THE MOUNTAIN MARCH.
“Onward amid the copse ’gan peep,
A narrow inlet still and deep,
Affording scarce such breadth of brim
As served the wild duck’s brood to swim;
Lost for a space through thickets veering,
But broader when again appearing,—
Tall rocks and tufted knolls their face
Could in the dark-blue mirror trace;
And farther as the hunter strayed,
Still broader sweep its channels made.”
_Lady of the Lake._
“How shall it be? Will you look your lay-lines to-day or to-morrow?”
said the Parson, who, though not a little amused at the tilting between
the rival champions, and by the manner in which Birger had suffered
himself to be drawn into the squabble, began to think it had gone quite
far enough for the future peace and unanimity of the expedition. “Come,
Jacob, shoulder your knapsack, and march like a sensible Swede.”
“There never was but one sensible Swede,” said Torkel, in a grumbling
aside, “and that was Queen Kerstin, when she jumped over the boundary,
and thanked God that Sweden could not jump after her.”[24]
Jacob had sense enough not to hear this laudatory remark on his late
sovereign’s discrimination, but, with his ordinary phlegm, resumed his
load and his place in the line of march.
“By the way,” said the Parson, as they resumed their journey, “what was
it, Torkel, that made you scrape the mud from your right foot and put it
on your head in that insane manner, just now?”
“I can answer that,” said Birger; “you know that the whole tribe of Alfs,
white, brown, and black, and the Trolls, and in fact the whole class
that go under the generic name of Bjerg-folk, or Hill-men, live under
the earth. To see them, therefore, on ordinary occasions, you must put
yourself—at least, typically—in a similar condition. That upon which
you have trod must cover your head; and you take it from the right foot
rather than the left, partly as being more lucky, and partly because the
left being a mark of disrespect, would incense the dwarfs, who would be
sure to make you pay for it sooner or later; in fact they are a dangerous
race to meddle with at all, they take offence so very easily. I believe,
however, this is the safest plan, for they are not aware, unless you
betray yourself, that the veil is removed from your sight. Did you never
hear the story of the Ferryman of Sund?”
The Englishman, of course, had not heard it, neither had any of the men,
for the legend is Danish and local; and though anything Danish is much
better known in Norway than stories or legends relating to Sweden, it so
happened that it was new to them all, and they closed up to listen to it.
“One evening, between the two lights,[25] a strange man came to the ferry
at Sund and engaged all the boats: no sooner had the bargain been made,
than they began to sink deeper and deeper into the water, as if some
heavy cargo had been put into them, though the astonished boatmen could
see nothing, and the boats looked quite empty.
“‘Shove off,’ said the stranger, ‘you have got quite load enough for one
trip;’ and so they had, for the gunwales were not a couple of inches from
the water, and the boats pulled so heavily, that it was as much as the
men could do to get to the Vandsyssel side; if the water had not been
wonderfully calm, they could not have done it at all—but it was calm;
and all under the wake of the moon it looked as if it was covered with a
network of silver filigree, to chain down the ripples.
“As soon as the boats touched the Vandsyssel shore, they began rising
in the water again, as if their freight had been taken out of them, and
then the stranger sent them back again; and so it went on throughout the
whole night, and very hard work the ferrymen had, bringing over cargoes
of emptiness.
“Then the day began to break, and the eastern sky to whiten; and just as
the coming sun shot up his seven lances to show the world that King Day
was at hand, the stranger, who had arranged all this, paid the ferrymen,
not counting the coins, but filling their hats with them with both hands,
as a boy shovels out his nuts.
“‘What had they been bringing over?’ asked one of them. ‘Cannot you be
quiet, and know when you are well off,’ said the stranger; ‘you need not
be afraid of the custom-house dues; they will have sharp eyes to see
anything contraband in what you have carried over last night; put your
money in your pockets and be thankful—you will not earn so much in the
next three years.’
“But in the mean while one of the ferrymen, a sharper fellow than his
neighbours, jumped on shore, and did just exactly what Torkel did just
now—put a piece of clay from the sole of his shoe on the crown of his
head. His eyes were opened at once; all the sandhills about Aalberg were
alive with little people, every one of them carrying on his back gold and
silver pots, and jugs, and vessels of every description—the whole place
looked like one gigantic anthill.
