit; he would not put up with it any longer. So off
they went. In the hurry of departure they left some of their chattels,
and, among others, a little copper horse, which Arne put out of sight,
though he had no idea what it was used for. Next day, a Troll came down
from the hill above yonder, into which the whole pack had retired for
the present, and claimed the property. Arne, however, had taken a fancy
to the horse, and would not give it up. They might have that little
drinking-beaker of strange workmanship, but the copper horse he was
determined to keep. ‘Well,’ said the Troll, ‘keep it then; but, mind
this, never you part with it. If ever you do, this house will never be
free from poverty and bad luck to the end of the present race.’[22]
‘Good!’ replied Arne, ‘I’ll take care of that, and my son will keep the
horse after me, and hand it down as an heir-loom.’

“After this, the house went on prosperously, and no more was heard of
the Trolls. Many years after, when Arne and his son were dead, the
grandson parted with the horse. He had heard of the story, but he did
not care; he did not want such trash--not he. After this, nothing went
well with him. Poverty overtook him, and the family fell into the
utmost distress.”

“But,” interposed I, “the people seem very well-to-do. I see no
symptoms of poverty. The woman is a filthy creature, and that towel is
disgusting [all travellers in Norway, mind and take a towel with you],
and the food she gives me is uneatable; but I hear they are rich.”

“Yes,” said Solomon, “but this is quite another branch of the family.
The other one died quite out, and then the destiny altered. The present
people have risen again in the world.”

Talking of heirlooms, there is no copper horse now, of course, but
there are several quaint things about the gaard, mementos of ancient
days. Among the rest were two curious old hand-axes, used, as
above-mentioned, by the Norwegians as walking sticks, when not applied
to more desperate service, the iron being then used as a handle. The
door-jambs of an out-house, moreover, are of singularly beautiful
carving. These are a couple of feet in width, and formerly adorned
the entrance to the old church of Hyllenstad, and give an idea of the
great taste displayed by these people in ecclesiastical ornament in the
Roman Catholic days. A tale is told here in wood, which I could not
make out. It is most likely connected with the building of the church.
Sundry figures appear with bellows and hammers, and the implements
of the carpenter. But these are afterwards exchanged for weapons of a
more deadly nature. A man with a sword drives it right through another,
while on the corresponding jamb a gentleman is seen in hot contest with
a dragon, whose tail is artfully mingled with the arabesques around.
All these figures are carved in bold relief. The work was no doubt by
Norwegian artists, for the interlacing foliage is in that peculiarly
graceful and broad style (mentioned by Mallet and Pontoppidan), which
always seems to have been at home in this country. These beautiful
panels, together with the slender pillars joined to them, sold at the
auction of the old materials for one dollar!

So little has this valley been modernized, that I find in almost every
house specimens of the Primstav, or old Runic calendar, handed down
from father to son for centuries. “It is the same with those tales you
have heard,” said the Lehnsman; “the oldest people in the valley got
them from the oldest people before them, though not in writing, but by
oral tradition.”

“And what is the state of morals up here?”

“The Nattefrieri is very much in vogue, but the evil consequences are
not so great as may be imagined.”

I must own that the revelations of the Lehnsman stripped those
people, in my eyes, of a good deal of the romance with which their
literary tastes had invested them. Nor was my idea of the artless and
unsophisticated simplicity of these rustic Mirandas enhanced, when I
was told that match-making was not uncommon among the seniors, and the
juniors consented to be thus bought and sold. Hear this, ye manœuvring
mammas!

    “With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter’s heart.”

Yes! marriage here, as among the grand folks elsewhere, turns upon a
question of lots of money--a handsome establishment. Perhaps, too,
the jilts of refined and polished society will rejoice, to hear that
they are kept in countenance by the doings in Sætersdal. It sometimes,
though rarely, happens that a girl is engaged to a young fellow, who
means truly by her, the wedding guests are bidden, and she--bolts with
another man.




CHAPTER XI.

    Off again--Shakspeare and Scandinavian literature--A
    fat peasant’s better half--A story about Michaelmas
    geese--Explanation of an old Norwegian almanack--A quest after
    the Fremmad man--A glimpse of death--Gunvar’s snuff-box--More
    nursery rhymes--A riddle of a silver ring--New discoveries
    of old parsimony--The Spirit of the Woods--Falcons at
    home--The etiquette of tobacco-chewing--Lullabies--A frank
    invitation--The outlaw pretty near the mark--Bjaräen--A
    valuable hint to travellers--Domestic etcetera--Early
    morning--Social magpies--An augury--An eagle’s eyrie--Meg
    Merrilies--Wanted an hydraulic press--A grumble at
    paving commissioners--A disappointment--An unpropitious
    station-master--Author keeps house in the wilderness--Practical
    theology--Story of a fox and a bear--Bridal stones--The
    Vatnedal lake--Waiting for the ferry--An unmistakable hint--A
    dilemma--New illustration of the wooden nutmeg truth--“Polly
    put the kettle on”--A friendly remark to Mr. Caxton--The real
    fountain of youth--Insectivora--The maiden’s lament.


Bidding adieu to the kind and hospitable Lehnsman and his spouse, whose
courtesy and hospitality made up for the forbidding ways of Madame
Rige, I turned my face up the valley. The carriage-road having now
ceased, my luggage is transposed to the back of a stout horse, which,
like the ancient Scottish wild cattle, was milk-white, with black
muzzle. The straddle, or wooden saddle, which crosses his back, is
called klöv-sal. Curiously enough, the Connemara peasants give the name
of “cleve” to the receptacles slung on either side the ponies for the
purpose of carrying peat, and through which the animal’s back _cleaves_
like a wedge. A very fat man came puffing and panting up to my loft to
fetch my gear.

“What!” said I, “are _you_ going to march with me all that distance?”
with an audible _aside_ about his “larding the lean earth as he walks
along.” The allusion to Falstaff he of course did not understand. His
literature is older than Shakspeare; indeed the bard of Avon often
borrowed from it. Whence comes his “Man in the moon with his dog and
bush,” but from the fiction in the Northern mythology of Mâni (the
moon), and the two children, Bil and Hiuki, whom she stole from earth.
Scott’s Wayland Smith, too, he is nothing but Völund, the son of the
Fin-king, who married a Valkyr by mistake, and used to practise the
art of a goldsmith in Wolf-dale, and was hamstrung by the avaricious
King Nidud, and forced to make trinkets for him on the desert isle of
Saeverstad. Though it is only fair to say that the legend belonged also
to the Anglo-Saxons, and indeed to most of the branches of the Gothic
race. But we are forgetting our post-master. He was the first fat
peasant I ever saw in this country.

“Nei, cors” (No, by the Rood). “I’m not equal to that. It’s nearly four
old miles. My wife, a very snil kone (discreet woman), will schuss you.”

His better half accordingly appeared, clad in the dingy white woollen
frock already described, reaching from the knee to the arm-holes, where
is the waist. On this occasion, however, she had, for the purpose
of expedition, put an extra girdle above her hips, making the brief
gown briefer still, and herself less like a woman about to dance in a
sack. Sending her on before, I sauntered along, stopping a second or
two to examine the huge unhewn slab before the church door, with a
cross and cypher on it, and the date 1639; to which stone some curious
legend attaches, which I have forgotten. Passing Solomon’s house, and
finding he had gone to the mountains, I left for him some flies, and a
_douceur_, to the bewilderment of his son. At a house further up the
valley I found a primstav two hundred years old, the owner of which
perfectly understood the Runic symbols.

“That goose,” said he, “refers to Martinsmass, (Nov. 11). That’s the
time when the geese are ready to kill.”

So that our derivation of Michaelmas goose-eating from the old story
of Queen Elizabeth happening to have been eating that dish on the day
of the news of the defeat of the Spanish Armada, is a myth. We got
the custom from Norway, but the bird being fit to eat on the 29th
September, Englishmen were too greedy to wait, and transferred to the
feast of the archangel the dish appertaining to the Bishop of Tours.

That’s a lyster for Saint Lucia (13th Dec.); it means that they used
to catch much fish against Yule. That knife means that it is time to
slaughter the pigs for Yule. That horn is Yule-horn [the vehicle for
conveying ale to the throats of the ancient Norskmen]. That’s Saint
Knut (Jan. 7th). That’s his bell, to ring winter out. The sun comes
back then in Thelemarken. Old folks used to put their hands behind
their backs, take a wooden ale-bowl in their teeth, and throw it over
their back; if it fell bottom upwards, the person would die in that
year. That’s St. Brettiva, (Jan. 11), when all the leavings of Yule are
eat up. You see the sign is a horse. I’ll tell you how that is. Once on
a time a bonder in Thelemarken was driving out that day. The neighbour
(nabo) asked him if he knew it was Saint Brettiva’s day. He answered--

    Brett me here, brett me there,
    I’ll brett (bring) home a load of hay, I swear.

The horse stumbled, and broke its foot; that’s the reason why the day
is marked with a horse in Thelemarken.

“That’s St. Blasius (Feb. 3), marked with a ship. If it blows (bläse)
on that day, it will blow all the year through. That’s a very
particular day. We must not use any implement that goes round on it,
such as a mill, or a spindle, else the cattle would get a swimming in
the head (Sviva).

“That’s St. Peter’s key (Feb. 22). Ship-folks begin to get their boats
ready then. As the weather is that day it will be forty days after.

“That,” continued this learned decipherer of Runes, “is St. Matthias
(24th Feb.) If it’s cold that day, it will get milder, and _vice
versâ_; and therefore the saying is, St. Matthias bursts the ice; if
there is no ice, he makes ice. The fox darn’t go on the ice that day
for fear it should break.

“That’s a mattock (hakke) for St. Magnus (16th April). We begin then to
turn up the soil.

“That’s St. Marcus (25th April). That’s Stor Gangdag (great
procession-day). The other gang-days are Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday
before Ascension.”

“And why are they called Gang-days?”

“Because a procession used to go round the fields, and the priest, at
their head, held mass, to drive away all evil spirits.”

Here, then, we see the origin of our beating the bounds. Although,
perhaps, the custom may be traced to some ceremonial in honour of Odin
akin to the Ambarvalia at Rome in honour of Ceres. According to an old
tradition, however, it originated thus. There was, many years ago,
a great drought in Norway about this period of the year. A general
procession-day was ordered in consequence, together with a fast, which
was kept so strictly, that the cattle were muzzled, and the babe in
the cradle kept from the breast. Just before the folks went to church
it was as dry as ever, but when they came out, it was raining hard. We
Christians ring the “passing bell” on the death of anybody, but are
perhaps not aware that it began in northern superstition. Sprites, as
we have mentioned elsewhere, can’t bear bells--one of them was once
heard lamenting in Denmark that he could stay no longer in the country
on account of the din of the church bells. So, to scare away the evil
spirits, and let the departing soul have a quiet passage, the sexton
tolls the bell.

“That’s Gowk’s-mass (May 1); you see the gowk (cuckoo) in the tree.
That’s a great bird that. They used to say--

    North, corpse-gowk, south, sow-gowk,
    West, will-gowk, east, woogowk.”

“What’s the meaning of that?”

“Why, if you heard the cuckoo first in the north, the same year you
would be a corpse; if in the south, you would have luck in sowing; if
in the west, your will would be accomplished; if in the east, you would
have luck in wooing.

“That’s Bjornevaak (bear’s waking day) May 22. You see it’s a bear.
They say the bear leaves his ‘hi’ that day. On midwinter (Jan. 12) he
gave himself a turn round.[23]

“That’s Saint Sunniva, Bergen’s Saint[24] (July 8).

“That’s Olsok (St. Olaf’s day), July 29, marked with an axe. The bonder
must not mow that day, or there will come vermin on the cattle.

“That’s Laurentius’ day, marked with a gridiron.

“That’s Kverne Knurran, marked with a millstone, Sept. 1. If it’s dry
that day the millers will come to want water.

“That’s vet-naet (winter-night), Oct. 14, when the year began. That’s a
glove,[25] to show cold weather is coming. There’s an old Runic rhyme
about that, where Winter says:--

    On winter-night for me look out,
    On Fyribod (Oct. 28) I come, without doubt;
    If I delay till Hallow e’en,
    Then I bow down the fir-tree green.”

The “Tale of the Calendar”[26] was, however, now interrupted by a tap
at the window, and a man screams out--

“Where is the Fremmad man? where is the Fremmad man?”

“The stranger is here in the house,” was the reply.

And in came a man, who had evidently just dressed in his best, with
something very like death written in his sunken cheeks, starting eyes,
and sharpened features.

“Can you tell me what is good for so and so?” he asked. “Oh! what pain
I endure.”

The poor fellow was clearly suffering from the stone, and there was no
doctor within a great many days’ journey. His doom was evidently sealed.

Further up the valley, a fierce thunder-storm coming on, I entered
one of the smoke-houses above described, where an old lady, Gunvor
Thorsdatter, bid me welcome. She offered me her mull of home-dried
sneeshing--it was rather a curious affair, being shaped like a
swan’s-egg pear, and sprigged all over with silver. A very small
aperture, stopped by a cork, was the only way of getting at the
precious dust. Gunvor was above eighty, but in full possession of her
faculties, and I judged her therefore not an unlikely person to have
some old stories.

“What do you sing to the babies when you want to make them sleep?”

“I don’t know. All sorts of things.”

“Well, will you repeat me one?”

She looked hard at me for a moment, and suddenly all the deep furrows
across her countenance puckered up and became contorted, just like a
ploughed field when the harrow has passed over it. A stifled giggle
next escaped her through her _erkos odontôn_, which was still white,
and without gaps. A slight suspicion that I was making fun of her I at
once removed from her mind; then, looking carefully round, and seeing
that there was nobody else by, she croaked out, in a sort of monotonous
melody, the following, which I give literally in English:--

    Row, row to Engeland,
    To buy my babe a pearlen-band,
    New breeches and new shoes,
    So to its mother baby goes.

This sounds like our--

    “To market, to market, to buy a plum-bun.”

Another, the first lines of which remind one of our--

    Rockabye, babye, thy cradle is green,
    Father’s a nobleman, mother’s a queen.

    Tippi, Tippi, Tua (evidently our “Dibity, Dibity, Do”),
    Mother was a frua (lady),
    Father was of gentle blood,
    Brother was a minstrel good;
    His bow so quick he drew,
    The strings snapt in two.
    Longer do not play
    On your strings, I pray:
    Strings they cost money,
    Money in the purse,
    Purse in the kist,
    Kist in the safe,
    Safe is in the boat,
    Boat on board the ship,
    Ship it lies in Amsterdam,
    What’s the skipper’s name?
    His name is called Helje;
    Have you aught to sell me?
    Apples and onions, onions and apples,
    Pretty maidens come and buy.

This species of accumulated jingle is called “Reglar,” and reminds us
of “The House that Jack built.”

Another, sung by a woman with a child on her knee:--

    Ride along, ride a cock-horse,
    So, with the legs across;
    Horse his name is apple-grey[27] (abel-graa),
    Little boy rides away.
    Where shall little boy ride to?
    To the king’s court to woo;
    At the king’s court,
    They’re all gone out,
    All but little dogs twain,
    Fastened with a chain:
    Their chains they do gnaw,
    And say “Wau, wau, wau.”

“Very good,” said I. “Many thanks. Have you any gaade (riddles)?”

Upon which, the old lady immediately repeated this:--

    Sister sent to sister her’n,
      Southwards over the sea,
    With its bottom out, a silver churn,
      Guess now what that can be.

_Answer._ A silver ring.

Before parting with her, I begged the old lady to accept a small
coin in return for her rhymes, which she said she had heard from her
grandmother; but this she indignantly refused to accept, begging me at
the same time, as she saw a man approaching, not to say a word about
what she had been telling me. The fact is, as has been observed by
the Norwegians themselves, that the peasants fancy that nobody would
inquire about these matters unless for the sake of ridiculing them,
of which they have a great horror. Although they retain these rhymes
themselves, they imagine that other people must look upon them as
useless nonsense.

