TRONDHJEM
Wild the Runic faith,
And wild the realms where Scandinavian chiefs
And Skalds arose, and hence the Skald's strong verse
Partook the savage wildness. And methinks
Amid such scenes as these the Poet's soul
Might best attain full growth; pine-cover'd rocks,
And mountain forests of eternal shade,
And glens and vales, on whose green quietness
The lingering eye reposes, and fair lakes
That image the light foliage of the beach.
SOUTHEY.
There would not be much to see in the Low Countries if they were
deprived of their historical associations, their ancient buildings and
their superb paintings. Most parts of Europe owe very much of their
interest and their beauty to the long-continued presence of mankind.
But the delights of Norway are of another sort, and a yachting trip
among her fjords and islands would lose little of its attraction to
many, had they as few associations as those of Alaska. The chief charm
of this northern country must always be found in the fact that a large
steamer may sail far into the heart of her lofty mountains through
winding valleys, enclosed by towering rock sides, over which fall
streams with courses so steep that they sometimes reach the surface of
ocean only in the form of spray. In Norway one may proceed up a wild
Highland glen with scenery grander than anything even in Scotland,
without leaving the surface of the sea. Here and there such river
gorges as that of the Hudson near West Point are somewhat recalled
to one's mind, but on the whole the scenery of Norway is not at all
like anything else. The overpowering vastness of it all is perfectly
unique.[31]
But, even if one has not realised the fact amid the romantic scenery
of those fjords where the works of man are confined to tiny fields
like handkerchiefs scantily stretched upon the mountain sides, and
settlements of wooden huts which are lost among the towering mountains
of God, in Trondhjem Fjord one can hardly ignore the fact that this
northern land has a history and a mythology of no mean kind, and one
that is her very own. Though they have added less to the general sum
of human action than have the thoughts of Greece and the achievements
of Rome, the mythology of the North is more robust, its history is more
virile, its literature is less voluptuous, its feelings more stern and
deep. As the Swedish poet and bishop, Esaias Tegnér, expresses it: "Go
to Greece for beauty of form, but to the North for depth of feeling and
thought."
Doubtless the difference is largely geographical, as is well set forth
in a thought-provoking passage of Sir Archibald Geikie's Romanes
Lecture, delivered at Oxford in 1898. "Who can doubt that the legends
and superstitions of ancient Greece took their form and colour in no
small measure from the mingled climates, varied scenery and rocky
structure of that mountainous land, or that the grim, litanic mythology
of Scandinavia bears witness to its birth in a region of rugged snowy
uplands under gloomy and tempestuous skies." And to those of English
speech at least the history of the North should mean much more, because
it was not merely our teachers and civilisers, but our very selves that
first launched dragon-prowed vessels on these clear waters and first
heard the eddas recited by the Skalds.
Just to the right of the spot where the broad river Nid pours its
rather muddy waters into the Trondhjem Fjord, there rises a low hill,
and there, commanding a glorious prospect far over the brown-green
mountains and the slate-blue waters of the sea, once stood a great
Temple for the worship of the Gods whose names are hourly on our lips,
whenever we need to distinguish the days. A mighty line of Earls once
had their seat in Ladir or Lade--for such are the ancient and modern
names of the village where the Temple stood--and widely their authority
was known. The greatest of them ruled over all the Norse for a quarter
of a century (970-995), but so proud was he of his ancestral stock that
he preferred to be known as the Earl of Ladir rather than as King of
Norway. Sixteen earls recognised his sway, and he trowed in the old
Gods.
Thus the _Heimskringla_ describes his sway. "Whiles Earl Hakon ruled in
Norway was the year's increase good in the land. And good peace there
was betwixt man and man among the bonders.
"Well beloved of the bonders was the earl the more part of his life,
but as his years wore, it was much noted of the earl that he was
mannerless in dealing with women.... Whereof he won great hatred from
the kin of such women, and the bonders fell a-murmuring sore against
it, even as they of Thrandheim are wont to do when aught goeth against
their pleasure."
