THE HOMESTEAD.
“’Tis a homestead that scarce has an equal,
Plenteous in wood and corn-fields, with rich grassy meadow and moorland—
This won my father, long since, in wedding the farmer’s fair daughter;
Here, at length he grew old, like a summer’s eve calmly declining,
Here he spent the best years of his life, and dwelt like a king, amid
plenty.
Servants he had by the score—men servants to plough with the oxen,
And maids in the house besides, and children, the joy of their mother—
Thus sowing and reaping, in comfort, from season to season, abode he,
Envied by all around—but having the good will of all men.”—
_The Elk Hunters—Runeberg._
Sunrise found the whole bivouac in a stir; the habits of the Norwegian
are always early—at least in the summer time—and many of the parties had
to travel to the yet distant sœters and wilder uplands: cows are not very
fast travellers, and the load which a dairyman carries on his back when
he is bound to those fjelds, which are inaccessible to carts, is by no
means a light one: ponies sometimes carry the heavier loads, but this is
not often, as they are useless in the fjeld life, and in the summer are
generally wanted for posting, as well as for agricultural purposes; the
loads are generally carried by the men—sometimes by the women even,—and
the milk-kettle which crowns the pack is alone a weight which few would
like to carry far, even on level ground.
The white smoke was already curling about the trees in long thin columns,
and the girls were already bringing in their pails of new milk, a very
fair proportion of which would be consumed with the morning’s gröd, which
was already bubbling in the kettles.
Gröd, in high life, means all sorts of eatables that are semi-liquid;
but in the fjeld it is invariably made thus: the water is heated in the
great milk-kettle to a galloping boil, and its temperature is raised to
a still higher point by the addition of salt; meal, generally rye-meal,
is then thinly sprinkled into it, the great art being to separate the
particles, so as to prevent them from forming lumps. As soon as the
contents of the kettle are thick enough for the bubbles to make little
pops, the gröd is taken off the fire and served up with milk. When that
milk is fresh, no one need desire a better breakfast; but when, as is
generally the case, they mix it with milk that has been purposely kept
till it is curdled over with incipient corruption, in which state they
prefer it, it is as disgusting a mess as ever attained the dignity of a
popular dish.
In the present instance they were obliged to put up with fresh milk, no
other being procurable; and the fishermen, having grilled the remains of
their gjep (an especial delicacy), and added to it some of the contents
of their havresacs, sent a deputation, headed by Birger, to invite Miss
Lota and her hand-maidens to partake of their breakfast. This was a
proceeding which Torkel regarded with very questionable pleasure. He
was flattered, no doubt, at the attentions paid to his lady-love by the
fishermen, who could not speak Norske; but, at the same time, was rather
jealous of those of Birger, who could.
Lota, however, was in no way disconcerted; she came smiling and blushing,
indeed, but without any sort of affectation or bashfulness, and listened
graciously, and without laughing, to the blundering compliments paid her
by the Englishmen; and without any great amount of coquetry, considering
the rarity of guardsmen in the Tellemark, to the tender elegance of the
Swede. Torkel had very good reason to be proud of her, and none at all to
be jealous, particularly as the knapsacks were already packed up for the
march.
The fishermen were in no particular hurry: the track to Soberud was
perfectly known; even if the droves of cows and the flocks of sheep
that had come up it the day before had not already marked it very
sufficiently. The way was not long either, for it was but a day’s journey
to the herds; the breaking up of the bivouac was very picturesque; Lota
was very pretty, and Birger found her very entertaining. It is no wonder
that they lingered.
However, the shadows of the trees began to shorten. Party after party
came up with their merry “farvels;” the songs and the laughter, and the
tinkling of the bells, sounded fainter and fainter from under the arches
of the forest; and, last of all, the fishermen, reluctantly shouldering
their knapsacks, took their journey down the glade; with the exception of
Torkel, who, having something to adjust about his straps, was not exactly
ready, and in fact was not seen for a couple of hours afterwards. He did
not join them, indeed, till the party had made their first halt near the
banks of a mountain lake.
The halt was called somewhat sooner than usual, for the Captain, who,
with his gun in his hand and old Grog at his heels, was a little in
advance, and had first caught sight of the lake, had caught sight also of
an object floating quietly along in the middle of it, which his practised
eye at once assured him was that very rare and beautiful bird, the
northern diver.
He threw himself flat on the ground, an action in which he was implicitly
imitated by the rest of the party, who, though they had not seen the
bird, were quite aware that there was some good reason for the caution.
In truth, there are few birds more difficult to kill than the northern
diver; to the greatest watchfulness he unites the most wonderful
quickness of eye and motion, and, large as he is, he is fully able to
duck the flash, as it is called,—that is to say, to dive between the time
of seeing the flash and feeling the shot.
They retired a hundred yards or so and smoked the pipe of council, thus
giving Torkel the opportunity of coming up with them.
Torkel was well acquainted with the ground, as was natural, not only
because the lake was celebrated for ducks and the country round it for
tjäder, but also because it happened to lie on the mountain track between
his own home and Torgenson’s farm, a road which business (he did not
state of what nature) required him to travel very often.