The man who approached the cottage brought with him a tiny axe, a
couple of inches long, which he had dug up in the neighbourhood.
Its use I could not conceive, unless, perhaps, it was the miniature
representation of some old warrior’s axe, which the survivors were too
knowing and parsimonious to bury with the corpse, and so they put in
this sham. That the ancient Scandinavians were addicted to this thrift
is well known. In Copenhagen, as we have already seen, facsimiles, on
a very small scale, of bracelets, &c. which have been found in barrows,
are still preserved. This peasant had likewise a bear-skin for sale.
The bear he shot last spring, and the meat was bought by the priest.

The storm being over, I walked on through the forest alone, my female
guide being by this time, no doubt, many miles in advance. All houses
had ceased, but, fortunately, there was but one path, so that I could
not lose my way. How still the wood was! There was not a breath of
wind after the rain, so that I could distinctly hear the sullen
booming of the river, now some distance off. As I stopped to pick some
cloud-berries, which grew in profusion, I heard a distant scream. It
was some falcons at a vast height on the cliff above, which I at first
thought were only motes in my eyes. With my glass I could detect two or
three pairs. They had young ones in the rock, which they were teaching
to fly, and were alternately chiding them and coaxing them. No wonder
the young ones are afraid to make a start of it. If I were in their
places I should feel considerable reluctance about making a first
flight.

At length I spied a cottage to the right in the opening of a lateral
valley. Hereabout, I had heard, were some old bauta stones; but an
intelligent girl who came up, told me a peasant had carried them off
to make a wall. This girl, who wore two silver brooches on her bosom,
besides large globular collar-studs and gilt studs to her wristbands,
asked me if I would not come and have a mjelk drikke (drink of milk).

Jorand Tarjeisdatter was all the time busily engaged in chewing harpix
(the resinous exudation of the fir-tree); presently, on another older
woman coming in, she pulled out the quid, and gave it to the new-comer,
who forthwith put it into her own mouth. But after all this is no worse
than Dr. Livingstone drinking water which had been sucked up from the
ground by Bechuana nymphs, and spit out by them into a vessel for the
purpose.

Jorand was nice-looking, and had a sweet voice, and without the least
hesitation she immediately sang me one or two lullabies, _e.g._--

    Upon the lea there stands a little cup
    Full of ale and wine,
    So dance my lady up.
    Upon the lea there stands a little can
    Full of ale and wine,
    So dance my lady down.

She then chanted the following:--

    Hasten, hasten, then my goats
    Along the northern heights,
    Homewards over rocky fell,
    Tange,[28] Teine, Bear-the-bell,
    Dros also Duri,
    Silver also Fruri,
    Ole also Snaddi,
    Now we’ve got the goats all,
    Come hither buck and come hither dun,
    Come hither speckled one,
    Young goats and brown goats come along,
    That’s the end of my good song,
    Fal lal lal la.

Another.

    Baby, rest thee in thy bed,
    Mother she’s spinning blue thread,
    Brother’s blowing on a buck’s horn,
    Sister thine is grinding corn,
    And father is beating a drum.

She then started off with a stave full of satirical allusions to the
swains of the neighbourhood, showing how Od was braw, and Ola a stour
prater (stor Pratar), Torgrim a <DW2>, and Tarjei a Gasconader--

    But Björn from all he bore the bell,
    So merry he, and could “stave” so well.

The whole reminded me of the catalogue in the glee of “Dame Durden.”

“But how long will you stop with us? If you’ll wait till Sunday,
we’ll have a selskab (party). Some of the men will come home from the
mountains, and then you shall hear us stave properly.”

She seemed much disappointed when I told her I must be off there and
then, my luggage was already miles ahead.

Leaving her with thanks, I made a detour of a couple of miles into the
side valley, to see a very ancient gaard, to which a story attaches.
Roynestad, as it was called, was built of immense logs, some as much
as three feet thick;[29] on one of which several bullet marks were
visible. Here once dwelt a fellow bearing the same names as the
murderer of the priest at Valle, viz., Wund Osmund. He had served
in the wars, and seen much of foreign lands. For some reason he
incurred the displeasure of the authorities, and fled for refuge to
his mountain home. A party of officials came to seize him. When he saw
them approaching, he took aim with his cross-bow at a maalestock (pole
for land-measuring), which he had placed in the meadow in front of his
house, and sent three or four shafts into it.

    Cloudesley with a bearing arrow
    Clave the wand in two.

The Dogberries were alarmed, and, after discharging a few bullets,
turned tail.

There were in the loft some curious reminiscences of this daring
fellow, _e.g._, an ancient sword, and some old tapestry, or rather
canvas painted over with some historical subject, which I could
not make out. In ancient times the interior of the houses was often
decorated with hangings of this kind (upstad, aaklæd). But what I
chiefly wanted to see was a genuine old Pagan idol, which had been
preserved on the spot many hundred years. But “Faxe,” I found, was not
long ago split up for fuel. The real meaning of “faxe” is horse with
uncut mane, so that it was most likely connected with the worship of
Odin.

Regaining my old road, by a short cut, which fortunately did not turn
out a longer way, I plodded on to Bjaräen, a lonely house in the
forest. Here I found my excellent conductress, who, alarmed at my
non-appearance, had halted, and it being now dusk, further advance
to-night was not to be thought of.

Those horrible cupboards, or berths, fixed against the wall, how I
dreaded getting into one of them! A stout, red-cheeked lass, the
daughter of the house, was fortunately at home, and posted up the hill
for some distance, returning with a regular hay-cock on her back, which
improved matters. But before I bestowed myself thereon, I took care to
place under the coverlet a branch of Pors, which I had cut in the bog.
It did for me what the aureus ramus did, if I remember rightly, for
Æneas, gained me access to the realms of sleep. The fleas, it is true,
mustered strong, and moved vigorously to the attack, but the scent of
the shrub seemed to take away their appetite for blood, and I remained
unmolested.

The stout lass brought me a slop-basin to wash in next morning, and
instead of a towel, an article apparently not known in these parts, a
clean chemise of her own. The house could not, by-the-bye, boast of any
knives and forks. No sugar was to be had, and the milk, which was about
three months old, was so sharp that it seemed to get into my head,
certainly into my nose.

Next morning, after some miles walk through uninterrupted solitudes, I
found myself on the shores of a placid lake, from which the mist was
just lifting up its heavy white wings. As I stood for a moment to look,
a large fly descended on the smooth water, and was immediately gobbled
up by a trout. Over head, half hidden in the mist, were perpendicular
white precipices, stained with streaks of black, which returned my
halloo with prompt defiance. Between their base and the lake vast
stone blocks were strewed around, and yet close by I now discovered a
farm-house exposed to a similar fall.

    On fair Loch Ranza shone the early day,
      Soft wreaths of cottage smoke are upward curled
    From the lone hamlet, which her inland bay
      And circling mountains sever from the world.

That’s a very proper quotation, no doubt, but the smoke must be left
out. The farm was deserted; not a soul at home, the family having gone
up to the mountain pasture. We must, however, except a couple of sad
and solitary magpies, which, as we drew near, uttered some violent
interjections, and jumped down from the house-top, where they had been
pruning themselves in the morning sun. They must be much in want of
company, for they followed our steps for some distance, and then left
us with a peculiar cry. Would that I had been an ancient augur to have
known what that last observation of theirs was!

The path now wound up the noted Bykle Sti, or ladder of Bykle, which
is partly blasted out of the rocks, and partly laid on galleries of
fir logs. Formerly, this place was very dangerous to the traveller.
Here the river, which has been flowing at no great distance from us
all the way, comes out of a lake. From a considerable height I gaze
down below, and see it gurgling and then circling with oily smoothness
through a series of black pits scooped out in the foundation rocks of
this fine defile. Opposite me is a huge precipice, whence the screams
that are borne ever and anon upon my ear, proclaim the vicinity of an
eagle’s eyrie. Below, the river widens again, and I see a number of
logs slumbering heads and tails on its shores. We are now more than two
thousand feet above the sea, but shall have to descend again to the
lake, and cross it, as the road soon terminates entirely.

The ferry-boat was large and flat-bottomed, but all the efforts of my
attendant and myself failed to launch it. At this moment a sort of Meg
Merrilies, clad in grey frieze, with hair to match, streaming over her
shoulders, made her appearance.

“Come and help us!”

“It’s no use. The boat’s fast; the water has fallen from the dry
weather, and old Erik himself can’t move it.”

“Well, let us try. You take one oar, and Thora the other, and I’ll go
and haul in front.”

The two women used their oars like levers, when suddenly, Oh,
horror!--snap went one of them. Tearing up a plank, which was nailed
over the gunwale as a seat, I placed it as a launching way for the
leviathan. This helped us wonderfully, and at last the unwieldly
machine floated. The Danish Count would have flung “Trahuntque siccas
machinæ carinas” in our faces, but he would have had to alter the
epithet, as the boat was thoroughly water-logged. So much so, that when
the horse and effects and we three were on board, it leaked very fast.
The women took the oars, the broken one being mended by the garters of
Meg Merrilies. The water rose in the boat much quicker than I liked,
and I could not help envying a couple of great Northern divers, which
my glass showed me floating corkily on the smooth water--fortunately it
was so--if the truth were known they doubtless looked upon us with a
mixture of commiseration and contempt.

When we arrived safely on the other side, which was distant about
half-a-mile, I gave our help-in-need sixpence. She was perfectly amazed
at my liberality.

“Du er a snil karro du.” (You’re a good fellow, you are.)

She was, she told me, the mother of fourteen children. Her pluck and
sagacity were considerable. Now, will it be believed, that this awkward
passage might altogether be avoided if the precipice were blasted for
two or three score yards, so as to allow of the path winding round it.
As it is, a traveller might arrive here, and if the boat were on the
other side, might wait for a whole day or more, as nobody could hear or
see him, and no human habitation is near.

As we rose the hill to Bykle, I saw two or three species of mushrooms,
one of which, of a bright Seville-orange colour, with white
imposthumes, I found to be edible. Visions of a comfortable place to
put my head into smiled upon me, as I saw a church-spire rising up the
mountain, and a gaard, the station-house, not far from it. But alas! I
was doomed to be disappointed--all the family were at the Stöl, and the
doors and windows fastened. A man fortunately appeared presently, whom
I persuaded for a consideration to go and fetch the landlord. My guide
meantime departed, as she was anxious to get half home before night.
Meantime I lay on some timbers, and went to sleep. Out of this I was
awakened by a sharp sort of chuckle close to my ear, and on raising
myself I found that two magpies had bitten a hole into the sack, and
were getting at my biscuits and cheese. It was with some difficulty
that I drove off these impudent Gazza-ladras: and as soon as I went to
sleep again, they recommenced operations. In three hours the messenger
returned with the intelligence that the station-master would not come;
the road stopped here, and he was not bound to schuss people Nordover
(to the North).

There was nothing for it but to go up the mountain, and wade through
the morasses to see the fellow. Fortunately I found an adjoining stöl,
where dwelt another peasant, Tarald (Anglicè Thorold) Mostue, whom I
persuaded to come down and open his house for the shelter of myself
and luggage. He brought down with him some fresh milk, the first I had
tasted since leaving Christiansand. After lighting for me a fire, and
making up a bed, he returned to his châlet, promising to return by six
A.M. with a horse, and schuss me to Vatnedal. Here, then, I was all
alone, but I managed to make myself comfortable, and slept well under
the shadow of my own fig-tree--I mean the branch of Pors--secure from
the fleas and bugs! Tarald appeared in the morning, and off we started.
He was, I found, one of the Lesere or Norwegian methodists.

“Do they bann (banne = the Scotch ‘ban’) much in the country you come
from?” inquired he, as we jumped over the dark peat-hags, planting our
feet on the white stones, which afforded a precarious help through them.

“I fear some of them do.”

“But I’ve not heard you curse.”

“No; I don’t think it right.”

“Where does the Pope (Pave) live?”

“At Rome.”

“They call it the great ---- of Babylon, don’t they? Is Babylon far
from Rome?”

“It does not exist now. It was destroyed for the wickedness of its
inhabitants, and according to the prophecy it has become something like
this spot here, a possession for the cormorant and the bittern, and
pools of water.”

“Ah! I had forgotten about that; I know the New Testament very well,
but not the Old.”

Tarald had also something to say about Luther’s Postils; but like most
of these Lesere, he had no relish for a good story or legend. He had
a cock-and-a-bull story--excuse the confusion of ideas--of a bear and
a fox, but it was so rigmarole and pointless, that it reminded me of
Albert Smith’s engineer’s story. The real tale is as follows. I picked
it up elsewhere:--Once on a time, when the beasts could talk, a fox and
a bear agreed to live together and have all things in common. So they
got a bit of ground, and arranged, so that one year the bear should
get the tops and the fox the bottoms of the crop, and another year
the bear the bottoms and the fox the tops. The first year they sowed
turnips, and, according to agreement, the bear got the tops and the fox
the bottoms. The bear did not much like this, but the fox showed him
clearly that there was no injustice done, as it was just as they had
agreed. Next year, too, said he, the bear would have the advantage, for
he would get the bottoms and the fox the tops. In the spring the fox
said he was tired of turnips. “What said the bear to some other crop?”
“Well and good,” answered the bear. So they planted rye. At harvest
the fox got all the grain, and the bear the roots, which put him in a
dreadful rage, for, being thick-witted, he had not foreseen the hoax.
At last he was pacified, and they now agreed to buy a keg of butter
for the winter. The fox, as usual, was up to his tricks, and used to
steal the butter at night, while Bruin slept. The bear observed that
the butter was diminishing daily, and taxed the fox. The fox replied
boldly--“We can easily find out the thief; for directly we wake in the
morning we’ll examine each other, and see whether either of us has
any butter smeared about him.” In the morning the bear was all over
butter; it regularly dropped off him. How fierce he got! the fox was so
afraid, that he ran off into the wood, the bear after him. The fox hid
under a birch-tree root, but bruin was not to be done, and scratched
and scratched till he got hold of the fox’s foot. “Don’t take hold of
the birch-root, take hold of the fox’s foot,” said Reynard, tauntingly.
So the bear thought it was only a root he had hold of, and let the foot
go, and began scratching again. “Oh! now do spare me,” whispered the
fox; “I’ll show you a bees’-nest, which I saw in an old birch. I know
you like honey.” This softened the bear, for he was desperately fond
of honey. So they went both of them together into the wood, and the
fox showed the bear a great tree-bole, split down the middle, with the
wedge still sticking in it. “It’s in there,” said the fox. “Just you
squeeze into the crack, and press as hard as you can, and I’ll strike
the wedge, and then the log will split.” The trustful bear squeezed
himself in accordingly, and pushed as hard as ever he could. Reynard
knocked out the block, the tree closed, and poor Bruin was fast.
Presently the man came back who had been hewing the tree, and directly
he spied the bear, he took his axe and split open his skull; and--so
there is no more to tell.

On the bare, rocky pass which separates Sætersdal from Vatnedal were
several stones, placed in a line, a yard or two apart from each other.

“Those are the Bridal Stones,” observed Tarald. “A great many years ago
there was no priest on the Bykle side (I suppose this was after the
murder by Wund Osmond, the Lehnsman), and a couple that wanted to wed
came all the way over here to be married. Those stones they set up in
memory of the event. On this stone sat the bridegroom, and on that the
bride.”

The mountain pink (Lycnis viscaria) occurs on most of these stony
plateaus. I also met with a mighty gentian, with purplish brown flower,
emitting a rich aromatic odour, the root of which is of an excessively
bitter taste, and is gathered for medicinal purposes.