Now a mysterious person named Oli was at Dublin, at that time a great
settlement of Norsemen. Concerning him the earl heard rumours that he
found exceedingly disquieting. He had a great friend called Thorir
Klakka, "who was long whiles at viking work, but whiles would go
cheaping voyages, and was of good knowledge of lands. Him Earl Hakon
sent West-over-sea, bidding him go a cheaping voyage to Dublin, as many
folk were wont, and look into it closely what this man Oli was; and if
he found that he verily was Olaf Tryggvison, or any other offspring
of the kingly stem of the North, then was Thorir to entangle him with
guile if he might bring it to pass."
Thorir had no difficulty in getting into conversation with Oli, and in
reply to his questions about the conditions in Norway, he told how the
earl was so mighty a man that none durst speak but as he would. Yet
he admitted that many mighty men, yea, all the people, would be most
fain and eager to have a king for the land come of the blood of Harald
Fairhair.
"Now when they had oft talked in this wise, Olaf bringeth to light
before Thorir his name and kin, and asked his rede, what he thought of
it, if Olaf should fare to Norway, whether the bonders would take him
for king. But Thorir egged him on full fast to the journey, and praised
him much and his prowess. So Olaf fell a-longing sorely to fare to the
land of his fathers: and he saileth from the west with five ships,
first to the South-Isles, and Thorir was in company with him."
So Olaf got back eventually to the kingdom of his fathers, and "when
he came north to Agdaness he heard that Earl Hakon was in the firth,
and withal that he was at strife with the bonders. And when Thorir
heard tell of these things, then were matters gone a far other way than
he had been deeming; for after the battle with the Jomsburg vikings
(notable pirates whose stronghold was in Pomerania) were all men of
Norway utterly friendly to Earl Hakon for the victory he had gotten,
and the deliverance of all the land from war; but now so ill had things
turned out that here was the earl at strife with the bonders, and a
great lord come into the land."
There was a man named Worm Lyrgia, a wealthy bonder, and he had to wife
one who was known as the Sun of Lund, where her father dwelt; she was
the fairest among women. Thralls came from the Earl of Ladir to carry
her away by force, but Worm (despite his name) was a man of spirit and
fire. He "let the war-arrow fare four ways through the countryside with
this bidding withal, that all men should fall with weapons on Earl
Hakon to slay him." This incident, which was far from being an isolated
case, proved very unfortunate for the government of the earl; in fact,
he soon became a fugitive with a single thrall, named Kark.
"Then he arose, and they went to the stead of Rimul, and the earl
sent Kark to Thora, bidding her come privily to him. So did she, and
welcomed the earl kindly, and he prayed her to hide him for certain
nights till the gathering of the bonders went to pieces. Said she:
'They will be seeking thee here about my stead both within and without;
for many wot that I would fain help thee all I may, but one place there
is about my stead where I deem that I would not think of seeking for
such a man as thou, a certain swine-sty to wit.'
"So they went thither: and the earl said: 'Make we ready here; for we
must take heed to our lives first of all.' Then dug the thrall a deep
hole therein, and bore away the mould, and then laid wood over it.
Thora told the earl the tidings how Olaf Tryggvison was come into the
mouth of the firth, and had slain Erland his son.
"Then went the earl into the hole and Kark with him, and Thora did it
over with wood, and strawed over it mould and muck and drave the swine
thereover. And this swine-sty was under a certain big stone."
So the bonders and Olaf fell straightway into good friendship, and the
son of Tryggvi ascended the throne of his fathers. He was one of the
greatest of the kings of the Norse, superior in many respects to his
namesake, who is distinguished as the saint. The chief secret of his
power is opened to us by the following passage from the _Faereyinga
Saga_, for popularity in the viking age was gained by much the same
qualities that secure it in an English Public School to-day. "Once in
the spring King Olaf said to Sigmund. 'We will amuse ourselves to-day,
and prove our feats of skill.' 'I am not the man for that, lord,'
said Sigmund, 'but thou shalt have thy way in this as in all other
things that are in my hands.' Then they tried their might in swimming
and shooting and other feats of skill and strength, and men say that
Sigmund came very nigh the king in many feats, albeit he came short of
him in all, as did every other man that was then living in Norway."
To return to the swine-sty in the _Heimskringla_. Olaf came to seek
the earl at Thora's stead as she had said he would. Then he "held a
House-Thing out in the garth, and himself stood up on that same big
stone that was beside the swine-sty.
