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 slope
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 slope of snow
by the side of a deep turquoise-coloured 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.