A mile or two beyond this we stood in a rocky gorge, from which we had
a glorious view of the Vatnedal lake, and another beyond it several
hundred feet below us. After a very precipitous descent, on the edge
of which stood several blocks, placed as near as they could be without
rolling over, we skirted the lake through birch-grove and bog till we
got opposite a house visible on the further shore. At this a boat was
kept, but it was very uncertain whether anybody was at home. Leaving
Tarald to make signals, I was speedily enticing some trout at a spot
where a snow-stream rushed into the lake. At last Tarald cried out--

“All right, there are folk; I see a woman.” And sure enough, after a
space, I could discern a boat approaching. A brisk and lively woman
was the propelling power. We were soon on the bosom of the deep--the
two men, the woman, and the horse, all, in spite of my protestations,
consigned to a flat-bottomed leaky punt, though the wind was blowing
high. The horse became uneasy, and swayed about, and, being larger
than usual, he gave promise of turning the boat upside-down before
very long. I immediately unlaced my boots, and pulled off my coat. The
Norwegians seemed at this to awake to a sense of danger, and rowed
back to the shore; the horse was landed and hobbled when he forthwith
began cropping the herbage. We then made a safe passage. Unfortunately,
Helge’s husband, whom I had counted on to help me on my journey,
had started with his horse the day before to buy corn at Suledal,
thirty-five miles off.

In this dilemma, I begged Tarald to take pity on me, or I might be
hopelessly stopped for some days. The “Leser” was like “a certain
Levite.” He had been complaining all day of fatigue. He felt so ill, he
said, he could hardly get along. I had even given him some medicine.
In spite, however, of his praiseworthy antipathy to swearing, and the
nasal twang with which he poured out some of his moral reflections, I
had felt some misgivings about the sincerity of his professions; for
he had begged me to write to the Foged, and complain of the absence of
the station-master at Bykle, that he might be turned out, and he get
his place. And, sure enough, I found him to be a wooden nutmeg with
none of the real spice of what he professed to be about him. No sooner
did he finger the dollars, than his fatigue and indisposition suddenly
left him, and he started off home with great alacrity, reminding me of
those <DW36>s in Victor Hugo’s _Hunchback of Notre Dame_, who, from
being hardly able to crawl, suddenly became all life and motion.

“Truly,” mused I, “these Lesere are all moonshine. They profess to be
a peculiar people, but are by no means zealous of good works. But this
lies in the nature of things. Which is the best article, the cloth
stiffened and puffed up with starch and ‘Devil’s dust,’ or the rough
Tweed, which makes no pretence to show whatever, but, nevertheless,
does duty admirably well against wind and weather?” But enough of the
thin-lipped, Pharisaical Tarald.

There was a beaminess about the hard-favoured countenance of Helge
Tarjeisdatter Vatnedal, together with a _brusque_ out-and-out
readiness of word and deed, that jumped with my humour. The fair Tori
too, her daughter, with her good-tempered blue eyes and mouth, and
comfortable-looking figure, swept up the floor, and split some pine
stumps with an axe, and lit the fire, and acted “Polly put the kettle
on” with such an evident resolve to make me at home, that the prospect
of being delayed in such quarters looked much less formidable. The two
women had netted some gorgeous trout that afternoon, and I was soon
discussing them.

“We must go now,” said Helge.

“Where to?”

“To the stöl. We are all up there now. It was only by chance we came
down here to-day. Will you go with us, or will you stop here? You will
be all alone.”

“Never mind; I’ll stop here.”

“Very good. We know of a man living a long way off on the other lake.
We’ll send a messenger to him by sunrise, and see if he can schuss you.
In the morning we’ll come back and let you know.”

My supper finished, by the fast waning light I began reading a bit of
Bulwer’s _Caxtons_. The passage I came upon was Augustine’s recipe
for satiety or _ennui_--viz., a course of reading of legendary
out-of-the-way travel. But I can give Mr. Caxton a better nostrum
still--To do the thing yourself instead of reading of it being done. In
the Museum at Berlin there is a picture called the Fountain of Youth.
On the left-hand side you see old and infirm people approaching,
or being brought to the water. Before they have got well through
the stream, their aspect changes; and arrived on the other bank,
they are all rejuvenescence and frolic. To my mind this is not a bad
emblem of the change that comes over the traveller who passes out of
a world of intense over-civilization into a country like this. How
delightful to be able to dress, and eat, and do as one likes, to have
escaped for a season, at least, from the tittle-tattle, the uneasy
study of appearances, the “what will Mr. So-and-so think?” the fuss
and botheration of crowded cities, with I don’t know how many of the
population thinking of nothing but getting 10 per cent. for their
money. Sitting alone in the gloaming, under the shadow of the great
mountains, with the darkling lake in front, now once more tranquil,
and lulled again like a babe that has cried itself to sleep--the sound
of the distant waterfalls booming on the ear--a star or two twinkling
faintly in the sky--I might have set my fancy going to a considerable
extent.

But bed, with its realities, recalled my wandering thoughts. That was
the hour of trial! A person, who ought to know something about these
matters, apostrophized sleep as being fond of smoky cribs, and uneasy
pallets, and delighting in the hushing buzz of night flies. I had all
these to perfection, the flies especially, quite a plague of them.
But nature’s soft nurse would not visit me. The fact was, I had lost
my branch, and the “insectivora” of all descriptions, as a learned
farmer of my acquaintance phrased it, roved about like free companions,
ravaging at will. Knocked up was I completely the next morning, when at
six o’clock the women returned with the welcome intelligence that one
Ketil of the Bog was bound for that Goshen, Suledal, to buy corn, and
would be my guide.

“I am so weary,” said I; “I have not slept a wink.”

With looks full of compassion, the women observed--“We thought you
wouldn’t. We knew you would be afraid. That kept you awake, no doubt.”

Whether they meant fear of the fairies or of freebooters, they did not
say. My assurance to the contrary availed but little to convince them.
No solitary traveller in Norway at the present day need fear robbery or
violence. The women soon shouldered my effects, not permitting me to
carry anything, and we started through morass, and brake, and rocks,
for the shieling of Ketil of the Bog.

At one spot where we rested, the fair Tori chanted me the following
strain, which is based on a national legend, the great antiquity of
which is testified by the alliterative metre of the original. It refers
to a girl who had been carried off by robbers.

    Tirreli, Tirreli Tove,
    Twelve men met in the grove;
    Twelve men mustered they,
    Twelve brands bore they.
    The goatherd they did bang,
    The little dog they did hang,
    The stour steer they did slay,
    And hung the bell upon a spray,
    And now they will murder me,
    Far away on the wooded lea.




CHAPTER XII.

    Ketil--A few sheep in the wilderness--Brown Ryper--The
    Norwegian peasants bad naturalists--More bridal stones--The
    effect of glacial action on rocks--“Catch hold of her
    tail”--Author makes himself at home in a deserted châlet--A
    dangerous playfellow--Suledal lake--Character of the
    inhabitants of Sætersdal--The landlord’s daughter--Wooden
    spoons--Mountain paths--A mournful cavalcade--Simple
    remedies--Landscape painting--The post-road from Gugaard to
    Bustetun--The clergyman of Roldal parish--Poor little Knut at
    home--A set of bores--The pencil as a weapon of defence--Still,
    still they come--A short cut, with the usual result--Author
    falls into a cavern--The vast white Folgefond--Mountain
    characteristics--Author arrives at Seligenstad--A milkmaid’s
    lullaby--Sweethearts--The author sees visions--The Hardanger
    Fjord--Something like scenery.


I was quite at Ketil’s mercy in a pecuniary point of view. But he
was not one of the Lesere, and was moderate in his demands. After a
scramble through his native bog, which would, I think, have put a very
moss-trooper on his mettle, we debouched on the end of a lake. Here we
took boat, and there being a spanking breeze, we soon shot over the six
miles of water. With a stern-wind, fishing was not to be thought of; I
never found it answer. At the other end of the lake was a stone cabin,
where I took shelter from the blast, while Ketil went in search of his
horse.

While I was engaged caulking the seams in my appetite, a fine young
fellow in sailor’s costume, who had rowed from the opposite shore,
looked in. Talleif, as he was yclept, was from Tjelmodal, with a
flock of fourteen thousand sheep and twenty milking goats. He and his
comrade, Lars, sleep in an old bear-hole in the Urden (loose rocks).
They get nine skillings (threepence) a-head for tending the sheep for
ten weeks. Besides this, they pay twelve dollars to Ketil and two other
peasants, who are the possessors of these wilds. Their chief food is
the milk of the goats. In winter they get their living by fishing.

“Have you any ryper here,” said I to Ketil, as we passed through some
very likely-looking birch thickets.

“Yes.”

“What colour?”

“Grey.”

“Are there no brown ones?”

“No; they are grey, and in winter snow-white.”

At this instant I heard the well-known cackle of the cock of the brown
species, and a large covey of these birds rose out of the covert.

“Well, they are brown,” said he; “now, I never laid mark to (remarked)
that before.”

So much for the observation of these people. Never rely upon them
for any information respecting birds, beasts, fishes, or plants. All
colours are the same to a blind man, and they are such. I take the
man’s word, however, for the fact of there being abundance of otters
about and reindeer higher up.

Terribly desolate was that Norwegian Fjeld that now lay before us. But
setting our faces resolutely to the ascent, we topped it in two and a
half hours, the way now and then threading mossy lanes, so to say, sunk
between sloping planes of rock. Screeching out in the unharmonious
jargon of Vatnedal, which the Sætersdal people, proud of their own
musical lungs, call “an alarm,” Ketil pointed to a row of stones upon
the ridge similar to those I had seen the day before, also called the
Bridal stones, and with a similar legend attached to them. What poverty
of invention. Why not call them Funeral stones by way of ringing the
changes? But no; the people of this country will escort a bride much
further than a bier. The honours of sepulture are done with a niggard
grace.

As we now began to descend past beds of unmelted snow, I had a good
opportunity of seeing the manifest effect of glacial action upon the
rocks, the strata of which had been heaved up perpendicularly. Rounded
by the ice in one direction, and quartered by their own cleavage
in another, the rocks looked for all the world like a vast dish of
sweetbreads; just the sort of tid-bit for that colossal Jotul yonder
behind us, with the portentously groggy nose, who stands out in sharp
relief against the sky. What Gorgon’s head did that? thought I; as the
picture in the National Gallery of Phineus and Co. turned to stone at
the banquet occurred to my mind. But my reverie was disturbed by a cry
from Ketil of the Bog.

“Catch hold of her tail!”

Which exclamation I not apprehending at the moment, the mare slipped
down a smooth sweetbread, and nearly came to grief.

Lower down we passed some ice-cold tarns, where I longed to bathe and
take some of the limpid element into my thirsting pores, but prudently
abstained. After a long descent we came upon a deserted châlet, the
door of which we unfastened, and plundered it of some sour milk. We
shall pay the owner down below. After this refreshment we plunged into
a deep gorge, skirting an elv just fresh from its cradle, and which was
struggling to get away most lustily for so young an infant.

“Ah! it’s only small now,” said Ketil; “but you should see it in a flom
(flood). It’s up in a moment. Two years ago a young fellow crossed
there with a horse, and spent the day in cutting grass on the heights.
It rained a good deal. He waited too long, and when he tried to get
over, horse and man were drowned. They were found below cut to pieces.”

I must take care what I’m about, thought I, as I nearly slipped down
the precipice, which was become slippery from a storm of rain which now
overtook us.

Below this the scenery becomes more varied, in one place a smiling
little amphitheatre of verdure contrasting with the bold mountains
which towered to an immense height above.

At length we descend to Suledal lake drenched to the skin. A ready,
off-hand sort of fellow, Thorsten Brathweit, at once answers my
challenge to row me over the water to Naes. The scenery of the lake is
truly superb. The elv, which we had been following, here finds its way
to the lake by a mere crack through the rocks of great depth. In one
place a big stone that had been hurled from above had become tightly
fixed in the cleft, and formed a bridge. Thorsten had plenty to say.

Two reindeer, he told me, were shot last week on the Fjeld I had just
crossed. Large salmon get up into the lake. The trout in it run to ten
pounds in weight; what I took were only small.

The landlord at Naes, where I spent the night, was astonished that I
should have ventured through Sætersdal.

“They are such a Ro-bygd folk there,” observed he, punningly, _i.e._,
barbarous sort of people.

The race I now encounter are, in fact, of quite a different costume
and appearance. The married daughter of the house possessed a good
complexioned oval face, with a close-fitting black cloth cap, edged
with green, in shape just like those worn by the Dutch vrows, in
Netscher’s and Mieris’ pictures. Her light brown hair was cut short
behind like a boy’s; such is the fashion among the married women
hereabouts.

“Long hair is an ornament to the woman,” observed I to her.

“She didn’t know; that was the custom there.”

The only spoon in the house was a large wooden one, but as by long
practice I have arrived at such a pitch of dexterity that I might
almost venture on teaching my grandmother to suck eggs, this
occasioned me little inconvenience in transferring to my mouth the
parboiled mementoes left by a hen now, alas! no more.

There is a mountain-pass across the Fjeld from hence to Roldal, and, as
I mounted it next morning by the side of one of the feeders of the lake
cascading grandly down, I had a fine view of this noble piece of water.
After a stiff walk of three hours and a half we arrive at the summit
of the _col_, and passing the rnan, or cairn, which marks the highest
point, looked down upon the pretty Roldal water sunk deep among the
mountains, with the snowfields of the Storfond gleaming in the distance.

Here we met a mournful cavalcade. First came a sickly-looking man
riding, and another horse following loaded with luggage, while a spruce
old dame and a handsome lad walked in the rear. This is a rich bonder
from Botne below, who is troubled with a spinal complaint, and after
enduring frightful tortures, is on his travels in search of a doctor.
Horror of horrors! I felt it running cold down my back as I heard
of it. Imagine a man with a diseased spine riding down a Norwegian
mountain. Heaven help him! The lad hails me, and asks if I know where
a doctor is to be found. I recommend Stavanger, sixty miles off--much
of which distance, however, may be travelled by water--in preference to
Lillesand, a small place nearer.

It was a great relief, after walking in the intense heat, to boat
across Roldal lake, under the shade of the mountains, the air
deliciously cooled by the glacier water, which, though milky in colour,
did not prevent me catching some trout. The poor fellow, my boatman,
has a swollen hand and wrist of some weeks’ standing; I recommend
porridge poultice as hot as possible, and a douche of icy water
afterwards. Formerly, instead of this simple remedy, it would have been
necessary to do “some great thing.” Abana and Pharpar alone would have
sufficed. I allude to the miraculous image which used to be kept in the
old church at Roldal, now pulled down. On the Eve of St. John it used
to sweat, and people came from far and near to apply the exudation to
their bodily ailments. Like Dr. Steer’s opodeldoc, it never failed to
effect a cure.

As we approach the other end of the lake, a little modern church rises
on the shore, while an amphitheatre of cultivated ground, dotted here
and there by log-houses, <DW72>s gently upwards towards the grey rocky
mountains behind, which afford pasturage for herds of tame reindeer.
In the distance may be discerned at intervals a winding path. This
path, which at present is only practicable for horses, crosses the
summit level of the Hardanger mountains. At Gugaard it becomes a
carriage-road, and thence passes on through Vinje to the part of
Thelemarken visited by me last year. The Storthing have long been
talking of completing the post-road from Gugaard to Busteten, on the
Sör Fjord, a branch of the Hardanger; but hitherto it is confined to
talk, although, at present, the only way of getting from the Hardanger
district to Kongsberg and the capital, is either to go the long route
by the sea round the Naze, or up to Leirdalsören, where the high road
commences. Formerly Roldal parish was annexed to Suledal, thirty miles
off, but it has lately been separated, and has the advantage of a
resident clergyman, and service every Sunday.

Sending my effects to the Lehnsman’s, where I purposed stopping the
night, I went up the hill to call upon his reverence. He was out, so
the girl went to fetch him, taking care to lock the house-door and put
the key in her pocket. Presently a vinegar-faced, Yankee-looking young
man, with white neckcloth, light coat, and pea-green waistcoat, with
enormous flowers embroidered on it, and sucking a cigar the colour
of pig-tail, approached. There was a Barmecide look about him, which
was not promising, and his line of action tallied exactly with his
physiognomy. He stood before the house-door, but made no effort to open
it, and there was a repelling uncommunicative way about him, which
determined me to retire the moment I had obtained the information I
stood in need of.