"There spake Olaf to his men, and some deal of his speaking was that he
would with wealth and worth further him who should bring Earl Hakon to
harm.
"Now this talk heard the earl, and Kark, and they had a light there
with them; and the earl said: 'Why art thou so pale, or whiles as black
as earth? Is it not so that thou wilt bewray me?'
"'Nay,' said Kark.
"'We were born both on one and the same night, said the earl, 'nor
shall we be far apart in our deaths.
"Then fared King Olaf away as the eve came on, but in the night the
earl kept himself waking, but Kark slept and went on evilly in his
sleep. Then the earl waked him and asked what he dreamed: and he said,
'I was e'en now at Ladir and King Olaf laid a gold necklace on the neck
of me.'
"The earl answered: 'A blood-red necklace shall Olaf do about thy neck
whenso ye meet. See thou to it; but from me shalt thou have but good
even as hath been aforetime; so bewray me not.'
"So thereafter they both waked, as men waking one over the other.
"But against the daybreak the earl fell asleep, and speedily his sleep
waxed troubled, till to such a pitch it came that he drew under him
his heels and his head as if he would rise up, and cried out high and
awfully.
"Then waxed Kark adrad and full of horror, and gripped a big knife from
out his belt, and thrust it through the earl's throat and sheared it
right out. That was the bane of Earl Hakon.
"Then Kark cut the head from the earl, and ran away thence with it;
and he came the next day to Ladir, and brought the earl's head to King
Olaf, and told him all these things that had befallen in the going of
him and Earl Hakon, even as is here written.
"Then let King Olaf lead him away thence, and smite the head from him."
At Ladir thereafter King Olaf made a feast and bade to it lords and
other great bonders. "But when the feast was arrayed, and the guests
were come, the first eve was the feast full fair and the cheer most
glorious, and men were very drunk; and that night slept all men in
peace there.
"But on the morrow morn when the king was clad he let sing mass before
him, and when the mass was ended the king let blow for a House-Thing.
And all his men went from the ships" (a "goodly host and great" of
them were laid in the Nid) "therewith, and came to the Thing. But
when the Thing was established the king stood up and spake in these
words: 'A Thing we held up at Frosta, and thereat I bade the bonders
be christened; and they bade me back again turn me to offering with
them.... But look ye, if I turn me to offering with you, then will I
make the greatest blood-offering that is, and will offer up men; yea,
and neither will I choose hereto thralls and evil-doers; but rather
will I choose gifts for the gods the noblest of men.'"
He proceeded to name some of the chief men present. This was a
convincing argument, and when the bonders saw that they lacked might to
meet the king, they professed their willingness to trow in the faith of
the White Christ. And at Ladir, on the site of the Godhouse, the king
let build a church. A Romanesque doorway about a century later than
his time still exists in the south wall of the chancel, under which is
a crypt; but the present church is a very plain plastered structure,
dated 1694; a porch was added in 1767.
Close by, in the year 996, King Olaf Tryggvison raised a city on Nid
bank. He chose a site at the very mouth, almost surrounded by the
stream, and he desired that his town should be such as he had seen
in Christian lands. He would that the Norse should resemble other
Europeans, should trow in Christ and dwell in towns and grow rich by
trade. The new settlement was known as Nidaros, because it was at the
mouth of the Nid, or else as Kaupstad, because it was a merchants'
town. But during the sixteenth century it was called as we know it
to-day, taking its name from the district round. At first it did not
prosper, for though Olaf Tryggvison gave men tofts whereon to build
them houses, they did not want a town, nor aught but their farms and
their ships.
But when the holy bones of another Olaf, martyr and king and saint,
were there enshrined and over them sprang the tall vaulting of
Scandinavia's fairest church, pilgrims and trade and prosperity
resorted to the mouth of the Nid.
Little of the saint was in Olaf Haraldson during his earlier years. The
first story of him in the sagas displays him as a mischievous boy. "On
a time it befell that King Sigurd would ride away from his house, and
no man was home at the stead; so he bade Olaf, his stepson, to saddle
him a horse. Olaf went to the goat-house, and took there the biggest
buck-goat and led it home, and laid thereon the saddle of the king, and
then went and told him he had harnessed him the nag."