“‘O-ho,’ said he, ‘that’s what you are about; well, joy go with you, we
shall not be plagued with you any more on our side of the water; that’s
one good job, anyhow.’
“But it was not a good job for him; it is very possible to be too sharp
for one’s own good. All his gold money turned to yellow queens,[26]
and his silver money to chipped oyster-shells, and he never got rich,
or anything more than a poor ferryman of Sund, while his companions had
their hats full of ancient Danish gold and silver coins, and bought ships
of their own, and went trading to Holland and the free towns, and became
great men.”
“Upon my word, Torkel,” said the Parson, “you are too venturesome; it is
just as well that there were no Trolls to be seen just now at the well;
but you must not try it again, or you will never become a great man, or
command a ship—not that this would suit you very well, I suppose.”
“Torkel would undertake the command of the _Haabet_, just now, I’ll
engage, little as he knows about seamanship, if he could only get young
Svensen out of her,” said Mr Tom, with a knowing grin; to which innuendo,
whatever it might mean, Torkel playfully replied by kicking out behind at
him with one foot, after the manner of a donkey. He missed Tom, however,
to his and Piersen’s intense mirth; but what was the precise nature of
the joke, there was now no opportunity of explaining, as the descent had
become so steep that the assistance of the hand was necessary, in order
to keep their footing.
At a few hundred yards from the dwarf’s well, they had fallen in with a
little streamlet, running eastward, on a pretty rapid descent, even from
the first, but which now began to form a series of diminutive cascades,
leaping in so many spouts from rock to rock, while the ground, over which
it ran, seemed as if it was fast changing from the horizontal to the
perpendicular; indeed, had there not been plenty of rocks jutting out,
and a good crop of twisted and gnarled trunks and roots, many portions of
the journey might have been accomplished with more speed than pleasure.
The rapidity of the descent soon brought them to the bottom of a deep
hollow valley, far above the level of the sea, indeed, but low compared
with the abrupt heights that surrounded it. It was one of those singular
features in Norwegian scenery, a valley without an outlet; its bottom
occupied by a deep, black, still lake, whose only drain—if it had any
drain at all except the porous nature of the soil—was under the surface.
As the ground rose rapidly on every side, it did not answer to cut timber
which could never be carried, and the forest here was left in the wildest
state of desolation. Solid, substantial firs, of ancient growth, were the
predominant tree; but the soil was rich and the valley sheltered, and
there was a plentiful sprinkling of birch and wych-elm, interspersed with
a much rarer tree, the stubborn old oak himself.
Beneath this mingled canopy was a plentiful undergrowth of juniper, and
enormous ferns. There was a still, calm desolateness about the whole
scene, for many of the trees were dead, not by accident or disease,
but from pure old age, and stood where they had withered, or reclined
against the younger brethren of the forest, exhibiting their torn and
ragged bark, and stretching forth their bare and leafless arms: the very
rill—their lively and noisy companion hitherto—seemed to be sobered down,
and to partake here of the general sadness, as it soaked its still way
among the rushes and weeds that encumbered its course.
Where it ran, or rather crept, into the lake, a small marshy delta was
formed of the sand carried down in its course; and here was moored an
old crazy boat, half full of water, with a couple of old primitive oars;
the whole had a bleached and weather-stained appearance, well in keeping
with the general character of the scene. The boat belonged to a sœter
some three or four miles off, on the western slope of the mountains, and
was used occasionally by the inhabitants, when, at rare intervals, they
amused themselves by setting lay lines for the char, for which the lake
had a local celebrity. The sœter belonged to Piersen’s brother, and it
was he who had induced Birger to visit the spot.
Having baled out the boat with their mess tins, they pulled out into
the lake, which turned out to be very much larger than they expected to
find it. The spot where the boat was moored, and which indeed looked
like a small, deep, still tarn, was in fact only a bay, or inlet, and
the whole lake was a body with numerous arms, none of them very large in
themselves, but making a very large piece of water when taken together.