As I had landed from the boat, a ragged square-built little fellow,
with gipsy countenance, had offered to carry my luggage, seventy pounds
in weight, over the mountain to Odde, thirty miles distance. Showing
me a miserable little hut, he told me he was very poor, and had five
children with no bread to eat, while his wife, a tidy-looking woman
carrying a bundle of sticks, chimed in with his entreaties, and thanked
me warmly for the gift of the few fish I had caught. I was quite
willing to hire him, and had come to the priest, to whom he referred
me, for some account of his trustworthiness and capabilities.

“Yes,” said his reverence, “he is able to carry that weight; he carried
for me more than double as much when I came hither from Odde, and
that’s much more uphill (imod).”

“Yes,” said I; “but I travel quick, and I don’t wish to use a man as a
beast of burden.”

“He lives by carrying burdens. And what do you want, Knut, for the job?”

“A dollar.”

“That’s too much.”

I did not think so, and the bargain was struck, and I took leave of the
vinegar-cruet, who was said to be a chosen vial of pulpit declamation.

What a set of bores or burrs my host the Lehnsman and his family
were. They would not let me alone in the loft, which was frightfully
hot, and with no openable window. Up tramped first the old man, with
half-a-dozen loutish sons, then followed a hobbling old beldam, leaning
on a stick, and attended by Brida, a young peasant lass, the only
redeeming feature in the group. Fancy arriving at a place dog-tired,
and a dozen people surrounding you in the foreground, and asking a
hundred questions, with a perspective of white heads bobbing about, and
appearing and disappearing through the doorway in the middle distance.

My only chance was my pencil; that is the weapon to repel such
intruders. Not that I used it aggressively, as those hopeful students
did their styles (see Fox’s _Martyrs_), digging the sharp points into
their Dominie’s body. Taking out my sketch-book, I deliberately singled
out one of the phalanx, and commenced transferring his proportions
to the paper. This manœuvre at once routed the assailants, and they
retired. Before long, however, the old gent stole in, and prowled
stealthily around the fortress before he summoned it to surrender.
I parried all his questions, and he departed. His place was then
supplied by his eldest son, who was equally unsuccessful, but whom I
made useful in boiling some water for tea. The only thing approaching
to a tea-pot was a shallow kettle, a foot in diameter. The butter of
Roldal is celebrated, and compared to the Herregaard butter of Denmark,
but the pile of it brought in by the landlord’s son, on a lordly
dish, was stale and nauseous. As nothing was to be got out of me, he,
too, disappeared, and I was left in peace and quietness. Another yet!
Horrible sight! the old Hecate herself again rises into the loft--not
one of “the soft and milky rabble” of womankind, spoken of by the
poet, but a charred and wrinkled piece of humanity--all shrivelled and
toothless, came and stood over me as I sat at meat.

“Who are you? You _shall_ tell me. Whence do you come from?”

“Christiansand.”

“But are you Baarneföd (born) there?”

At the same time she hobbled to a great red box, with various names
painted on it, and as a kind of bait, I suppose, produced a quaint
silver spoon for my use, which she poised suspiciously in her hand
like a female Euclio, as if she was fearful I should swallow it.

But I was much too tired to respond; and at last, seeing nothing was
to be got out of me, she crawled away, and I was speedily between the
woollen coverlets--sheets there were none. By five A.M. the gipsy
Knut was in attendance, with a small son to help him; and on a most
inspiriting morning we skirted along the lake, and began to mount the
heights. The haze that still hung about the water, and filled the
shadowy nooks between the mountains, lent an ineffable grandeur to
them, which the mid-day atmosphere, when the sun is high in heaven,
fails to communicate.

Leaving my coolies to advance up the track, I thought I would take a
short cut to the summit of the pass, when I came unexpectedly upon a
lake, which stretched right and left, and compelled me to retrace my
steps for some distance. As I scrambled along fallen rocks, my leg
slipped through a small opening into a perfect cavern. Thank God, the
limb was not broken, as the guide could not have heard my cries, and I
might have ceased to be, and become a tissue of dry bones (_de mortuo
nil nisi bonum_), long before I could have been discovered. That old
raven overhead there, who gave that exulting croak as I fell, you’re
reckoning this time without your host. See, I have got my leg out of
the trap; and off we hurry from the ill-omened spot. Those ravens are
said to be the ghosts of murdered persons who have been hidden away on
the moors by their murderers, and have not received Christian burial.

What a delicious breeze refreshed me as I stood, piping hot, on the top
of the pass. Half-an-hour of this let loose upon London would be better
than flushing the sewers. It was genuine North Sea, iced with passing
over the vast white Folgefond. There it lies full in front of us, like
a huge winding-sheet, enwrapping the slumbering Jotuns, those Titanic
embodiments of nature in her sternest and most rugged mood, with which
the imagination of the sons of Odin delighted to people the fastnesses
of their adopted home.

As we had ascended, the trees had become, both in number and size,
small by degrees and beautifully less, until they ceased altogether,
and the landscape turned into nothing but craggy, sterile rockscape.
This order of things as we now descended was inverted, and I was not
sorry to get once more into the region of verdure.

At length we arrive at Seligenstad, where, to avoid the crowd of
questioners, I sit down on a box, in the passage, to the great
astonishment of the good folks. The German who has preceded me has
been more communicative: “He is from Hanover; is second master in a
Gymnasium; is thirty years old; has so many dollars a year; is married;
and expects a letter from his wife at Bergen.”

When the buzz had subsided, and nobody is looking, one girl, dressed
in the Hardanger costume, viz., a red bodice and dark petticoat, with
masculine chemise, but with the addition of a white linen cap, shaped
like a nimbus by means of a concealed wooden-frame, comes and sits on a
milk-pail beside me. At my request she sings a lullaby or two. One of
them ran thus:--

    Heigho and heigho!
    My small one, how are you?
    Indeed but you’re brave and well:
    The rain it pours,
    And the hurricane roars,
    But my bairn it sleeps on the fell.

I vow that the touching address of the daughter of Acrisius to her
nursling, in the Greek Anthology, never sounded so sweetly to me in my
school-boy days, as did the lullaby I had just heard. I’m sure the girl
will make a good mamma. Perhaps she’s thinking of the time when that
will happen.

Another--

    My roundelay, it runs as nimble
    As the nag o’er the ice without a stumble;
    My roundelay can turn with a twirl,
    As quick as the lads on snow-shoes whirl.

A strapping peasant lad, joining our _tête-à-tête_, I bantered him on
the subject of sweethearts.

“You’ve got one. Now, tell me what you sing to her.”

With a look of _nonchalance_, which thinly covered over an abundance of
sheepishness, the rustic swain pooh-poohed the idea, and, in defiance,
sang the following--

    To wed in a hurry, of that oh! beware;
      You had far better drag on alone;
    What, tho’ she be fair, a wife brings much care,
      With marriage all merriment’s flown.

    Well, suppose you have land, and flocks and herds too,
      But at Yule, when they’re all in the byre,
    It perhaps happen can, that you’ve scarce a handfu’
      Of fodder the cattle to cheer.

“That’s very fine, no doubt,” interrupted the girl; “but he’s got a
kjærste (sweetheart) for all that, and I’ll tell you what he sings to
her:--

    Oh! hear me, my pretty maid,
      What I will say to thee,
    I’ve long thought, but was afraid;
      I would woo thee,
      Wilt thou have me?

    Meadows I have so fair,
      And cattle and corn good store,
    Of dollars two or three pair,
      Then don’t say me nay, I implore.”

The girl had completely turned the tables on the said flippant young
fellow, who, by his looks, abundantly owned the soft impeachment.

Taking leave of these good folks, I pursued my downward course along
the river, which was, however, hidden by trees and rocks. Suddenly,
however, we got a sight of the torrent in an unexpected manner. The
earth at our feet had sunk into a deep, well-like hole, leaving,
however, between it and the stream, a great arch of living rock,
crowned with trees like the Prebischthor in the Saxon Switzerland,
only smaller. Soon after this, we pass a picturesque bridge (Horbro),
where the river roars through a deep and very narrow chasm, terrible
to look down into; and, after some hours’ walking, get the first peep
into the placid lake of Hildal, with two great waterfalls descending
the opposite mountain, as if determined to give _éclat_ to the river’s
entrance therein. Visions of Bavarian beer, fresh meat, clean sheets,
&c., crowd upon my imagination, as, after catching some trout in
crossing the lake, we land on the little isthmus which separates the
sheet of fresh water from the beautiful salt-water Sörfjord; and with
light foot I hasten down to Mr. M----’s, the merchant of Odde. The
situation is one of the grandest in Norway. The mighty Hardanger
Fjord, after running westward out of the Northern Ocean for about
eighty miles, suddenly takes a bend south, and forms the Sör (South)
Fjord, which is nearly thirty miles long. At the very extreme end of
this glorious water defile I now stood. To my left shoot down the
sloping abutments of the mountain plateau, on which lies the vast
snow-field called the Folgefond; they, with their flounce-like bands
of trees, first fir, then birch, and above this mere scrub, are now
immersed in shadow, blending in the distance with the indigo waters
of the Fjord. But further out to seaward, as we glance over the dark
shoulder of one of these natural buttresses, rises a swelling mound of
white, like the heaving bosom of some queenly beauty robed in black
velvet. That is a bit of “Folgo” yet glowing with the radiance of the
setting sun. As I stood gazing at this wonderful scene--the snow part
of it reminding me of the unsullied Jungfrau, as seen from Interlacken,
only that there the water, which gives such effect to this scene, is
absent--I saw a man rise from behind a stranded boat in front of me.
He was a German painter, and had been transferring to his canvas the
very sight I had been looking on.

“Eine wunderschöne Aussicht, Mein Herr,” remarked I.

“Unvergleichbar! We’ve nothing like it even in Switzerland,” said he.

With this observation I think I can safely leave the scenery in the
reader’s hands.

“That church, there,” said the German, pointing to a little ancient
edifice of stone, with mere slits of windows, “is said to have been
built by your countrymen, as well as those of Kinservik and Ullensvang,
further down the fjord. They had a great timber trade, according to
tradition, with this part of the country. But, to judge from that
breastwork and foss yonder, the good people of the valley were favoured
at times with other visits besides those of timber merchants.”




CHAPTER XIII.

    Author visits a glacier--Meets with two compatriots--A good
    year for bears--The judgment of snow--Effects of parsley fern
    on horses--The advantage of having shadow--Old friends of the
    hill tribe--Skeggedals foss--Fairy strings--The ugliest dale
    in Norway--A photograph of omnipotence--The great Bondehus
    glacier--Record of the mysterious ice period--Guide stories--A
    rock on its travels.


Next day I went across the Hildal Lake to visit a glacier of which I
had got a glimpse the evening before. It then seemed a couple of miles
off; but I never was more taken in in judging of distance before--such
is the uncommon clearness of the atmosphere and the gigantic scale of
objects in this country. After a sweltering walk, however, of nearly
three hours, I at last stood at the spot, where a torrent of water,
the exact colour of that perennial sewer that comes to the light of
day, and diffuses its fragrance just below London Bridge, rushed out
of an archway of the purest azure, setting me a moralizing about
deceitful appearances, and so forth. My boy-guide halted the while at
a respectful distance from the convulsed mass of ice.

“Do let me go back,” he had apostrophized me; “I am so frightened, I
am. It is sure to fall on us.”

And it was only by yielding to his cowardly entreaties that I prevented
him from imitating the trickling ice, and being dissolved in tears.

Close to the ice grew white and red clover, yellow trefoil, two kinds
of sorrel, and buttercups. This fertility on the edge of a howling
desert had been taken advantage of, for, as I moved my eye to the
opposite cliff from taking a look at the sun, who had just hidden his
scorching glare behind the tips of the glacier, I descried several men
and women busily engaged, at an enormous height, making hay on a <DW72>
of great steepness. As we descended, a noise, as of a salute of cannon,
greeted my ears. The above sewer, which descends with most prodigious
force, had set agoing some stones apparently of great size, which
thundered high even above the roar of the waters, making the rocks and
nodding groves rebellow again.

Next day I had determined to cross “Folgo” to the Mauranger Fjord, but
the clouds hanging over him forbid the attempt.

That evening it cleared up, and two compatriots from the Emerald Isle
arriving by water, we agreed to join forces the next day.

On the 20th of August, at an early hour, we started with two guides,
one Ole Olsen Bustetun, and Jörgen Olsen Præstergaard. The latter was
a very grave-looking personage, with a blue face and red-tipped nose,
which, however, told untrue tales.

“Well, Jörgen,” said I, “how are you off for bears this year?”

“Hereabouts, not so bad; but yonder at Ulsvig they are very
troublesome. It was only the other day that Ulsvig’s priest was going
to one of his churches, when a bear attacked him. By good luck he had
his hound with him--a very big one it is--and it attacked the bear
behind, and bothered him, and so the priest managed to escape.”

“Aren’t there some old sagas about the Folgefond?” asked I.

“To be sure. I know one, but it is not true.”

“True or not true, let me hear it.”

“Well, then, it is said among the bonders that once on a time under
all this mountain of ice and snow there was a valley, called Folgedal,
with no less than seven parishes in it. But the dalesmen were a proud
and ungodly crew, and God determined to destroy them as He did Sodom
and Gomorrah--not by fire, however, but by snow. So He caused it to
snow in the valley for ten weeks running. As you may suppose, the
valley got filled up. The church spires were covered, and not a living
soul survived. And from that day to this the ice and snow has gone on
increasing. They also say that in olden days there used to be a strange
sight of birds of all colours, white, and black, and green, and red,
and yellow, fluskering about over the snow, and people would have it
that these were nothing but the spirits of the inhabitants lingering
about the place of their former abodes.”

“That’s a strange story, no doubt,” said I.

“And, now I think of it,” continued Jörgen, “I’ve heard old men say
that this tale of the snowing-up must be true, for, now and then, when
there has been a flom (flood), pieces of hewn timber, as if they had
belonged to a house, and household implements, such as copper kettles,
have been brought down by the stream that comes out of Overhus Glacier.

“Now and then, too, the traveller over Folgo is said to hear strange
noises, as of church bells ringing and dogs barking. But the fact is,
there’s something so lonely and grewsome about the Fond, and the ice
is so apt to split and the snow to fall, that no wonder people get
such-like fancies into their heads.”

As we ascend I see tufts of a dark green herb growing in the crevices
of the grey rocks.

“Ah! that’s spraengehesten (horse burster),” said Jörgen. “If a horse
eats of this a stoppage of the bowels immediately takes place. A horse
at Berge, below there, was burst in this way not long ago.”

[The reader may remember that a similar account was given me last year
on the Sogne-fjeld].[30]

We had now emerged from the thickets, and, after crossing a _mauvais
pas_ of slippery rock, touched the snow after four hours’ hard walking.
The glare of the sun on the snow was rather trying to the eyes, I
congratulated myself that I was not shadowless, like Peter Schlemil,
as it was a great relief to me to cast my vision on my own lateral
shadow as we proceeded. It was first-rate weather, and the air being
northerly, the snow was not very slushy. The German painter ought to be
here. He told me his _forte_ is winter landscape.

“Now,” said the grave-faced Jörgen, who was at bottom a very good sort
of intelligent fellow, “look due east, sir, over where the Sör fjord
lies. Yonder is the Foss (waterfall) of Skeggedal, or Tussedal, as some
folks call it.”

As I cast my eyes eastward, I saw the highest top of the Hardanger
Fjeld, which I traversed last year; my old friend Harteigen very
conspicuous with his quaint square head rising to the height of 5400
feet, while his grey sides contrasted with the Storfond to the south
and the dazzling white Tresfond and Jöklen to the north.