A renowned viking he became, whose deeds men talked about in all the
lands from Sweden to the British Isles. But as King of Norway he would
have no peace but with believers in the White Christ. Perhaps his
methods lacked charity and tact, and his temper lacked control, that
he was wealth-grasping, the sagas distinctly say, but he was truly
of a religious frame and in comparison with his faith he counted not
anything dear.
At the time when he was establishing his power the city that Olaf
Tryggvison had founded on Nid-bank was already in decay. King Olaf the
Saint, we read in the _Heimskringla_ "gat him gone at his speediest
and held out to Nidoyce, where King Olaf Tryggvison had let set a
cheaping-stead and reared a king's-house; but before that there was
only one house in Nidness, as is writ before. But when King Eric became
ruler of the land, he favoured Ladir, where his father had had his
chief abode, but he left unheeded the houses which King Olaf had let
build on the Nid; and some were now tumbled down, while othersome,
though standing, were scarce meet for dwelling in. King Olaf steered
his ships up into the Nid; and forthwith he let dight for dwelling the
houses yet standing, and reared those up again which were fallen down,
and had thereat a throng of men; and he let flit into the houses both
the drink and the victuals, being minded to sit there Yule-tide over."
Thrandheim "he deemed was all the pith of the land" (and thither he
fared at his speediest), "if he might there bring the folk down under
him while the earl was away from the land. But when King Olaf came
to Thrandheim, then was no uprising against him there, and there he
was taken to king; and he set him down there in the harvest-tide at
Nidoyce, and there dight him winter-quarters. He let house a king's
garth, and reared Clement's Church there whereas it now standeth. He
marked out tofts for garths, and gave them to goodmen, and chapmen, or
to any others he would, and who were minded to house. He sat there with
many men about him, for he trusted the Thrandheimer's good faith but
little, if so be the earl should come back to the land."
A few chapters further on the court of the king is described.... "King
Olaf let house a king's garth at Nidoyce. There was done a big court
hall with a door at either end, but the high-seat of the king was in
the midmost of the hall. Up from him sat Grimkel, his court-bishop,
and next to him again other clerks of his; but down from the king sat
his counsellors. In the other high-seat straight over against him sat
his marshal, Biorn the Thick, and then the guests. If men of high
degree came to King Olaf, they were well seated.... Withal he had
thirty house-carles to work all needful service in the garth, and at
whatso ingatherings were needful; he had many thralls withal. In the
garth also was a mickle hall, wherein slept the bodyguard, and there
was withal a mickle chamber wherein the king held his court councils."
His canonisation came to pass thus. His vigorous propaganda on behalf
of the true faith was by no means universally approved in Norway, and
he had to take refuge in Russia (p. 231). Thence he returned to recover
his kingdom, but even in almost desperate straits he would be succoured
by none other than Christian men. One Arnliot Gellini offered his
services and the king asked at once of his faith. "But he said this of
his troth, that he trowed in his might and main. 'And that belief has
served me full well hitherto; but now I am minded to trow in thee, O
King.'
"The king answered: 'If thou wilt trow in me, then thou shalt believe
in what I teach thee. Thou shalt believe this, that Jesus Christ has
created heaven and earth and all men, and that to him shall fare after
death all those who are good, and who believe aright.'
"Arnliot answered: 'I have heard tell of the White Christ, but I am not
well learned in his doings, nor where he ruleth; so I will now believe
all that thou hast to tell me, and I will leave all my matter in thy
hand.'
"Then Arnliot was christened, and the king taught him as much of the
faith as he deemed was most needful, and arrayed him to the vanward
battle-array, and before his own banner."
On the field of Sticklestead, a few miles from Trondhjem, Olaf fell in
fight against foes who were supported by English gold, for Knut the
Rich, though a Christian himself, was planning a vast Empire of the
North, and his political zeal was stronger than his enthusiasm for the
holy faith (p. 115). His viceroy in Norway was one Hakon, the last of
the stout Earls of Ladir, to whom he gave a court-bishop named Sigurd,
a Dane. "That Bishop was a man masterful, and pompous of speech;
he gave King Knut all the word-propping he might, and was the most
unfriend of King Olaf."