Of course it had a name; every rock, and stream, and splash of water in
Norway, has a name of one sort or other; but whatever it might have been,
it was unknown to the fishermen, and this dark pool was entered into
their diaries by the appropriate appellation of the “Lake of the Woods.”
Mountains surrounded it on every side, steep, abrupt, plunging into the
deep dark water, and wooded from base to summit with a dense black mass
of wood wherever tree could stand on rock. There was not beach or shore
of any kind; the mountain rose from the water itself, so steep as to be
scarcely accessible, and, in many places, not accessible at all. As for a
bird, Avernus itself could not be more destitute of them. Not a sound was
heard, except the splash of the cumbersome oar, and the creaking of the
rowlock, and that sounded so loud, and so out of place in the universal
stillness, that the rowers tried to dip them quietly, as if they feared
to awaken the desolate echoes.
“Ah,” said Birger, in a whisper, “this is just the place for the ‘Lady
of the Lake;’ I hope she will do us no harm for trespassing on her
territories.”
The men looked uneasy, and a little whispering went on between Tom and
Piersen, who were pulling, they resting on their oars the while, from
which the drops trickled off and dripped into the silent water. Tom
brightened up. “I do not think she will hurt us,” he said; “she had a
very fine cake from Piersen’s family last Christmas, and she will not
hurt any one while he is with us.”
“What a confounded set of gluttonous sprites you have in your country,”
said the Captain; “mercenary devils they are too.”
“Hush, hush, don’t abuse them, at all events while you are on their
territories. The fact is, the ‘Lady of the Lake’ is the easiest
propitiated of all the sprites: she is an epicure, too, and not a
glutton; she likes her cake good, but she does not care how small it is.
On Christmas Eve you pick a very small hole in the ice, and put a cake by
the side of it, only just big enough to go through it; and if you watch,
which is not a safe thing to do if you have any sins unconfessed,[27]
you may see, not the lady herself, for she is never seen, but her small
white hand and arm, as she takes the offering and draws it down through
the hole in the ice. Those see her best who are born on the eves of the
holiest festivals.”
“That is all nonsense,” said Jacob, “I never could see her at all, often
as I have looked, and I was born on Easter Eve.”
“Why you precious rascal,” said the Captain, “how could you expect it?
When were your sins shriven, I should like to know?”
The men were not by any means displeased at Jacob’s rebuff, who seemed
much more disconcerted by it than the occasion at all required; when
Birger took up the conversation. “There is danger in that,” said he, “not
that you should miss seeing the Lady, but that you should suffer for
your rashness. The fact is,” he continued, turning to his friends, “the
Lady of the Lake is the impersonation of the sudden squalls which fall
unexpectedly on open spaces of any kind in mountainous countries, and her
small white hand and arm are the dangerous little white breakers that
are stirred up by the gusts, which, though diminutive when compared with
the mighty rollers of the ocean, very often do draw men down, just as
the hand draws Torkel’s cake. There is a similar spirit for the rivers,
called the Black Horse, and another for the sea. This latter is called
King Tolf, and is represented as driving furiously across the Sound,
his chariot drawn by water-horses, and cutting right through any ship
or boat that may lie in his path. But they all signify the same thing,
in different situations to which their several attributes are very well
adapted.”
“And that thing is?”
“Death, by drowning.”
“Here are the corks,” broke in Piersen in very indifferent English; “we
shall have gjep for supper to-day, I see the floats bobbing.”
The corks which he had pointed out were, in reality, a string of
birch-bark floats, which on being examined, were found attached to lines
anchored in the very deepest spot of the whole lake; for the gjep, or
great lake char, unlike any of its congeners, and indeed unlike any
fresh-water fish whatever, except the common char, the eel, and the
fictitious mal,[28] is never found but in the deepest waters.
Birger, who was the hero of this fishing, caught the nearest float in the
crook of his gaff, and began hauling in—evidently there was something,
for at first the line twitched and twitched and was nearly jerked out
of his hand; but as he hauled on (and in good truth the line seemed as
long as if some one, as Paddy says, had cut off the other end of it), it
came lighter and lighter, and before he had got it in, a large ugly fish,
three or four pounds weight, with an enormous protuberant belly, lay
helpless on the surface.