His plan was founded on a well-known characteristic in the nature of
diving birds: during their dive they cannot breathe, and therefore on
rising to the surface for a moment or so, they cannot make any immediate
effort either to dive or to fly. He proposed, therefore, that the Captain
should conceal himself among the understuff, and that the rest, taking
different positions about the lake, which was not large, should break
twigs and slightly alarm the bird, who would naturally edge away toward
the point occupied by the Captain, and the object being a valuable prize,
an hour or so was not grudged, as there was plenty of time to spare. The
party having first reconnoitred their ground, marked the position to be
occupied by the Captain on the lee side of the lake, and ascertained
that the bird was still resting on the water, separated, taking a wide
circuit, lest they should alarm it prematurely.
The Captain, with his gun ready cocked, lay at full length on the top of
a little ledge of rock about six feet high, which sloped away from the
water, forming a sort of miniature cliff. It afforded very little cover
apparently—there was nothing between it and the water but a light fringe
of cranberry bushes—but the cover was perfect to a man in a recumbent
position, and the Captain being dressed entirely, cap and all, in Lowland
plaid, the most invisible colour in the world, looked, even if he had
been seen, like a piece of the rock on which he lay. This place had been
selected with forethought, for the bird is wonderfully suspicious, and
will not approach any strong cover at all.
For half an hour after the Captain had wormed himself to the edge of the
rock, the bird lay as still as if it had been asleep, which it certainly
was not; at the end of that time there was a quick turn of its neck, and
its eye was evidently glancing round the margin, but the body remained as
quiet and motionless as before; there was not a ripple on the water, and
it was only by observing the diminishing distance between it and a lily
leaf that happened to be lying on the surface, that even the practised
eye of the Captain could tell that it was in motion, and was nearing him
imperceptibly. There had been no sound, nor had the bird caught sight of
anything; but the Parson had come between it and the wind, and the light
air, that was not sufficient even to move the surface, had carried down
the scent.
The Parson had caught sight of the lily, as well as the Captain, and,
seeing the bird in motion, had halted, leaving it to the scent alone to
effect his purpose. But in a few minutes it was evident that the bird had
become stationary, having either drifted out of the stream of scent, or,
possibly, having imagined that it was now far enough from the suspected
shore.
A slight snapping of dry wood just broke the stillness; again that sharp,
anxious glance, and the imperceptible motion, was renewed; another
and another snap, and now the water seemed to rise against the bird’s
breast, and a slight wake to be left behind him,—but it was still that
same gliding motion, as if it were slipping through the water: at last,
when the distance was sufficiently great to secure against flying, a cap
was raised, and responded to by two or three hats at different places;
the bird had disappeared, while the calm, quiet water showed no trace
of anything having broken its surface. Half-a-dozen pair of eyes were
anxiously on the look-out, and long and long was it before the smallest
sign rewarded their vigilance. At last, and many hundred yards from the
point at which they had lost sight of it, a black spot was seen floating
on the water, as quietly and unconcernedly as if it had never been
disturbed. It was, however, a good way to the right of the line in which
they were endeavouring to drive it; the hats had disappeared, and for
ten minutes the lake was as quiet as if the eye of man had never rested
upon it. Then came again the glance, the move, the dive,—then an anxious
moment of watchfulness,—then a white puff of smoke and a stream of
hopping shot playing ducks and drakes across the water,—then the sharp,
ringing report, caught up and repeated by echo after echo,—and there
lay the bird, faintly stirring the surface, in the last struggles of
death,—and there was gallant old Grog, plunging into the lake, and making
the water foam before him in his eagerness. Four or five ducks, which had
hitherto been basking unseen among the stones, sprang into air; and a
flight of teal appeared suddenly whistling over the water, and, turning
closely and together as they came unawares within a dozen yards of the
Parson, received his right and left shots among them, and, with the loss
of three or four of their company, scattered hither and thither among the
trees.
“Hurrah, Grog!—bring him along, boy! bring him along!” shouted the
Captain; and on every side, instead of the quiet, gliding, creeping
figures, just peering about the understuff, were seen forms bounding and
tearing through the cover.
The prize was one which the Captain, a taxidermist and a veteran
collector, had long desired to possess, and great was the care with which
it was secured on the top of Jacob’s knapsack; it being entrusted to him,
as the most phlegmatic of the party and the least likely to be led away
by any excitement of sport,—for at last they had arrived into something
like shooting country: the character of the ground was more open and free
from timber than anything they had seen, and the understuff of whort and
cranberry was proportionally thicker and more luxuriant; it was ground
which a dog could quarter without any very great amount of difficulty,
particularly as it was absolutely free from brambles, and that furze was
unknown in those latitudes anywhere outside of a greenhouse.