The Christian host went down before the troops whose faith was mixed,
and after various adventures, the body of the king was buried at
Nidaros, or Trondhjem, in Clement's Church, which he had built. "That
winter uphove the word of many men there in Thrandheim[32] that King
Olaf was a truly holy man, and that many tokens befell at his holy
relic. And then many began to make vows to King Olaf about those
matters whereon they had set their hearts. From such vows many folk got
bettering." "Next summer there grew up mickle talk about the holiness
of King Olaf, and all word-rumour about the king was changed."
When Grimkel the bishop caused the chest of the king to be opened there
was glorious fragrance, and when the face was exposed the lips were as
ruddy as if Olaf had just gone to sleep. And so by degrees, as miracles
increased, and old sharp feelings wore away, Olaf became the patron
saint of all the Norse; Churches were raised to him in many lands,
including a fair sprinkling in English seaports from Exeter to York.
The Cathedral that rose to enshrine the relics of St. Olaf would be a
striking feature of any city in the world, and it completely dominates
this far northern, low-roofed town. Both from far off and near it is
a Church of very English type, and it stands in a regular close amid
fair trees and grass. The vegetation indeed seems more to suit the
English south than a spot not far outside the Arctic Circle. It forms
an impressive illustration of the influence that the warm currents of
ocean exert upon westward looking shores. For the opposite point of
America is north of Labrador.
It has been in the hands of restorers for about the same time that
the temple was in the hands of builders, and very amply fulfilled is
Du Chaillu's prophecy that it would lose the quaint old look so much
esteemed by the lovers of antiquity (p. 223). Much as some cry out
against the restorer in England, that country is far ahead of the
Continent both in reverence for the work of the past and in making
serious efforts rather to bind up what is broken down than merely to
present facsimiles of it to posterity. Trondhjem Cathedral has been
rebuilt rather than restored, though Mr. Christie, the architect, has
strictly followed the ancient lines. Sarcastic people might say that he
has given us a building which ranks high among modern churches!
Shortly before the earliest part of the Cathedral was built, Nidaros
became the seat of an Archbishop whose metropolitan jurisdiction
extended further than did that of any bishopric before. In 1151 Nicolas
Breakspear, once it is said a beggar at St. Alban's, afterwards the
only English pope,[33] came to set in order the affairs of the Northern
Church. He arranged for the formation of a province that should
include all Christians of Norwegian stock. The other sees in Norway
(Bergen, Stavanger, Oslo (p. 95) and Hamar) were placed under the
supervision of the Primate of Nidaros. Far over the sea his authority
was likewise known, by bishops midst the British Isles, of Kirkwall
in Orkney and of Sodor (or the Southern Isles[34]) and Man, by the
Bishop of the Faroes, whose cathedral was at Kirkebö (p. 23), by the
twin Bishops of Skalholt and Holar in Iceland and even by the first of
American prelates, he who sat at Garth (or Garde) in Greenland[35] far
away, knowing not that he lived in a different quarter of the world.
Trondhjem Cathedral is a great cruciform church about 325 feet long,
whose nave and quire are aisled, and the western towers project north
and south to widen the great façade: at the east end of the quire is an
octagonal corona, and on the northern side, joined only by a passage,
is the apsidal Church of St. Clement, recalling the position of the
Lady Chapel at Ely. It is built of blue-grey saponite, a local stone
easy to work, varied with marble from the island of Almenningen.
The oldest part is the transept which was raised by the great
Archbishop Eystein. He was the foe of Sverre Sigurdsson, the
knight-errant king, who in his youth had been ordained, still ignorant
of his royal birth. In 1180 at a battle near Nidaros he contrived to
establish his power and the archbishop fled to St. Edmundsbury in
England, launching as a Scythian dart against the recreant priest a
sentence of the excommunication of the Church. When no one seemed
in the least impressed, and the king's power was waxing fast, the
archbishop became more prudent. Making his peace with Sverre he
returned to Nidaros and found less strenuous occupation in building his
cathedral. He died in 1188, and the king gave his funeral address.