“That’s the fellow,” said Piersen, pouncing on him,—but the fish made
little effort to get away; it was almost dead before he got hold of it.
The gjep, though classed as a char by the learned, is as little like the
bright crimson char of our own lakes or of the mountain lakes of Norway
as can well be imagined; never met with except in water of immense depth,
never found out of his hole, never caught except with a still and (so the
Swedes assert) a stinking bait, he bears the colours and character of
his local habitation, a sober dark olive brown back, a dark grey side
shot with purple, which turns black when the fish is dead; no red spots
or very minute ones, no splashes of red or anything red about it, except
one bright line along the edge of the fins. The most remarkable point
about it, its enormous belly, from which it derives its name, _Salvelinus
ventricosus_, is really no distinguishing mark at all, except of its
habitat. The fact is, drawn suddenly and against its will from the depths
of the lake, its air-bladder swells so enormously as to kill the fish,
and give it that peculiarly inelegant appearance.
Inelegant as it looks, and disagreeable as it is to catch, it is by far
the best eating of any Swedish fish, and, from its rarity, and from the
difficulty of catching it, bears, when it is to be had at all, which is
very seldom, by far the highest price of any fish in the market. In fact,
to eat it at all in perfection, a man must go after it; it will never
answer to catch it for amusement; but the men may easily be set to lay
lines for it while other sports are going forward.
Four or five of these highly prized fish were hauled in one after another
by Birger, who looked as proud of his exploit as if he had landed a
schoolmaster.[29] When the lines had been all coiled up and deposited in
the boat, Birger proposed visiting some rushes that he remembered, in
a hope of meeting with wild fowl; a hope in which he was disappointed,
not at all to the surprise of his brother fishermen, for the whole lake
looked so black and gloomy that no duck of ordinary taste would think of
pitching there; it was, however, an interesting voyage among the sad and
silent intricacies of the lake; but it so happened, that in returning
they took a turn short of their point and wandered into another deep and
narrow inlet, very like that from which they had started, but still not
the same.
So like was one spot to another that they had pulled some considerable
distance before the mistake was found out, and when it was, so much time
had been lost that they were unwilling to pull back.
“Piú noja un miglio in dietro che dieci in avanti,” said the Captain;
“let us pull on and see what luck will send us.”
Piersen, on being consulted, as best acquainted with the country, did not
seem to know a great deal about it, but imagined that if once on shore he
could cut into the right track; and the fishermen having taken a look at
their compasses, and the sun, and the wind, what little there was of it,
decided that at all events the adventure should be tried.
Hardly had this conclusion been arrived at, when the boat grounded on a
bed of spongy rushes, so like that from which they had embarked, that it
was with difficulty they could persuade themselves that it was not the
very same—there was the same little soaking rill, the same mossy, soppy
turf, and when they had gone on a little further, there was the same
leaping, sparkling brooklet, bounding from rock to rock, just like that
by which they had descended.
A good stiff pull it took them to reach the top, and then it was evident
enough that the spot they had attained was not the same as that from
which they had descended. There was no hill on the other side, properly
so called, but a wide smooth plain of light sand, shelving, certainly,
towards the east, but shelving so gradually, that the declivity was
scarcely perceptible; it was completely overshadowed by large massive
well-grown pines, not growing together closely but in patches (as is
generally the case both in Norway and Sweden), so as to leave grassy
glades and featherly copse-wood between the groups, but regularly and
evenly, as if they had all been planted at measured distances. The
branches formed a complete canopy over head, shutting out both air and
sunshine, and effectually destroying everything like verdure beneath: the
tall straight monotonous trunks with a purplish crimson tint on their
bark, effectually walled in the view on every side, and the whole ground
was carpeted with a slippery covering of dead pine-leaves.
“I hope this will not last long,” said the Captain, “the place is so dark
and the air so close and stifling, that it seems like walking through
turpentine vaults. However, our road lies this way, that is certain,”
putting his compass on the ground so that it could traverse easily, “and
at all events we must come to a water-course sooner or later.”
