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, slopes 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.”