Each transept has the usual three storeys with corner turrets and a
square chapel opening on the east. They are rich in shafts and arcading
with plentiful zigzag moulding, and they are really striking examples
of the style that the Normans brought to England. The upper parts
display a certain restiveness to commence the development of later
forms. The present tower arches are modern.
Not much later than the transepts is the little chapel of St. Clement,
sometimes called the Lady Chapel and sometimes the Chapter House. Its
nave is vaulted in two bays and flanked by western turrets; the roof
of the apse is sustained by four clustered pillars bearing pointed
arches.
The quire and nave and octagonal corona are fairly uniform in style but
surprisingly otherwise in plan. They belong to that period of Gothic
architecture when lancets were just giving place to traceried windows,
and clustered shafts and foliage caps and deeply-moulded arches were
more beautiful than after or before. The works were in progress through
much of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and evidently dragged
on long. A bad fire gave a serious set-back in 1328. It is doubtful
whether the nave was ever done. It was begun as early as 1248 by
Archbishop Sigurd, son of one of the brave birkebeiner or birchlegs,
who had helped King Sverre to his throne.
The builders of each part seem to have been profoundly unconscious of
what their colleagues elsewhere had been about. For they were working
on the foundations of three little older churches. St. Clement's was
built originally by St. Olaf himself, his son Magnus the Good raised a
church over his later grave where now the corona stands, a stone church
of St. Mary was erected by Harald Hardredy (p. 95) on the site of the
quire.[36] Most awkwardly St. Clement's joins the rest of the church;
the beautiful aisle-encircled corona declines to meet the quire at any
understandable angle, the walls and pillars of the quire itself trend
apart on either side toward the east.[37] See plan opposite p. 246.
[Illustration: NORTH-EAST CORNER OF QUIRE, LOOKING INTO AISLE AND CORONA]
[_Face page 86_
Over the great central tower, which long was cut off by a low metal
roof, have been raised a tall spire of wood and four pinnacles of
stone. It is largely this lofty steeple in the centre that gives the
Cathedral so English a look. The magnificence of this fair church
is all the more striking when one realises that, with a few most
unimportant exceptions, it is the furthest north of all the buildings
of the middle ages. Yet its equal is not to be found in any part of
Europe further south, till the latitude of Glasgow is reached.
The most striking feature of Trondhjem to-day is that so large and
thriving a town should be almost wholly of wood, even in the business
section and including the vast palace of the king. In 1872 the city
seemed to Du Chaillu (p. 223) singularly cheerless from the large
sections that had been burnt and not rebuilt, while grass grew in many
of the streets. Things are very different to-day. The thoroughfares
are broad and straight, most of them pleasantly fringed with trees,
and there is all the character of a prosperous, substantial town. A
few wooden buildings are two centuries old, for instance the vane of
the Raadhus is dated 1710 and that of the Hospitals Kirken[38] 1704,
but these do not in the very least affect the general character of the
place, and the aspect of the streets as a whole is as modern as well
could be. The Cathedral quarter by a river bend seems to exhale a quite
different atmosphere from the whole of the rest of the town. It is
almost as though an English close had invaded an American city.
Near the white square tower of the Frue Kirke (dated 1739) is a wide
open space where on market-days stalls are erected and country and town
deal directly with each other in those picturesque surroundings that
are so largely the same all over the north of Europe. The harness of
the horses looks primitive, and all the weight is on the shafts, but
they race along like the wind, and when a destination is reached, the
owner needs to do no more than to slip round the front foot of his
beast a long strap attached to the carriage. Little of the Norwegian
costume that is so attractive a feature of the fjord villages is to be
seen in the city; the general life of towns is becoming distressingly
the same all over the Western world. The atmosphere is, however,
distinctly Norse by the quays, where the fish boats come in and large
barrels of their catchings are rolled about, and also where high wooden
warehouses, not entirely without picturesqueness, fringe the shores of
the Nid and exhale a smell of fish and tar.
The days of Danish supremacy are recalled on a hill just east of
the Cathedral on the other side of the river by the picturesque old
Fortress of Christiansten, which dates from the seventeenth century,
and displays rubble stone walls surmounted by grassy slopes and
penetrated by brick-vaulted passages and rooms. This period and this
district of Norway were chosen by Victor Hugo when writing his first
romance, _Han d'Islande_, which he published anonymously in 1823. The
scene is, however, laid chiefly in Munkholm, a small rocky island which
rises out of the waters of the fjord immediately opposite the town. In
very earliest days of Christianity in Norway a Benedictine cloister was
reared there, and for half a thousand years the monks remained, but
little beyond the name survives to indicate their occupation to-day.