Straight in a line between myself and Harteigen I now discerned a
perpendicular strip of gleaming white chalked upon a stupendous wall
of dark rock. That is Skeggedals foss. It falls several hundred feet
perpendicularly, but no wonder it looks a mere thread from here, for it
is more than fourteen miles off as the crow flies.

“There are three falls at the head of the valley,” continued Jörgen.
“Two of them cross each other at an angle quite wonderful to see. They
are called Tusse-straenge (Fairy strings).”

Wonderful music, thought I, must be given forth by those fairy strings,
mayhap akin to

                “The unmeasured notes
    Of that strange lyre whose strings
    The genii of the breezes sweep.”

“Tussedal is a terribly stügt (ugly) dale,” went on Jörgen, “so narrow,
and dark, and deep. A little below those three waterfalls the river
enters into the ground, and disappears for some distance, and than
comes out again. We call that the Swelge (swallow). Just below that
there is a great stone that has fallen across the chasm. It’s just like
a bridge: I’ve stood on that stone and looked down many, many ells
deep into the water boiling below. Ay! that’s an ugly dale--a very
ugly dale. It’s not to be matched in Norway. You ought to have gone to
see it; but now I think of it, it’s difficult to get to the falls, for
there is a lake to cross, and I think the old boat is stove in now.”

After passing one or two crevasses (spraekker), which become dangerous
when the fresh snow comes and covers them over, we at length arrive
at the first skiaer (skerry), a sort of Grand Mulets of bare jagged
crag, on which the snow did not seem to rest. After lunching here,
and drinking a mixture of brandy and ice, we descend a <DW72> of snow
by the side of a deep turquoise- gutter, of most serpentine
shape, brimful of dashing water. Just beyond this a sight met our eyes
never to be effaced from my memory. Far to the westward the ocean
is distinctly visible through a film of haze rising from the snow,
just thick enough, like the crape on those veiled Italian statues, to
enhance its beauty. Between us and the sea, purple ranges of mountains
intersect each other, the furthermost melting into the waves. At right
angles to these ranges is the Mauranger Fjord, to which we have to
descend. There it lies like a mere trough of ink, opening gradually
into the main channel of the branching Hardanger, with the island of
Varald lying in the centre of it. Over this to the north-west lies
Bergen. To the southward, skirting the Mauranger, is a cleft rock, like
the Brèche de Roland in the Pyrenées, while between it and us may be
seen the commencement of the great Bondehus glacier.

Look! the smooth, sloping, snow-covered ice has suddenly got on the
_qui vive_. It’s already on the incline, no drag will stop it; see how
it begins to rise into billows and fall into troughs, like the breakers
approaching the sea-shore; and yonder it disappears from view between
the adamantine buttresses that encroach upon its sweep. To our right
is another pseudo glacier hanging from a higher ascent like a blue
ball-cloak from the shoulder of a muslin-frocked damsel.

The _rochers montonnées_ on which we stand tell tales of that
mysterious ice-period when the glacier ground everything down with its
powerful emery, while by a curious natural convulsion, a crevasse as
broad and nearly as deep as the Box cutting--not of ice but of rock,
as if the very rocks had caught the infection, and tried to split in
glacial fashion--strikes down to a small black lake dotted with white
ice floes.

It was indeed a wondrous scene. As we looked at it, one of my
companions observed, one could almost imagine this was the exceeding
high mountain whence Satan shewed our Saviour all the kingdoms of the
world and the glory of them. As if to make the thing stranger still, on
one of the bleached rocks are carved what one might easily suppose were
cabalistic letters, the records of an era obscured in the grey mists of
time, but which it is beyond our power to decipher. Above us the sky
was cloudless, but wore that dark tinge which as clearly indicates snow
beneath as the distant ice-blink of the Arctic regions tells tales to
the voyager of a frozen ocean ahead.

“Now were off the Fond,” said Jörgen. “You laughed at me when I asked
you if you had a compass. We’ve made short work of it to-day, but
you don’t know what it is when there is a skodda (scud) over Folgo.
Twenty-five years ago five Englishmen, who tried to come over with five
horses, lost their way in the mist, and had hard work to get back. Why
it’s only fourteen days since that I started with three other guides
and four Englishmen, but we were forced to return. At this end of the
passage there is one outlet, and if you miss that it is impossible to
get down into the Mauranger.”

I found he was right; for, after worming our way for a space through a
hotch-potch of snow and rocks, we suddenly turned a sharp corner, and
stood in a gateway invisible a moment before, from whence a ladder of
stone reached down to the hamlet of Ovrehus, at the head of the Fjord,
four thousand feet below us.

“Four years ago,” said Jörgen, “I guided a German state-councilor
across the Fond. How he did drink brandviin! I think it was to give
him courage. He had a bottle full when he started, and he kept pouring
the spirits on to lumps of sugar, and sucking them till the bottle got
quite empty and he quite drunk. We could not get him a step further
than this, and night was coming on. I had to go down to Ovrehus, and
get four men with lanterns, and at last we got him down at two o’clock
in the morning.”

Jörgen thought the traveller was a German, but I suspect if the real
truth were known, it must have been our friend the Danish Count, whose
propensity for drink and other peculiarities have been recorded in the
_Oxonian in Norway_. The descent was uncommonly steep, even in the
opinion of one of my companions, who had ascended the Col du Géant, and
the stiffest passes in the Tyrol.

After descending in safety, we entered a belt of alder copse-wood. In
one part of this the ground had been ploughed up, and the trees torn
away and smashed right and left, as if some huge animal had rushed
through it, or rather, as if two or three Great Western locomotives
had run off the line and bolted across country. What could it be! The
gash, I found, reached to a torrent of fierce snow-water, in the centre
of which a rock of a great many tons weight had come to an anchor.
This was the _corpus delicti_. Looking at the cliffs, I could discern
several hundred feet above me the mark of a recent dislocation, whence
the monster had started. The rupture had occurred only two or three
days before. What a grand sight it must have been.




CHAPTER XIV.

    Three generations--Dangers of the Folgo--Murray at
    fault--Author takes boat for the entrance of the Bondehus
    Valley--The king of the waterfall--More glacier paths--An
    extensive ice-house--These glorious palaces--How is the
    harvest?--Laxe-stie--Struggle-stone--To Vikör--Östudfoss,
    the most picturesque waterfall in Norway--An eternal crystal
    palace--How to earn a pot of gold--Information for the
    _Morning Post_--A parsonage on the Hardanger--Steamers for
    the Fjords--Why living is becoming dearer in Norway--A
    rebuke for the travelling English--Sunday morning--Peasants
    at church--Female head-dresses--A Norwegian church
    service--Christening--Its adumbration in heathen Norway--A
    sketch for Washington Irving.


After a very sharp walk of eleven hours in all, we entered a small
farm-house. No less than eighteen persons, from the sucking infant to
the old woman of eighty-four, surrounded us, as we dipped our wooden
spoons into a round tub of sour milk, the only refreshment the place
afforded. Red stockings, and blue caps, with an inner one of white,
and red bodices, were the chief objects that caught my eye. The
ventilation soon became so defective from the crowd, that I got up
and succeeded in pushing open a wooden trap-door in the centre of the
roof by a pole attached to it. The apartment, in fact, was one of the
old “smoke rooms,” described elsewhere, and the orifice, the ancient
chimney and window in one, which had been superseded by a modern window
and chimney in two. “That’s an awkward place to cross, is that Folgo,”
said a big fellow to me. “My grandfather, who lived in Sörfjord, where
you come from, was to marry a lass at Ovrehus here. On the day before
the wedding he started, with thirteen others, to cross Folgo. Night
came, but the party did not arrive. But no harm was done, you see, sir;
for I’m his grandson, and if he had been lost I should not have seen
the light. [This pleasantry seemed to tickle the crowd.] They did,
however, stop all night on the snow, and it was not till next day that
they got down.”

From these people I find that there is no foundation for the statement
in “Murray,” that a band of peasants lost their lives in crossing the
snow. The nearest approach to an accident is that detailed above.

Next morning we take boat for the entrance of the Bondehus valley,
which debouches on the Fjord half a mile from this, and opposite to
which, across the Fjord, is a place called Fladebo, from which Forbes
ascended the Folgefond by a much easier path than that we had taken.
Indeed, as we loll easily in the boat, and look back at the descent
of yesterday, it seems astonishing how we ever could get down at all.
Landing at Bondehus, after an hour’s walk up the valley, which was
occupied for some distance by meadows, in which peasants were at work
making hay, we reached a lake, across which we row. By the stream,
which here shot into the further side of the lake, there were a couple
of water ouzels, bobbing about.

“Ay, that’s an Elv-Konge (river king), or, as some call him, Foss-Konge
(king of the waterfall),” said our guide.

In spite of the apparent proximity of the glacier, it still took us
several minutes’ climb before we reached its foot.

Truth to tell, the bad fare exhibited by Margareta Larsdatter Ovrehus,
was bad travelling on, and made me rather exact in distances to-day.
Passing through a birch-grove, full of blue-berries and cloud-berries
of delicious taste, we found the glacier only about thirty yards in
front of us. The shingly space which intervened was traversed by four
or five breastworks of loose sand and stones, about ten feet in height.
These are the moraines left by the retreating glacier, so that at one
time the ice and the birch-copse must have touched. Indeed, on either
side of the glacier the trees may be seen holding their ground close by
the ice, loth, apparently, to be separated from their opposite brethren
by the intervention of such an unceremonious intruder.

We scrambled over the loose ramparts, and going close under the
glacier where a muddy stream came forth, we discovered a huge cave,
cut out of a blue wall of ice, some sixty feet in height. Some of the
superincumbent mass had evidently just fallen in, causing, perhaps,
the roar which we had heard as we ascended the valley. It was rather
dangerous work entering the cavern, as another fall might take place,
and I had no ambition to be preserved after the manner of the Irish
salmon for the London market. But it was not every day that one is
privileged to enter such a magnificent hall, so in I went alone. It
was lit, too, by a lantern in the roof, in other words, by a perfectly
circular hole, drilled through the crown of the arch, through which I
saw the sky overhead. Nothing could exceed the intense depth of blue in
this cool recess.

But let us come and look a little more at the stupendous scene above.
Far up skyward, at a distance of perhaps six English miles, though
it looks about one, is the pure cold level snow of the Folgefond,
glistening between two mighty horns of shivered rock, that soar still
higher heavenward.

These two portals contract the passage through which pours the great
ice ocean; so that the monstrous billows are upheaved on the backs of
one another in their struggle onward, and tower up into various forms.

“By Jove,” said one of my companions, “it looks just like a city on a
hill side, Lyons, for instance. Look yonder, there are regular church
towers and domes, and pinnacles and spires, and castellated buildings,
only somehow etherialized. Why, there’s the arch of a bridge, you can
see right under it at the buildings beyond.”

“If Macaulay’s New Zealander were there,” remarked I, “he would behold
a grander sight than ever he will on London Bridge when the metropolis
of the world is in ruin.”

“Ruin!” rejoined the poetical son of Erin, “that’s already at work
here. Look at this hall of ice which has come down to-day. Ah!
it’s quite melancholy to think how all this splendid vision, these
cloud-capped towers, these glorious palaces of silver and aquamarine,
are moving on insensibly, day by day, to their destruction, and will
melt away, not into air, but into dirty water, by the time they reach
the spot where we’re standing.”

We had some hours of boating before night-fall, so that we were forced
to tear ourselves from the scene, not forgetting to have a good look
first at a feature in it not yet mentioned--a magnificent waterfall,
which descended from the cliffs on the left. So now adieu to the
mountains. I shall climb no more this year. Positively I feel as
downcast as the hot-brained youth of Macedon when no more worlds were
left for him to conquer.

We were soon at the farm-house near the sea, where Ragnhild Bondehus,
with her red stockings, blue polka-jacket and red boddice, looking
quite captivating, albeit threescore-and-ten, put before us porridge
and goat’s milk, which we devoured with keen glacial appetite.

“How is the harvest looking where you came from?” asked she, with
anxious looks. This was a question that had been frequently asked me
this summer.

“Very good all over Europe.”

“To God be praise and thanks!” she ejaculated. “We shan’t have corn
then too dear to buy. We did hear that there was no grain sown in
Denmark this year; that’s not true, is it?”

The old lady derived no small comfort from my assurance that this must
be a fabrication of some interested person.

Our boatmen landing with their great provision boxes to dine at the
rocky point where we reach the main Hardanger, we land and examine one
of those singular “fixings” for catching salmon, called a laxe-stie,
or salmon ladder. It consists of a high stage, projecting on a light
scaffolding into the water. In front of this, under the water, is an
oblong square of planks, painted white, from twenty to thirty feet long
and six broad. This is kept at the bottom by great stones. Beyond this,
and parallel with the shore, several yards out, is a fixed wall-net,
to guide the fish into a drag-net, one end of which is fastened to the
shore, the other sloped out to seaward. The dark-backed salmon, which
in certain places are fond of hugging the shore, as they make for the
rivers to spawn, swim over the white board, and are at once seen by the
watcher perched on the stage above, and he speedily drags in the net
set at right angles to the shore, with the fish secure in the bag. In
some places the rock close by is also painted white[31] to attract the
fish, who take it for a waterfall. The man lodges in a little den close
by, his only escape from hence being most likely his boat, drawn into a
crevice of the sheer rocks around him. Sometimes from twelve to twenty
fish are taken in this manner in a day. St. Johann’s-tid (Midsummer) is
the best time for taking them. The season is now over, and the solitary
sentinel off to some other occupation.

According to the boatmen’s account, who, however, are very lazy
fellows, the stream is hard against us; indeed, it always sets out in
the Hardanger from the quantity of river water that comes into it.

“Ah!” said Ole, “that’s called Streit-Steen (Struggle-Stone). Satan
once undertook to tow a Jagt from Bergen up the Hardanger. He had tough
work of it, but he got on till he reached that stone; then he was
dead beat, and banned and cursed dreadfully. It was he who called it
Streit-Steen.”

The less said about the poisonous beer and bad food at Jondal, where we
slept that night, the better.

We cross over, early next morning, to Vikör. The elder boatman,
seventy-nine years old, was a strange little, dried-up creature,
dressed in a suit of dark-green, the ancient costume of Jondal. One of
the party told him if he were to see him in the gloaming he should take
him for a Tuss. Anyhow he had a great aversion to the priest, against
whose profits he declaimed loudly.

“Only to think,” said he, “the parson got tithe of butter and
calf-skins--yes, actually got a hundred and fifteen calf-skins every
year, worth half-a-crown each, from Jondal alone!”

How beautiful the placid Fjord looked as we pulled up the smiling
little estuary to Vikör, and gradually opened behind us the end of the
great Folgefond peninsula!

Near Vikör is the famed Östudfoss, said to be the most picturesque
waterfall in Norway. At all events, it is a very eccentric one. The
stream, which at times is of immense volume, shooting from the well
shrubbed cliff above, which projects considerably, makes a clear jump
over a plot of green turf, on which a dozen people or more could stand
without being wetted; in fact, right inside the fall. While I stood
within this crystal palace, one of my Hibernian friends, who had
approached the spot by another route, clambering up the rocks, mounted
on to the platform,--

“Faith, and I’ve earned the pot of gold!” exclaimed he, breathless with
exertion.

“How so?”

“Why, did ye never hear the proverb--‘If you catch hold of the rainbow
you will get a pot of gold?’ Ye never saw such a thing; just below
there, where the stream makes a shoot, I put me hand right into a
rainbow--yes, clean into it.”

On our return we overtook a number of women, dressed in their best. The
inventory is as follows: A lily-white, curiously-plaited head-dress,
the “getting-up” of which must take an infinity of time and trouble;
red or parti- bodice, black gown, and stockings of the same
colour, cut off at the ankle, while on the foot were white socks with
red edging, and shoes with high leather insteps, such as were worn in
the days of the Cavaliers. By their side were a lot of children, also
in their best attire.

“Where are you all going to this fine day?”