But they did not come to a water-course; whether there were none, the
sand being sufficiently permeable to sop up the rain, or whether they
were travelling on the rise between two parallel brooks, did not appear;
but mile after mile was skated and slid over with considerable fatigue
and exertion, and the same scene lay before them, and around them, and
above them. Tall clear branchless stems, with long vistas between them
opening and closing as they went on, vistas which led to nothing and
terminated in nothing but the same bare, branchless, dead-looking poles.
Their compasses and a slight declivity told them that they were not
travelling in a circle, and their reason enlightened them as to the fact
that everything except a circle must have an end; but after three hours’
very hard work and some dozen of tumbles a piece, that end seemed as far
off as ever.
The only variety was a dead tree, and the only apparent difference
between the living and the dead was, that in this case the straight
perpendicular lines were crossed by lines as straight, which were
diagonal; for the dead trees for the most part reclined against their
living neighbours, very much to the detriment of the latter. As for a
bird, it did not seem as if birds could live there; nor could they in the
close space beneath that dark-green canopy; but every now and then there
was a tantalizing whirr of wings, as a black-cock threw himself out from
the topmost branches, and, far above their heads, skimmed along in that
bright sunshine which could not penetrate to them. This is a favourite
haunt of the black-cock, for the pine-tops and their young buds are its
most welcome food, and often render its flesh absolutely uneatable from
the strong turpentiny flavour they impart to it.
At last, and after they had well-nigh begun to despair, the trees began
to be thinner. Here and there a patch of sky relieved the monotonous
black, here and there a sunbeam would struggle down; then a little
grass, weak and pale, would cast a shade of sickly green over the ashy
brown of the dead fir leaves, and afford a somewhat steadier footing; a
patch of birch was hailed with the joy with which one meets a welcome
friend; cattle paths, deceptive as they are, afforded at least a token
of civilization: and now the whort and the cranberry began to show
themselves, and the hospitable juniper too, the remembrancer of bright
crackling fires and aromatic floors, and—
“Oh, positively we must have a halt now, for the difficulties are over,”
said Birger, and, though he had plenty of tobacco in his havresac, out of
sheer sentiment he stuffed his pipe with the dead strippy bark of that
useful shrub, which is generally its mountain substitute.
A few minutes were sufficient for their rest; breathing the fresh air
again was in itself a luxury, and treading the firm elastic turf a
refreshment. As they went on, the landscape began to resume its park-like
character, glades to open, trees to feather down, gentians to embroider
the green with their blue flower work, and lilies of the valley to
perfume the air. They were as much lost as ever, but the country looked
so like the beautiful banks of the Torjedahl, that they could not but
think themselves at home.
“This will do,” said Torkel, at last, who apparently had recognised some
well-known landmark, “we shall soon find a night’s lodging now, and a
kind welcome into the bargain.”
The track into which he had struck, did not at first appear more inviting
than any of the numerous cattle-paths which they hitherto passed on their
way; but Torkel followed it with a confidence which, as it turned out,
was not misplaced; for it soon widened out into a broad green glade, at
the further end of which stood a sœter of no mean pretensions.
The portions of cultivated and inhabited land in Norway are almost always
mere strips, the immediate banks of rivers or of lakes—most of them are
actually bounded by the forest; and in no case is the wild unenclosed
country at any great distance from them. Every farm, therefore, has, as
a necessary portion of its establishment, its sœter, or mountain pasture,
to which every head of cattle is driven as soon as the grass has sprung,
in order to allow the meadows of the lower farms to be laid up for hay.
At these it is often a very difficult thing to get a mess of milk in the
summer, for almost all the cheese and butter of the kingdom is made at
the sœters. They are generally abundantly stocked with dairy furniture,
but, as they are abandoned in the winter, they seldom exhibit any great
amount of luxury. They consist generally of rude log-huts, of sufficient
solidity, no doubt, for these logs are whole trunks of pines roughly
squared and laid upon one another, morticed firmly at the corners, but
of very little comfort indeed, notwithstanding. They contain generally a
single room, a chimneyless fire-place, and a mud floor, in most places
sufficiently dirty, with a few sheds and pens surrounding the main hut.