Fortifications have long existed where the psalter was chanted in days
of yore.
Victor Hugo himself explains the object of the work: "I wished to
describe a girl who might realise the ideal of all fresh and poetic
imagination, the girl of my dreams ... you, Adèle, my beloved....
And beside her I wanted to set a young man, not such as I am but
such as I would wish to be." He has certainly succeeded so far that
his characters are entirely French, and he seems rather to have made
a mistake in placing the scene so far from France. The nightmare,
gruesome character of the book is bloodcurdling enough, but decidedly
overdone, and though the work is very well worth reading as the early
effort of one of the greatest of writers, it contributes little to his
fame and still less, perhaps to the interest of a visit to Trondhjem.
The local colour is extremely poor, a fact that is hardly surprising
when it is remembered that the author had never visited Norway.
The hills stand about Trondhjem, as indeed about all other Norway
towns; some of them display, five hundred feet above the sea, marks
of former beaches where waves lapped cliffs unnumbered years ago,
before the movements of the globe had raised the land so high. And
from places within an easy walk of the city, there is a magnificent
panorama, westward over hills riven in all directions by the jagged
edged sea, and eastward to the snowy mountains of the Kiolen range
that form the frontier of Sweden. Superbly beautiful at all times is
the prospect of wooded hill and inland sea, particularly when seen
in softer outline as the long Arctic twilight gradually gives place
to the paler illumination of the moon, and little lights begin to
sparkle over land and sea. But even in such dreamy conditions the city,
beautiful from its verdure and striking from its position, declines
to look like a mediæval or even a historic town. Though for more than
a thousand years the landscape below has been the scene of the varied
activities of mankind, and from it has gone out power by which the
life of half Europe has been quickened, even yet there is rather the
restless atmosphere of new settlements in a country still only half
subdued, than that of quiet peace and sense of satisfied repose, such
as broods over an ancient Italian seaport, where every corner has been
transformed by untold generations of man and centuries ago even the
rough hill-sides were terraced to enlarge his domain.
Some three miles from the city, amid pine forests of perpetual shade,
the River Nid plunges over hard dark blue rocks to form the Lerfos
Falls. Most Norwegian cascades are chiefly spray, and by their great
resemblance to bridal veils are associated with the happiest events in
the lives of most of us. But these are more business-like waterfalls,
which are not left in peace by mankind. The Lower Fall, or Lille
Lerfos, is a rather average sort of thing: in a broad open place where
much naked rock is exposed the water of the stream plunges over a sort
of stairway to descend abruptly for nearly eighty feet, and the effect
is not improved by various works in cement. A path along the wooded
river bank leads to the Upper Fall, or Store Lerfos, which is one of
the most beautiful anywhere to be seen. The stream leaps down a hundred
feet, and both high and low the surging mass of whitened waters is
cleft by tree-bearing rocks, while mist-like foam spreads far and wide.
Europe has cathedrals statelier than that of Trondhjem and mediæval
cities of greater intrinsic charm, but the interest of nearly
everything is affected chiefly by its position, and it is startling
indeed among the wildness of the northern fjords to come upon this
history-haunted spot, to see this fair cathedral rising from the trees
and grass of so English-looking a close. And in the long-drawn aisles
of the ancient Metropolitan Church it is strange to reflect that the
saint who was here enshrined in one of the stateliest of Gothic fanes
was the doughty Olaf the Thick, famed in life for his wild viking
career, who knew the craft of the bow, and of all men was the best in
shooting of hand-shot, who was but twelve winters old when he first
stepped on a warship to begin the harrying and burning in which so
much of his life was spent! And as the bright sunlight streams through
the lancet windows to illuminate and shade chaste arcading and hanging
foliage carved in stone, with the deep mouldings of arch and vault,
it is difficult indeed to realise that one is hardly more than three
degrees outside the Arctic Line.[39]
[Illustration]