“It’s vaccination (bole, an Icelandic word) day, and we are all going
to meet the doctor, who will be here from Strandebarm by two o’clock.
We must all of us get a bolen-attest (certificate of vaccination).
That’s the King’s order.”

The merchant’s establishment supplied us with some tolerable Madeira
wherewith to drink to our next merry meeting, and my Irish friends, who
were pressed for time, took boat that afternoon for Graven.

That evening and the next day (Sunday) I spent under the hospitable
roof of the parson of the district. His house is beautifully situate on
a nook of the Hardanger, with a distant view of the Folgefond.

“Ah!” said he, “it won’t be so difficult to explore the beauties of our
Fjords for the future. Our Storthing, I see, by the last Christiania
papers, has voted several thousand dollars for setting up steamers on
this and the Romsdal Fjord, which are to stop at the chief places.
The abrogation of Cromwell’s Navigation Act has done great things for
Norge’s commerce, and brought much money into the country.”

“Norway is getting richer,” said I, “no doubt, if one is to judge from
the increase in the price of living.”

“That may be caused in some measure by the increase of capital, but the
chief cause is another, though it, too, lies at England’s door. We used
to get a great deal of butter, cheese, meal, and meat from Jutland, but
now, since the English steamers run regularly thither, and carry off
all the surplus provisions, that source of supply is stopped, and the
articles of food are dearer.”

“That would not affect us much up here,” put in the Frua (priest’s
lady); “No, no; it is the travelling English that do the mischief.
Last year, sir, when I and my husband went up to see the Vöring foss,
everything was so dreadfully dear, we said we must never venture out on
another summer trip. And then, only think, there was an English lord
there with his yacht, who saw a pig running on the shore, and said he
would have the pig for dinner cost what it might. It was quite a small
one, and they charged him six dollars. Yes, it positively makes us
tremble, for you know we parson’s wives have not a great deal of money,
though we have good farms.”

“At all events, I can’t be charged with this sort of folly,” said I;
“for I resisted the extortions of the merchant at Jondal.”

“What, he! he is one of the Lesere, and is considered a very
respectable man.”

“But will play the rogue when he thinks it won’t be talked of,” rejoined
I. “Shams and realities are wonderfully alike. Do you know, even that
black-coated biped, the ostrich, can make a roar just like a lion’s?”

As I crossed over from my bed-room next morning to the main building,
I found the grass-plot in front of the house thronged by peasants who
had come to church, while in the centre of them was the priest in his
Lutheran cloak and elaborate frill. The washing and starching of one of
these ruffs costs a shilling. The widow of a clergyman in Bergen is a
great adept in getting them up, and it is no uncommon thing for them to
come to her by steamer from a distance of one hundred and forty English
miles.

The congregation were in church when I entered with the ladies. We
sat altogether in a square pew on a level with the chancel dais. This
mingling of the sexes, however, was not permitted, of course, among
the primitive bonders: the men being on one side of the interior,
the women on the other, reminding me of the evening parties in a
famous University town. The former wore most of them short seamen’s
jackets, though a few old peasants adhered to the antique green coat of
singular cut, while their grey locks, which were parted in the centre
of the forehead, streamed patriarchally over their shoulders, shading
their strongly-marked countenances. The female side was really very
picturesque. The head-dress is a white kerchief, elaborately crimped
or plaited, but by some ingenious contrivance shaped in front somewhat
like the ladies’ small bonnets of the present day, with one corner
falling gracefully down behind, like the topping of the Carolina ducks
on the water in St. James’s Park. Another part of this complicated
piece of linen, which is not plaited, covers the forehead like a
frontlet, almost close down to the eyebrows, so that at a distance they
looked just like so many nuns. Nevertheless, they were the married
women of the audience. The spinsters’ head-dress was more simple. They
wore no cap at all. The back hair, which is braided in two bands or
tails with an intermixture of red tape, is brought forward on either
side of the head and round the temples just on a level with the front
hair. For my part, I much admired the clean and classic cut which some
of their heads exhibited in consequence. Most of the females wore
tight-fitting scarlet bodices edged with green.

On either side of their bosom were six silver hooks, to hold a cross
chain of the same metal. The snow-white sleeves of the chemise formed
a conspicuous feature in the sparkling parterre. One woman wore a
different cap from the rest: its upper part was shaped just like a
glory, or nimbus; this is done by inserting within a light piece of
wood of that shape. Her ornaments, too, were not plain silver, but
gilt. She was from Strandebarm, which I passed yesterday on the Fjord,
the scene of a celebrated national song--“Bonde i Bryllups Gaarden.”

Much psalm-singing prevailed out of Bishop Kingo, of Funen’s,
psalm-book. The priest then read the Collect, Epistle, and Gospel, with
the traditional, I suppose, but what sounded to me very frightful,
intonation. The sermon was not extempore.

“He is a tolerable preacher,” said a peasant, with quite the “Habitans
in sicco” tone of criticism, “but it is out of a book, and not out of
his hoved (head), like priest So-and-so, on the other side of the
Fjord.”

Very small and very red babies, not many hours old,[32] I
believe--such is the almost superstitious eagerness with which these
good folk rush to have that sacred rite administered--were now brought
to be christened. No font was visible; there was, however, an angel
suspended by a cord from the roof, with deep, flesh- legs and
arms, and a gilt robe. In its right hand was a bowl, in its left a
book. The glocker, or clerk, a little man in a blue sailor’s jacket,
here dispatched a girl for some water, which was brought, and poured
into the bowl, and the ceremony proceeded; which being concluded, the
angel was pulled up again midway to the ceiling.[33]

The priest then examined some young men and women, who stood on either
side of the aisle, he walking up and down in the intervals of the
questions.

As we left the church a characteristic sight presented itself. The
churchyard was just the spot in which one would like to be buried--a
beautiful freshly-mown sward, sloping down to the sea, and intersected
by a couple of brooks brawling down from the hills, extended upwards
to the copse of hazel, aspen, ash, and rowan trees that fringed the
heights. Under some of these trees sat two or three maidens, looking
as stiff as Norwegian peasant girls only can, when busked in their
best, and before a crowd of people. Nor was a view of the placid fjord
wanting. Look, some of the church-goers are already in their boats, the
red bodices and white sleeves conspicuous from afar, while the dripping
oars flash in the sun.

Before I took leave of my host and his agreeable family, I presented
one of them, who was studying English, with a volume of Bulwer’s.
The parting glass, of course, past round--a sacred institution, the
Afskedsöl of the Sagas.




CHAPTER XV.

    Up Steindalen--Thorsten Thormundson--Very near--Author’s
    guide gives him a piece of agreeable information--Crooked
    paths--Raune bottom--A great ant-hill--Author turns rainbow
    manufacturer--No one at home--The mill goblin helps author out
    of a dilemma--A tiny Husman--The dangers attending confirmation
    in Norway--The leper hospital at Bergen--A melancholy
    walk--Different forms of leprosy--The disease found to be
    hereditary--Terrible instances of its effects--Ethnological
    particulars respecting--The Bergen Museum--Delicate little
    monsters--Fairy pots--The best bookseller in Bergen--Character
    of the Danish language--Instance of Norwegian good-nature--New
    flames and old fiddles.


Passing the Östudfoss, I struck straight up Steindalen, purposing to
pass a place called Teigen, and thence over to the Samnanger Fjord, on
my road to Bergen. My hulking guide, Thorsten Thormundson, who, from
his height, had been chosen as the front man of his regiment, was but
a poor fellow notwithstanding. Having started later than we ought, we
did not reach our destination before dark; and as there was not the
smallest vestige of a path through the morasses, we had nearly walked
over a cliff into a lake before I was aware of our danger. Luckily, we
at last found a cot, and a boy conducted us to our destination.

After an uncomfortable night in a miserable hole of a cottage, I
received the agreeable intelligence from my attendant, that he did not
know the way any further, and wished to leave me. I informed him that
he was quite welcome to do so, but if he did, he must go minus all
pay. Upon this, the giant put on a very martial air, but seeing that I
was not to be bullied, he prepared for the journey, employing a little
maiden to show the way.

It was lucky for us that he did so, for the road was intricate beyond
description. The old St. Giles’s rookery may serve as a comparison, for
want of a better one. Being ahead, I was marching straight forward,
when I was recalled by the shrill voice of the bare-footed lassie.

“On there,” she said, “was a precipice, over which Brat-foss poured.
There was not foot-hold for a goat that way. We must try and get
through the bog to the left, and so round by Raune bottom.”

It was a bottom indeed--cliffs all round, with a treacherous swamp and
streams flowing all manner of ways; and then came another descent, the
girl leading the pony, and the man pulling hard at its tail by way of
drag.

The progress was so slow that I sat down, from time to time, to look
about me. In one place I found I was close upon a great ant-hill,
a yard high, from whence I perceived a regular line was formed to
a neighbouring pine-tree. Up the bole of this a number of these
industrious insects were ascending and descending with most exemplary
perseverance; though I could not see that, either going or returning,
they went otherwise than empty away. I tapped the tree with my stick,
when in the twinkling of an eye the ascending and descending squadrons
put themselves in a posture of defence; that is to say, each of them
threw itself on its back, with its head reared up, and its tail
protruded. In a moment or two, when all was quiet, they, as if by
signal, unfixed their bayonets, and recommenced their march.

In another part of our round-about walk I sat down by a stream side,
and began making rainbows--yes, rainbows. The sun shone straight up
the valley, and the wind was blowing in the same direction. I threw a
stone into the clear torrent right among some watching trout, and from
the spot where it struck an iris immediately threw out its tricoloured
arch athwart the stream, slowly disappearing as the spray, upheld for a
second or two by the wind, again subsided on the water.

If my friend the Irishman was to find a pot of gold for getting hold of
the rainbow, what luck was in store for me who had actually made one?
But the augury was a treacherous one, as we shall see.

Following the stream, which abounded in most captivating looking holes,
to my piscatorial eye, we at length reach the farm of Tyssen, whence a
beautiful view is obtained across the head of the Samnanger Fjord, with
the church of Samnanger lying under the mountains at the further side.
As bad luck would have it, not a soul was at home. The only biped I saw
was a statuesque heron standing on a stone by the boat-house. What was
to be done? It was my object to obtain a boat here and sail down the
Fjord to Hatvigen, where I should be on the great coast road, and not
many miles from Bergen.

In this dilemma I descried a little man emerge from the quern, or
corn-mill, which stood at the bottom of the stream, near some salmon
traps. Perhaps he was only the mill-goblin, but at any rate I would
hail him. He took no notice. It must be the Quern knurre. But perhaps
the noise of the stream rushing over the rocks into the Fjord drowned
my voice, and prevented it being heard; so I and the loutish Thorsten
clubbed lungs, when the figure looked round, and immediately walked
away. Mr. Thorsten Thormundson wished to be off and leave me to my
fate; but I positively forbid him to move until we had discovered some
means of conveyance. Presently the small figure reappeared, accompanied
by a female figure. We hailed again, and this time the mannikin
walked to a boat and came across to us. He was a poor peasant from the
mountains, who had been buying a sack of corn for four dollars three
marks, which would serve him and three mouths till “Michelsmass,” and
he and his wife had come hither to grind it. The grinding must be
finished, and the meal carried up to his distant home before night.
Nevertheless he would row me, he said, half a Norwegian mile, where he
thought I might get another boatman.

When we had rowed some distance we descry some people making hay on the
lea.

“Would they row me?”

“Had no time. But they had a husman in a cottage hard by, who perhaps
could do it.”

My man landed, and went in search of the said husman. A tiny little man
in rags, much smaller than the mill-goblin, with a very tiny voice,
and a still more tiny boy, appear and undertake the job, provided I
give him time to have some mad (meat) first. Although the boat was very
leaky, and though at one place we encountered a good deal of swell
from the effects of a gale out at sea, we manage by night-fall to reach
Hatvigen.

On the road we meet a boat full of boys and girls, who have been
several miles to be examined by the clergyman for confirmation. We
little know the hardships to which these people are subject. Only a few
days ago, a boat similarly laden, and on a similar errand, was upset by
a sudden squall, and about a dozen unfortunate young people drowned.

Nothing particular caught my eye next day, as I drove along the coast
to Bergen, beyond the new telegraphic line which is just completing to
Bergen. Some of the posts are the growing pine-trees, which happen to
stand ready fixed for the purpose. Another telegraphic cable is making
for a part of the coast to advertize people of the approach of the
herrings. This will be the future sea-serpent of the country.

I was not sorry to sleep that night under the roof of Madame Sontum at
Bergen. Next day, under the auspices of a German physician, I visit
the Leper Hospital on the hill above the town. It is a magnificent
building of wood, lately constructed by the State, at an expense of
sixty thousand dollars, and kept up from the same source, private
donations being unusual. Three years ago the old hospital was burned
down at dead of night, and eight unfortunates were consumed. The
present spacious building can accommodate two hundred and eighty
patients; at present there are only one hundred and eighty inmates.
In the Jörgen Spital there are one hundred and thirty, and a few in
another hospital in the town. This disease is generally supposed to be
incurable. About twenty-five per cent. die in the course of the year.
The chaplain, a burley, good-looking man, was in his canonicals, and
about to bury a recently deceased patient on our arrival; he descanted
on the horrors of the place.

With these I became personally acquainted on the arrival of Dr. L----,
the physician of the establishment.

“Now, gentlemen, if you please,” said that functionary, putting on a
blouse of black serge; “but I warn you it is a terrible sight.”

Well, thought I to myself, I will go notwithstanding. The best antidote
to the imaginary ills of this life, is to become acquainted with the
real ones.

Walking along the spacious corridors, we first entered a room devoted
to male cases. Here, as in all the other rooms, there were six beds.
I conversed with one man. This case was not yet at a bad stage. He
had suffered much hardship in his youth as a seaman, was often wet,
and badly fed withal. By dint of industry, he became owner of a jagt,
and he said he hoped to get out again and be well enough to take the
command of it.

Another man in a bed close by was affected with the smooth leprosy. He
attributed it to his having slept in the same bed with a man affected
with the disease. He was worn to the bone, and his face and body were
blotched and copper-. But before pursuing our melancholy walk,
I will just glance at a small tract which has been published by the
Government in respect to this foul and mysterious disease, which,
after having been driven out of the other countries of Europe, still
holds its ground on the sea-coast of Norway, especially from Stavanger
northwards.

There are two sorts of leprosy, which are so very dissimilar in their
outward symptoms, that one would hardly imagine that they are the same
disease; the one is called the knotted leprosy, the other the smooth
leprosy. The first indications of the poison being in the system are
lassitude and stiffness in the limbs. The body feels unusually heavy
and disinclined to exertion. Sharp pains rack the frame, especially
when it is warm, or on the eve of a change of weather. Cold shudderings
also supervene, succeeded presently by fever; together with pains in
the head, thirst and loss of appetite. All this is accompanied by
general listlessness and depression of spirits. Another symptom is a
strong inclination to sleep, though sleep brings no refreshment to the
limbs.

In knotted leprosy, red spots and sores break out upon the body,
especially on the face, which becomes much swollen. These are not
accompanied with pain, and often disappear again; but with a new attack
of fever they re-appear, and at last become permanent. They now
grow larger and larger--some of the knots attain the size of a hazel
nut--and are generally of a yellow-brown colour, with occasionally a
tint of blue. They are most frequent on the arms, hands, and face, but
most of all about the eyebrows, which fall off in consequence. After a
period of time--which is shorter or longer as the case may be--pain is
felt in these knots, and they then either turn into regular sores, or
become covered with a brown crust. The eyes, mouth, and throat are next
attacked, and the eye-sight, breathing and swallowing are affected.