The present sœter, however, was one of far greater pretensions, it
was built of sawn timber, and boasted of an upper floor, implying, of
necessity, a separation between human beings who could climb a ladder,
and cows and pigs who could not. This projected some two or three feet
on every side beyond the lower storey, forming at once a shade and a
shelter for the cattle, according as the weather required one or the
other, and, in its turn, was crowned with a low-pitched shingled roof,
whose eaves had another projection of two or three feet, so that, seen
end on end, it had the appearance of a gigantic mushroom standing on
its stalk. The dairymen had been men of taste as well as of leisure,
for the barge-boards which protected its gables were ingeniously carved
and painted with texts from Scripture, and the heavy corners of the
projecting upper storey terminated in pendants no less grotesque than
elaborate. There was one window in each gable and two in the side, the
sills of which had been planed and painted with some date, text, or
motto, like the barge-boards.
Round these sœters there are generally some patches of enclosed ground
where hay is made, or where the more tender of the herds or flocks are
protected, but here there seemed to be a complete farm; full forty
acres had been redeemed from the forest, and enclosed by the peculiar
fence of the country; which, except that it is straight, is in its
general appearance not unlike the snake fences of America. It is formed
by planting posts in the ground by pairs at small distances between
pair and pair, and then heaping a quantity of loose planks and stems,
and any other refuse timber which comes to hand, between them, the tops
being kept firm by a ligature of birch-bark or some such material. These
fences, when they begin to rot, which they do very soon, are the harbour
of all sorts of small vermin, and are, in fact, the great eye-sores of
Swedish scenery.
In the present instance, this was pre-eminently the case; not only the
fences, but everything else, was in a terrible state of disrepair—in
many places the posts were gone, in others the birch ropes had rotted
through, and the miscellaneous timber which had formed the fence was
lying about entwined with a spiry growth of creepers and brambles, a mass
of rottenness. The house itself was in a more promising state; it was
evident that it had been partially repaired and put in order, and that
very recently, for many of the timbers showed by their white gashes, the
recent marks of the axe, and the axe which had made them was lying across
the door sill.
Torkel lifted the latch—that was easy, for there was no bolt or lock to
prevent him—but the place was evidently uninhabited—he looked on Tom with
a face of disappointment.
“Faith!” said he, “this is too bad. Torgenson told me that the Soberud
party were to drive their cattle to the fjeld on Thursday last, and the
weather has been as fine as fine can be. Well! there is no trusting
people.”
“There is no trusting Torgenson’s daughter, at all events,” said Tom,
“for I suspect it was from her that you had the information; Lota is
much too pretty to be trusted further than you can see her; and I have
no doubt she made some excuse herself for not coming last Thursday. It
was natural enough too; of course she would not like to come to the sœter
before young Svensen sailed.”
“The Thousand take young Svensen, and you too!” said Torkel, turning
round as sharply as if Tom had bitten him in earnest, but catching a grin
upon the latter’s countenance which he had not time to dismiss, looked
very much as if he meditated making him pay for his ill-timed joke, when
a loud, clear voice was heard in the glade below, making the leafy arches
of the old forest ring with the ballad of master Olaf—
“Master Olaf rode forth ere the dawn of day,
And came where the elf folk were dancing away,
The dances so merry,
So merry in the green-wood.”
Torkel stopped to listen, and Tom laughed.
“The elf father put forth his white hand, and quoth he,
Master Olaf stand forth, dance a measure with me,
The dances so merry,
So merry in the green-wood.”
“Here they come at last,” said Tom; “pretty Lota is not half so false
as you thought her, Torkel. The _Haabet_ has sailed, I suppose,” added
he, in a stage whisper. Torkel, however was much too happy to pay the
smallest attention to his malicious insinuations, but took up the song
for himself. Whether Lota put any particular meaning on the words of it,
we will not take upon ourselves to say—
“And neither I will, and neither I may,
For to-morrow it is my own wedding-day,”
shouted he, at the full pitch of his voice, while the whole party took up
the chorus—
“The dances so merry,
So merry in the green-wood.”