In smooth leprosy, the symptoms are large blisters and white spots,
together with great pain and tenderness in various parts of the body.
These vesicles are from the bigness of a hazel-nut to that of a hen’s
egg, and are filled with a watery fluid. They are situated about
the elbows and knees, occasionally under the sole of the foot, and
elsewhere, and soon burst. The spots, which in the smooth leprosy occur
on the body, are not brown, as in the knotted leprosy, but white, and
of a larger size, sometimes being as big as a man’s hand; they are
covered with white scales. The pain and tenderness which occur in this
kind of leprosy gradually disappear, and are followed by utter absence
of feeling. At this stage fire or the knife can be applied to the parts
diseased without the patient feeling it in the least. A large portion
of the body can be thus affected. The patient now begins to get thin,
his skin is dry, and his countenance distorted. He can’t shut his eyes,
and he is not able to bring his lips together, so as to cover the
teeth; besides this, the toes and fingers become contracted and rot off.

Curiously enough symptoms of both these horrible phases of a most
loathsome disorder occur in one and the same person; in that case the
knotted leprosy occurs first, and the knots gradually vanishing, the
smooth leprosy supervenes.

This frightful malady has been ascertained to be hereditary, that is
to say, it can be transmitted by either parent to their offspring. At
first the children seem to be quite healthy, but they conceal within
their system the hidden germs of the complaint, which may at any
time break out. Sometimes such children never do betray the presence
of the poison, certain defective sanitary conditions being necessary
for its development. But, notwithstanding, the disease may come out
in the third generation. The most favourable circumstances for its
development are an irregular way of life, defective clothing, bad
lodging or diet, want of personal cleanliness, and mental anxiety.
Under such circumstances, persons who have no hereditary tinge may take
the complaint. It is not contagious in the strict sense of the word,
but experience seems to show that persons who live in intercourse with
leprous persons are very prone to become so themselves. A remarkable
illustration of this occurred in Nord-Fjord. The owners of a gaard took
the leprosy, and died. The farm was inherited by another family, who
became infected with the disease, and died of it. A third family, who
succeeded to the dwelling, also perished of the malady. On this, the
owner of the house burnt it down.

The Government authorities finally recommend, as a means of getting
rid of this dreadful disease, personal and household cleanliness,
proper apparel and lodging, wholesome diet (especially abstinence
from half-rotten fish), moderation, particularly in the consumption
of spirituous liquors; and, above all, they deprecate intermarriage
among those so affected. The present number of lepers in Norway is two
thousand and fifty odd, or about one in every seven thousand.

But to proceed with our walk through the hospital. In another ward set
apart for males, I addressed a lump of what did not look like humanity,
and asked how old he was. The answer was sixteen. He looked sixty. His
voice--oh heavens! to think that the human voice divine could have
become degraded to that hoarse grating, snuffling sound, the dry husk
of what it ought to be!

Close by this case was a man whose face was swollen immensely, and over
the brows huge knots and folds of a dark tint congregated together.
His face looked more like a knotted clump in the bole of a tree than
a human countenance. Sitting on a bed in another room was a boy whose
face was literally eaten through and through, and honeycombed as if
by malignant cancer. Nobody can witness all this without realizing to
himself more completely the power of Him who could cure it with a mere
touch.

Crossing the passage, I saw a nice, pretty little girl playing about.

“She is all right at present,” said the doctor, “but both her sisters
showed it at her age, and her parents died of it. She is here to be
taken care of.”

On the women’s side, one of the first cases that caught my attention
was an old woman with the septum of the nose gone, and groaning
with intense agony. Near her was a woman whose toes and fingers had
disappeared, and for the present the complaint was quiescent. Indeed,
one of the not least frightful symptoms of the disease is, that after a
toe or finger is gone the sore heals up, but suddenly breaks out afresh
higher up the limb. Unlike a person in an adjoining bed, who shrieked
out for fear she should be touched--so sensitive was her flesh--this
poor thing had lost all sense of feeling. When I touched her, at the
doctor’s request, she could feel nothing.

One blue-eyed girl, with a fair skin and well combed hair, looked well
in the face, but the doctor said her body was in a terrible state.

As I walked round the room, I observed another young woman, stretched
on a bed in the corner, with dark luxuriant hair--very un-Norwegian in
tint--and with peculiarly bright flashing eyes, with which she gazed at
me steadfastly.

“Come hither,” said the doctor to me; “shut your eyes, Bergita.”

The poor thing gave a faint smile, and slightly moved her lids; but
this was all. She will never shut those eyes again, perhaps, not even
in death.

In another bed was a woman with her teeth uncovered and lips apart.

“Now, mother, try and shut your lips.”

A tremulous movement of the lower jaw followed, but the muscles would
not work; the disease had destroyed the hinges, and there she lay,
mouth open, a spectacle of horror.

In some cases--indeed, very many--when the disease has seriously set
in, it throws a white film over the iris of the eye, the pupil becomes
contracted, the ball loses its colour, becomes a whitish mass, and
gradually rots out of the socket. Each patient had a religious book by
his side, and some sat on the bed or by it reading. They all seemed
unrepining at their lot. One poor woman wept tears of gladness when I
addressed a word or two of consolation to her. Indeed, the amount of
pain felt by these poor sufferers is very small in comparison with what
might have been expected from the marks of the fell talons imprinted on
their frames. The doctor said they were chiefly carried off at last by
hectic fever. Scurvy ointment is used in many cases, frequent cupping
in others. One poor woman, with a leg like an elephant’s, so deformed
and shapeless was it, declined amputation. And there she will go on,
the excessive sensitiveness to pain succeeded by an utter anæsthetic
state, and one extremity rotting off after another, till she is left a
mere blotched trunk, unless a merciful death relieve her before.

One poor woman had been afflicted for no less than fifty years; her
parents, if I remember rightly, were free from the malady, but her
grandfather and grandmother had suffered from it. But we have seen
enough of this melancholy place. It is a satisfaction to know that,
at all events, although the disease cannot be cured by medicine or
any other remedy, yet as much is done as possible to alleviate its
miseries. The surgeon and chaplain are daily in attendance; abundance
of active young women--not old gin-drinking harridans--discharge the
office of nurses. The diet is much better than these people would
obtain at home. I examined the spacious kitchens, and learned that
meat is served thrice a-week to the patients, not to mention soups,
puddings, &c. It has been asserted that the disease has lately been
on the increase in Norway, but this statement is based most likely on
insufficient data.

In the rest of Europe, Scotland especially, to judge from all accounts,
it was at one time as bad as it is now in this country. Neither was it
confined to the lower classes. Robert Bruce died of it. But as it is
now almost, if not altogether, exterminated in Scotland, there seems
no reason why, if the advice of the Government above-mentioned is
followed, it should not also die out in Scandinavia. In other respects,
the population is healthy and strong, and not affected by goître or any
of the usual mountain complaints.

We now took leave of the doctor; my friend, the German physician,
who was specially interested in the effect produced on the sight by
the disease, appointed the next day for a microscopic examination of
some of the patients’ eyes in early stages of the disorder. It may
be as well to state that Professor Danielson has published a work
illustrating by plates the progress of the disorder. Inoculation is
also about to be tried as a method of cure, it having been used with
success in this country in another disease, many symptoms of which, to
a non-professional observer at least, are identical in appearance with
those above described.

“Farewell!” said the doctor; “I have shown you a sad spectacle. I am
sorry I can’t converse with you in your own language. But the next
generation will all speak English. It has just been proposed in the
Storthing that, in the middle schools, less Latin shall be taught, and
English made a necessary branch of education.”

Before leaving Bergen I visited the museum, under the auspices of the
very obliging curator, Dr. Korn.

Here is a specimen of a new kind of starfish (Beryx Borealis),
discovered by Asbjörnsen. The only habitat yet known of this animal is
the Sörfjord. The Glesner Regalicus was also here. It is found in very
deep water, and so rarely that, in three hundred years, only two or
three specimens had been met with.

Some embryo whales of different degrees of maturity were also preserved
in spirits; specimens of these delicate little monsters are not, I
believe, to be found in any other museum of Europe. The Strix Funerea,
or Hawk Owl, such as I shot in the Malanger, with its beautiful black
and white plumage, was also to be seen. Especially beautiful was the
Anas Stellaris from beyond the North Cape.

The usual assortment of old Runic calendars and other mementoes of
ancient days were not wanting: not to mention one of those enigmatical
Jette gryde (fairy pots) with which the vulgar have connected all sorts
of stories. It is composed of two parts, a mortar-shaped cavity in
stone, and in this a loose, round cannon-ball sort, also of stone. Here
were evidently cause and effect. A loose stone happening to be brought
by the stream into a depression in the rocky bed of the torrent, by the
action of water becomes itself round, after the manner of a marble, and
makes its resting-place round too. The countenances of people who live
continually together are often observed to become like. In the same way
the perforated and rounded stones which are formed by trituration in
the channels of the brooks on the Scottish borders are still termed,
says Scott, by the vulgar, fairy cups and dishes.

Before leaving Bergen, I must not omit to record an incident which
really speaks much for the good-nature of these people.

“Will you tell me, sir,” said I, accosting a jolly, bearded gentleman,
in the street, “which is the best bookseller in Bergen?”

“Certainly, sir; come this way, I will show you.”

We entered the shop of the bookseller, whose snuffling, sobbing
method of talk convinced me at once that he was a Dane. The language
is a nerveless, flabby sing-song, gasped out with bated breath.
The Norwegian speaks out like a man, and with a pith and marrow in
his pronunciation worthy of the rugged power with which one always
associates in idea the name of Norway.

The pale bibliopole, after carefully shutting the door, which I had
purposely left open--so close and oppressive was the atmosphere of the
unventilated shop--fumbled about for a little time, and then discovered
that the book I wanted was out of print.

“Oh! never mind,” said the stranger, “I have got a copy, which is very
much at your service.”

And in spite of my protestations, this amiable gentleman, whom I
afterwards discovered to be Professor C----, an author of some repute,
conducted me to his house, placed refreshments before me, and
compelled me to take the book, the cost of which was considerable.
Indeed, all books in Norway are very dear, which may account for the
fewness of readers.

Two matters of considerable importance stirred Bergen to its innermost
core while I was there. What do you think they were, reader? Gas has
been introduced, and to-night is the first night of lighting it. What
a number of people are moving about to see it, as we go on board the
steamer _Jupiter_, bound for Hamburg. The other incident was productive
of no less ferment. Ole Bull, the prince of fiddlers, the Amphion of
the American wilds, sick apparently of combining the office of leader
of a colony, and musician-in-chief to the new community, has just
returned to this, his native place, and is about to give a concert, to
inaugurate his assumption of his new office of director of the Bergen
Theatre.




CHAPTER XVI.

    The safest day in the year for travelling--A
    collision--Lighthouses on the Norwegian coast--Olaf the Holy
    and the necromancers--The cathedral at Stavanger--A Norwegian
    M.P.--Broad sheets--The great man unbends--Jaederen’s Rev--Old
    friends at Christiansand--Too fast--The Lammer’s schism--Its
    beneficial effects--Roman Catholic Propagandism--A thievish
    archbishop--Historical memoranda at Frederickshal--The Falls
    of the Glommen--A department of woods and forests established
    in Norway--Conflagrations--A problem, and how it was
    solved--Author sees a mirage--Homewards.


In the old coaching days it used to be said the safest day in the year
to travel by the Tantivy was the day after an upset. The same will
hold good, thought I, of steamers, as I heard an animated conversation
on board, how that last voyage it was all but a case of _Norge_ v.
_Bergen_ (alluding to a collision between those two steamers, when the
former went down), and how the _Viken_, Government steamer, would have
been utterly cut down, and sunk, had it not been for the presence of
mind of the _Jupiter_ captain; how, moreover, a fierce newspaper war
was going on in consequence, and the Government had ordered an inquiry.

Sooth to say, the navigation of this coast by night is very dangerous.
Lord Dufferin, I think, says there are no lighthouses. He is wrong;
there are more than twenty. But what are these among so many shoals,
islands, narrow channels, ins and outs, as this coast exhibits?

“Yonder,” said a Norwegian gentleman on board, “is the Skratteskjaer
(skerry of shrieks).” This spot takes its name from a tragic event of
which it was the scene many hundred years ago. Olaf the Holy, being
resolved to get rid of the Seidemaend (magicians and necromancers), who
then abounded in Norway, made a quantity of them drunk, and, in that
condition, set fire to the house where they were assembled, and made a
holocaust of them. Eywind, however, a noted warlock, escaped through
the chimney-hole; but afterwards he, with three hundred others, were
caught, and chained down on that skerry, which is covered at high
water. As the tide rose, the shrieks of the victims pierced the air;
but the royal executioner was inexorable.

Crossing the mouth of the Buknfjord, we stopped for half-an-hour at
Stavanger, where I had an opportunity of examining the cathedral, which
really exhibits some fine pieces of early Gothic. The nave was built
in 1115. The verger was profoundly ignorant of all architecture, and
so were some Norwegian gentlemen who accompanied me. What they chiefly
attended to was a plaster model of Christ, after Thorwaldsen, and some
tasteless modern woodwork. The pulpit is two hundred years old.

We here shipped a deputy, on his way to the Storthing now sitting at
Christiania. He was a very staid person, who evidently considered
that he was called upon to set the passengers an edifying example of
superior intelligence and unmoved gravity. I heard that he had formerly
been a simple bonder, but was now a thriving merchant. Perhaps I shall
best describe him by saying that his parchment visage reminded me of a
Palimpsest, whence a secular composition had been erased to make room
for a sanctimonious homily; but, at the corners of the parchment, some
of the old secular characters still peeped out unerased. Next me, after
dinner, sat a sharp young Bergenser. To while away the time, I asked
him if he could recite me any popular songs or rhymes. He responded
to the call at once, and produced a couple of broad sheets from his
pocket-book, containing two favourite old Norsk ballads; one of which
was the famed “Bonde i Brylups Garen;” the other was, “The Courtship of
Ole and Father Mikkel’s Daughter.”

The deputy’s attention I observed to be caught by our conversation, and
he smiled gravely. Only think of a Storthingsman, clad in a sober suit
of brown, whose mind was supposed to be full of the important business
of the country, listening to such trifles. Gude preserve ye! Mr. ----,
what childish stuff. Nevertheless, he had once been a child, and a
peasant-child, too; and there was a time when he sat on the maternal
knee, and heard the lullabies of his country. Nay, he went so far as
to recite a country jingle himself. It was what we call in England a
Game rhyme. Seven children are dancing round in a ring; suddenly the
ring is broken, and each one endeavours to seize a partner.

    Shear shearing oats,
      The sheaves who shall bind?
    My true love he shall do it,
      Where is he to find?

    I saw him yestere’en
      In the clear light of the moon,
    You take yours, I take mine,
      One is left standing alone.

He uttered this in a low tone of voice, as if he was heartily ashamed
of the infantine reminiscence. Human nature shrunk again into itself;
the deputy remembered that his countrymen’s eyes were upon him, and
he must be careful of betraying any further weakness of the sort. One
or two Norwegians who had overheard the conversation, looked with
no little astonishment at their representative, and with a somewhat
indignant expression of countenance at me, doubtful, apparently,
whether I had not of _malice prepense_ been taking a rise out of a
Norwegian Storthingsman.

As we passed Jaederen’s Rev (reef), a long, low flat shore of some
miles in extent, we had the usual storm, which stirred up the
bilgewater to an offensive degree, and in consequence thereof, the
wrath of a doctor on board, who wore yellow kids and much jewellery,
but who was not half a bad fellow in spite of his foppery.

As I sat by the open window of the hotel, at Christiansand, two burly
fellows in the singular Sætersdal costume, greeted me. In them I at
once recognised two peasants with whom I had had speech at Valle. They
had come down to meet the new parson and his family, whom they would
drive up on the morrow on the way to his expectant parishioners. The
good fellows were mightily pleased when I handed them some Bayersk
Öl out of the window. A Norwegian student who was with me heard them
deliberating whether they should not treat the strange Carl to a glass
of something; but they apparently thought it would be taking too
great a liberty, and presently made their bow, carrying all sorts of
greetings to my friends in their distant home.