By this time the approaching party had emerged from the forest, and came
along the glade in an irregular procession, putting one in mind of the
Nemorins and Estelles of ancient pastorals, and all the more so from
their picturesque costumes. The men wore certainly absurdly short round
jackets, but they had rows of silver buttons on them, and brown short
trousers worked with red tape, very high in the waistband, to match the
jacket, but coming down no further than the calf of the leg, which was
ornamented with bright blue stockings, with crimson clocks.
The women had all of them red kerchiefs on their heads, the ends of
which hung down their backs, and red or yellow bodices with great silver
brooches on them, and blue petticoats trimmed with red or yellow. Both
sexes adorn themselves with all the silver they can collect; the men’s
shirt buttons are sometimes as big as a walnut, and on gala days they
will wear three or four of them strung one under another.
All the party were loaded with the utensils necessary for following their
occupations in the fjeld; the women were carrying the pails, while the
men’s loads, which consisted of all sorts of heterogeneous articles, were
topped with the great iron kettles in which they simmer their milk, after
the Devonshire fashion, in order to collect the whole of the cream.
There were little carts, too, that is to say, baskets placed upon two
wheels and an axle, and drawn by little cream-coloured ponies; stout,
stubby little beasts, very high crested, and with black manes and
tails—the former hogged, the latter peculiarly full and flowing. A Swede
generally values his horse according to the quantity of hair on his tail.
These were loaded—it did not take much to load them—with meal for the
summer’s gröd, and strings of flad bröd, a few sheep skins, particularly
dirty, though in very close proximity to the provisions,—and now and then
the black kettle, which its owner was too lazy to carry. Then came the
goats and sheep, and the little cows following like dogs, now and then
stopping to take a bite, when the turf looked particularly sweet and
tempting—little fairy cows were they, much smaller than our Alderneys,
finer in the bone, and more active on their legs; they looked as if they
had a cross of the deer in them. They were all of one colour—probably
that of the original wild cattle—a sort of dirty cream colour,
approaching to dun, and almost black on the legs and muzzle.
The party was a combined one, and was bound eventually to several other
sœters besides this, but they had agreed to make their first night’s halt
in Torgenson’s pasture, and beside the regular herdsmen and dairymaids,
as many supernumeraries as can possibly find excuse for going, accompany
the first setting out of the expedition, which is always looked upon in
the light of a holiday and a merry-making.
And a holiday and a merry-making it seemed to be, judging by the shouts,
and screams, and laughter, and rude love-making that was going on among
the gentle shepherds and shepherdesses of the north; but, for all that,
there was a good deal of real work too. Sœter-life may be a life of
pleasure, but it certainly is anything but a life of ease.
The Soberud division, bestial as well as human, evidently seemed to
consider themselves quite at home; and the cows belonging to it, which
looked as if they recognised the old localities, roamed at liberty;
but the parties bound to the more distant mountains were occupied in
hobbling, and tethering, and knee-haltering their respective charges,
mindful of their morrow’s march and of the difficulty of collecting
cattle and even sheep, which, except that they keep together, are just as
bad, from among the intricacies of a strange forest. Some were forming
temporary pounds, by effecting rude repairs in the dilapidated fences,
chopping and hewing, for that purpose, great limbs of trees and trees
themselves, with as little concern as, in England, men might cut thistles.
Streams of blue smoke began now to steal up through the trees, and fires
began to glimmer in the evening twilight, while the girls brought in
pail after pail of fresh milk, and swung their kettles, gipsy fashion,
and, opening their packages, measured out, with careful and parsimonious
foresight, the rye-meal that was to thicken it into gröd. Meal is
precious in the mountains, though milk is not.
Whether the _Haabet_ had sailed, or what had become of poor Svensen, did
not transpire; but certain it was that the damsels from Soberud, after
looking in vain for their mistress, were obliged, that evening, to act
on their own discretion—and equally certain it was that the Parson,
whose knife had been inconsiderately lent to Torkel on the preceding
day, was obliged to eat his broiled gjep with two sticks, the knife and
the fortunate individual in whose pocket it was, being, for the time,
invisible.