Next day I started to Moss, in the Christiania Fjord, by the steamer
of that name. She was built in Scotland, and goes sixteen miles an
hour, more than double the pace of the Government steamers, which are
proverbially slow. Many of the Norwegians are frightened of her, and
say she will break her back.

There was an intelligent young Norwegian on board who is resident
in America. He tells me that the Lammers’ schism has done no little
good, in a religious point of view, by awaking the State clergy from
the torpor into which they had sunk; and there is every symptom of
a new spiritual life being infused into the community. Things, he
says, have hitherto been at a low ebb in this respect throughout the
country. Among the better classes there is no such thing as family
prayers, they seldom look at their Bibles. At Arendal and Christiania
private meetings have been set on foot for prayer and reading of the
Scriptures. A Moravian clergyman, who was the first to establish
gatherings of this kind, and who has laboured diligently in this line
for some years, has lately received a subvention from the Government
without his solicitation.

In Sweden, the proposal to abolish the law by which Dissenters may not
reside in that country, has lately been thrown out in the Chambers,
Count P---- having described in pathetic language the danger likely to
ensue upon such a change, and being backed in his opposition by 280
clergy.

In Norway, on the contrary, as in England, all religions, provided they
do not trangress the laws of morality and social order, are tolerated.
The Roman Catholics take advantage of this, and are busy in a quiet way
making proselytes. The widow of the late King Bernadotte is understood
to give her countenance to their exertions. Contributions are also
received from Belgium and France, and two French ladies conduct a
school on Romish principles at Christiania. One of the two Romish
priests there is a born Norwegian.

My travelling companion also informs me of a curious discovery made
lately by Lange, the author of a _History of Norwegian Monasteries_.

It has always been supposed that the precious treasures which adorned
the tomb of St. Olaf, in the Cathedral of Trondjem, were stolen by King
Christian the Second, and that the ship conveying the ill-gotten booty
sank near Christiansand.

At Amsterdam, however, from whence Lange has just returned, he found
incontestable documentary evidence that the Archbishop of Trondjem was
himself the thief. He fled to Amsterdam, got into debt, and the jewels
were sold and dispersed.

Landing at Moss, I passed through a wretchedly ugly country to
Frederickshal. There is nothing in the place worth seeing, except the
fortress and the statue to the patriotic burgher, Peder Colbjörnsen.
Some of the houses are far beyond the average of many of the Norwegian
towns; to which detracting people might be inclined to apply the old
description of Granville:--

    Granville, grand vilain,
    Une église, et un moulin,
    On voit Granville tout à plein.

A small enclosure outside the fortress marks the spot where the Swedish
madman was sacrificed by one of his own soldiers while occupied in the
siege. The monument, however, has utterly disappeared. A new one is
talked of.

Thence I posted to Sarpsborg, to see the mighty falls of the Glommen,
with the beautiful suspension-bridge swung over them. Above it the huge
river winds away its vast coils into the distant mountains, bringing
down the timbers which once grew upon their sides. But the wastefulness
of the people in timber is now beginning to tell. Norway is at length
about to start a Forstwesen similar to that of Germany, and Asbjörnsen
is now employed by the Government in travelling through Bavaria, for
the purpose of investigating the admirable regulations there in force
in the Department of Woods and Forests.

As usual, there has been a fire in Sarpsborg. Half the town is
destroyed, and presents a terrible scene of desolation.[34] A new
church, just completed, was saved by a miracle. At Drammen, on the
other side of the Fjord, one or two fires have also been sweeping
away a vast quantity of buildings. The conflagration was visible at
Uddevalla, near Gottenburg, about one hundred and fifty miles off.

My slumbers that night, at the waterside inn, whence the steamer was
to start next morning, were interrupted by an odd sort of visitation.
Two bulky Norwegian gentlemen were ushered into the bed-room, puffing
away at cigars, and forthwith prepared to occupy the other bed. By
what Procrustean process it could possibly be made to contain two such
ponderosities was a problem now to be solved. However, one of them
got in first, and retreated as far as he could into its recesses. The
other followed, and managed to squeeze himself into the space left by
the side of his companion. Many jocular remarks were let fall between
them, and one remark especially seemed to tickle the risibilities of
the larger and fatter man to such an extent that he shook again, and
the bed also. Suddenly I heard a loud smash, and looking up, found that
the bottom of the bed, though equal to their dead weight in a quiescent
state, was unable to bear the momentum of their laughter-shaken frames,
and had given way, both gentlemen falling through on to the floor.

For some time they had great difficulty in escaping from their awkward
predicament. This, however, was at length effected, and for the rest of
the night the floor was their couch--the floor which they had used as
a spittoon; but this did not seem in the least to interfere with their
comfort.

Having nothing to call me to the capital, I determined to catch the
Kiel steamer that afternoon in the Christiania Fjord, where I saw for
the first time one of those remarkable mirages so common in the seas
of Scandinavia, which are supposed to have given rise to the legends
of phantom-ships, which prevail along the coast. The next day we were
steaming over a smooth sea, along the low coast of our forefathers, the
Jutes, and the day after shot by train through the heathy flats whence
issued England’s sponsors, the Angles.

THE END.

[Illustration: SKETCH MAP OF NORWAY.

_J. Netherclift lith._

_London. Pubd. by Hurst & Blackett Gt. Marlboro’ St. 1858_]




FOOTNOTES


[1] According to Worsaae, the “stone” period in Denmark preceded the
Celts, who possessed settled abodes in Europe 2000 years ago, by about
a thousand years. The “bronze” period must have prevailed in the early
part of the Christian era, when the Goths were inhabitants of the
country. The “iron” period can first be traced in Norway and Sweden
with any certainty in the fourth and fifth centuries. In Denmark the
use of iron superseded the use of bronze altogether about 700 A.D. But
it is hardly necessary to observe, that there is still much controversy
among antiquarians on this difficult subject.

[2] There must have been an air of barbaric grandeur about these
heathen temples. On the door of that at Lade, near Trondjem, was a
massive gold ring. Olaf Trygveson, when wooing Sigrid the Haughty, made
her a present of it. Having an eye to the main chance, she put it in
the hands of the Swedish goldsmiths to be tested (Becky Sharp would
not have done worse). They grinned knowingly. The weight was due in a
great measure to a copper lining. No wonder after this that she flatly
refused to be baptized, the condition Olaf had laid down for wedding
her. Upon this he called her a heathen ----, and struck her on the
cheek with his glove. “One day this shall be thy death,” she exclaimed.
She kept her word. Through her influence Sweyne was induced to war with
Olaf, who lost his life in the memorable battle of the Baltic.

[3] These tolls, as is well known, have since been redeemed.

[4] Foster-children are as common in Norway at the present day as they
used to be in Ireland, where it was proverbially a stronger alliance
than that of blood. The old sign of adoption mentioned in the Sagas was
knaesetning, placing the child on the knee.

[5] In this part of Norway the wolf is known by no other name. Like
graa-been (grey-legs) elsewhere in Norway, so here skrüb is a euphemism
for wolf. The word is evidently derived from skrübba, to scrub, and
alludes to the rough dressing or scrubbing to be expected at the claws
of that beast. This disinclination to use the real name “ulv,” is no
doubt due to the ancient superstition of the “varulf” (wer-wolf).

    Oh! was it wer-wolf in the wood,
    Or was it mermaid in the sea,
    Or was it man or vile woman,
    My own true love, that misshaped thee?

    A heavier weird shall light on her
    Than ever fell on vile woman,
    Her hair shall grow rough and her teeth grow lang,
    And on her fore feet shall she gang.

See Grimm. _Deutsche Mythologie_, 1047. In the war of 1808 it was
commonly believed in Sweden that those of their countrymen who were
made prisoners by the Russians were changed by them into wer or
were-wolves, and sent home to plague their country. The classical
reader will remember the Scythian people mentioned by Herodotus, who
all and several used to turn wolves for a few days in every year. The
Swedes go still further in their reluctance to call certain animals
by their real names. Not only do they call the bear _the old one_, or
_grandfather_, and the wolf _grey-foot_, but the fox is _blue-foot_, or
_he that goes in the forest_; the seal is _brother Lars_, while such
small deer as rats and mice are known respectively as the _long-bodied_
and the _small-grey_.

[6] Still the mountain châlet is now no longer known here by the name
of “sæter,” but by that of “stöl.” “Sæter” is most probably derived
from the word “sitte,” to sit = to dwell; the technical phrase for a
person being at the mountain dairy being “sitte paa stölen.”

[7] I asked this same question of the intelligent and obliging curator
of the Bergen Museum. He replied that it was generally believed to be
the case, though bear-stories, unless well authenticated, must be taken
_cum grano_.

The following statistics of the amount of wild animals destroyed in
Norway in three years may be interesting--

    +----+------+-------+-------+---------+-------+-----+------+
    |    |Bears.|Wolves.|Lynxes.|Gluttons.|Eagles.|Owls.|Hawks.|
    +----+------+-------+-------+---------+-------+-----+------+
    |1848|  264 |  247  |  144  |    57   |  2498 | 369 | 527  |
    |    |      |       |       |         |       |     |      |
    |1849|  325 |  197  |  110  |    76   |  2142 | 343 | 485  |
    |    |      |       |       |         |       |     |      |
    |1850|  246 |  191  |  118  |    39   |  2426 | 268 | 407  |
    +----+------+-------+-------+---------+-------+-----+------+

[8] Dusk, in Norsk, “Tus-mörk:” that being the hour when the Tus, or
Thus (sprite), loves to be abroad.

[9] Like the Daoineshi of the Scotch Highlands, the Neck of Scandinavia
shines in a talent for music. Poor creatures! the peasantry may well
fancy they are fallen angels, who hope some day for forgiveness; for
was not one heard, near Hornbogabro, in West Gotland, singing, to a
sweet melody, “I know, and I know, and I know that my Redeemer liveth?”
And did not a Neck, when some boys once said to him “What good is
it for you to be sitting here and playing, for you will never enjoy
eternal happiness,” begin to weep bitterly?

[10] In Border-ballad language, “maik.”

[11] So, in old English, “Church-ale” was the festival on the
anniversary of the consecration of a church: while “grave-ale” was the
“wake” at an interment.

[12] I must not quit the subject without mentioning the Danish remedy.
In Holberg’s facetious poem, _Peder Paars_, we read:--

    For the nightmare a charm I had,
      From the parson of our town--
    Set your shoes with the heels to the bed,
      Each night when you lie down.

[13] Landstad is a Norwegian clergyman, who has lately edited a
collection of Norsk minstrelsy, gathered from the mouths of the people.
Bugge is a student, who is travelling about the remote valleys, at
the expense of the Government, to collect all the metrical tales and
traditions that still linger there. It is very unfortunate that this
was not done earlier. The last few years have made great inroads on
these reminiscences of days gone by.

[14] A Manx gentleman assured Waldren that he had lost three or four
hunters by these nocturnal excursions, as the fairies would not
condescend to ride Manx ponies. In Norway, however, they have no choice.

[15] “Upon a time, when he (Lord Duffus) was walking abroad in the
fields, near his own house, he was suddenly carried away, and found
next day at Paris, in the French king’s cellar, with a silver cup in
his hand. Being brought into the king’s presence, and questioned who he
was, and how he came thither, he told his name, country, and place of
residence; and that, on such a day of the month (which proved to be the
day immediately preceding), being in the fields, he heard a noise of a
whirlwind, and of voices crying, ‘Horse and Hattock!’ (this is the word
the fairies are said to use when they remove from any place); whereupon
he cried, ‘Horse and Hattock’ also, and was immediately caught up,
and transported through the air by the fairies to that place; where,
after he had drank heartily, he fell asleep; and, before he awakened,
the rest of the company were gone.”--_Letter from Scotland to Aubrey,
quoted by W. Scott._ I could not learn what the _mot_ of the fairy
pack is in Sætersdal, or that there was any at all. Still the Norsk
superstition is clearly the parent of the Scotch one.

[16] The word is written with or without h.

[17] “Some of the Highland seers, even in our day, have boasted
of their intimacy with elves as an innocent and advantageous
connexion.”--Walter Scott, _Border Minstrelsy_.

[18] Mr. Bellenden Kerr’s theory of a political and much less ancient
origin for these rhymes is surely more ingenious than correct.

[19] This alludes to the custom of sprinkling the girdle-cake with a
brush during the baking.

[20] Like our “Rompty idity, row, row, row.”

[21] The day on which Thor is on his rounds; and when, therefore, the
little people are forced to sing small.

[22]

    “If this glass do break or fall,
    Farewell the luck of Edenhall.”

That goblet was said to have been seized by a Musgrave at an
elf-banquet.--See Longfellow.

[23] So the old French proverb:--

    “Quatorze Janvier,
    L’ours sort de tanière,
    Fait trois tours,
    Et rentre pour quarante jours.”

[24] Sunniva was an Irish king’s daughter. In order to escape
compulsory marriage with a heathen, she took ship, and was driven by
tempests on the Isle of Selia, near Stad, in Norway, and, with her
attendants, found shelter in a cave. The heathens on the mainland, on
the look-out for windfalls, observed that there were people on the
desert island, and immediately put off to it. At this juncture, through
the prayers of Sunniva and her friends, the rocks split, the cave
became blocked up, and the savages drew the island blank. In 1014, when
Olaf Trygveson landed here from Northumberland, breathing slaughter
against the pagans, he discovered the bones of Sunniva, and she was at
once canonized.

[25] The similarity between vetr, the old word for winter, and vöttr,
the old word for vante (glove), most likely suggested the use of this
symbol.

[26] Much of the above explanations of the Runes has been thrown
together by Professor T. A. Munck, in the _Norsk Folke Kalender_ for
1848.

[27] Hence evidently comes our “dapple,” _i.e._, mottled like an apple.

[28] Names of goats.

[29] In the district of Lom, where the climate is said to be the
driest in Norway, there are the remains of a house in which Saint Olaf
is said to have lodged. There was, not long ago, a house at Naes, in
Hallingdal, where the timbers were so huge that two sufficed to reach
to the top of the doorway from the ground. This old wood often gets so
hard that it will turn the edge of the axe.

[30] It is singular that two peasants in different parts of the country
should have made this statement, which seems after all to be based on
error: for the plant was nothing but our Rock-brake, or parsley fern
(Allosurus crispus), which is not generally supposed to possess any
noxious qualities.

[31] The Chinese have a somewhat similar device. “A strip of white
canvas is stretched slanting in the water, which allures or alarms
the fish, and has the strange effect (but they were Chinese fish)
of inducing them to leap over the boat. But a net placed over the
boat from stem to stern intersects their progress, and they are
caught.”--Fortune’s _Travels in China_.

[32] Ström, in his description of Söndmör, relates that in the hard
winter of 1755, of thirty children born in the parish of Volden not one
lived, solely because they were brought to church directly they were
born. But even in the present day in the register books (kirke-bog)
notices may be found, such as “Died from being brought too early to
church.”

[33] What a curious custom that was of the heathen Norwegian
gentle-folk to select a friend to sprinkle their child with water, and
give it a name. Thus Sigurd Jarl baptized the infant of Thora, the wife
of Harald Harfager, and called it Hacon, although this had nothing
to do with Christianity, for this child was afterwards baptized by
Athelstan, king of England. The heathen Vikings often pretended to take
up Christianity, to renounce it again on the first opportunity. Some of
them allowed themselves to be baptized over and over again, merely for
the sake of the white garments. Others, who visited Christian lands for
the sake of traffic or as mercenary soldiers, used to let themselves be
primsegnet (marked with the sign of the cross) without being baptized.
Thus they were on a good footing with the foreign Christians, and also
with their heathen brethren at home. Many of those who were baptized
in all sincerity quite misunderstood the meaning of the rite, thinking
that it would release them from evil spirits and gramary.

[34] According to the newspapers, a great part of the capital itself
has just met with a like fate.





End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Oxonian in Thelemarken, volume 2
(of 2), by Frederick Metcalfe

*** 