It was more for the amusement of the thing, and for the sake of
ascertaining the resources of the country, that the party extended
themselves into a line and beat their way onwards, for it was too early
in the year for shooting anything but wild ducks. Game laws in Norway
exist, certainly, but are utterly disregarded; still the broods of
grouse were, as yet, too young to take care of themselves, and it would
have been sheer murdering the innocents to injure the grey hens, which,
into the bargain, are at this time not fit for eating. This proceeding
seemed very absurd to Torkel and to Tom, for a Norwegian has no idea of
preserving the game—in reality, he can eat and relish much that most
civilized people cannot; but, besides that, he is a selfish animal, and
the poor lean bird that he secures for himself in spring, is better than
the fine, fat, plump, autumnal one that he has left for his neighbour.
Hen after hen got up and tumbled away before the dogs, who were too well
broke to disturb her, had they even been deceived by her antics, but no
shot was fired to convert her pretence into reality. Now and then, it
must be confessed, when an old, selfish, solitary cock, as black as a
hat, and as glossy as a whole morning’s dressing could make him, whirred
off as if he cared for no one but himself and had not a wife or family in
the world, he paid the penalty of his selfishness, and fell fluttering on
the cranberries—deservedly, perhaps; at all events, he left no one behind
him to lament his fate, for the black-cock is a roving bird, and never
pairs: but no exclamations of Torkel’s could induce the English sportsmen
to sever the loves of the smaller description of grouse, and Birger,
though a Swede—for very shame—was obliged to imitate their forbearance.
But, every now and then, a blue Alpine hare was knocked over without
mercy; once an unlucky badger came to an untimely end, and, upon the
whole, the bags were getting quite as heavy as the men approved of, when
a light, graceful, elegant roe, for once in its life was caught napping,
though there had been noise enough, not only from shots, but from talking
also, along the whole line, to have awakened a far less watchful animal.
It sprang from a thicker piece of covering than common, which probably
had been the means of deluding it into staying, in the false hope that it
could possibly escape the keen scent of old Grog, whose flourishing tail
said as plainly as tail could speak (and dogs’ tails are very eloquent),
“look out, boys; I have got something here for you, this time, that is
worth having.”
Jacob was pretty well strung with hares, and remonstrated against the
additional load, which was finally slung around Torkel’s body like a
shoulder-belt, and he was dismissed at once with directions to follow the
path to Soberud, a place where he was well known, and to prepare, as well
as he could, for the reception of the party, and their provisioning.
Torkel undertook the mission readily enough, and went off gaily under a
load of game that would have been quite enough for a pony, casting back
a knowing look to Tom, who seemed perfectly to understand him, implying
that he had some project in his head by which he intended to astonish the
strangers.
The day wore on in this pleasant exercise—perhaps the halt for Middagsmad
might have been a long one, and the pipe after luxurious; in fact,
there is not so luxurious a couch in this sublunary world as a heap
of heather, and no sensation so luxuriously happy as that of basking,
half-tired, in the warm, pleasant sunshine, after a well-spent morning
of honest exercise, with our gun beside us, and our dogs half sleeping,
like ourselves, around us; but the sun was not a very great way from the
horizon when the party gained the first view of the village which was to
be their resting-place for the night.
The fjeld was not high, for it had been sloping away gradually to the
eastward ever since they left the high mountains which surround the Lake
of the Woods, but, as it almost always does, it terminated abruptly
in a sort of cliff, portions of which were precipitous, and the rest
extremely steep. The path which Torkel had taken, following the course
of a largish brook, had found an easy access to the valley, practicable
even for the carts of the country; but at the point at which they had
struck the valley, there was nothing for it but a stiff scramble down the
face of the hill, a proceeding which their loads rendered anything but
pleasant and easy. It was a beautiful scene that lay before them, and
perfectly different from anything they had seen before, though they had
been passing through scenery of wood and lake ever since they left the
Torjedahl.
In the present instance the broad, still lake, broad as it was, filled
up but half the amphitheatre of the wooded mountains. There was an ample
margin of cultivated land round it, fields rich with the promise of
autumn, and green quiet meadows; here and there a wooded spur shot out
from the frame of highlands, forming sometimes a cape or promontory in
the water, while, in return, narrow secluded valleys would wind back into
the recesses of the mountains, each with its own little brook and its
own secluded pastures. Besides the village, there were several detached
farmsteadings and scattered cottages, all looking trim and tidy and well
to do in the world, and through the middle of them ran a well-kept but
very winding road, with a broad margin of turf on each side. The fences
might have been a dissight a little nearer, for they were the post and
slab fence so common in the north, but, at the distance, they looked like
park paling; and the swing poles for opening the gates across the road,
formed a picturesque feature in the landscape.
Close by the lake-side was the church, a grey and weather-stained
building, which looked like one solid mass of timber, supporting on
its steeply-pitched and shingled roof, three round towers of different
heights, each surmounted with its cross. Dominating over the whole sat a
huge golden cock, which, newly gilded, glowed in the light of the setting
sun as if it were a supplementary sun itself. The houses of the village
were a good deal scattered, but, with the exception of the Præstgaard, or
parsonage, did not hold out any very magnificent hopes of accommodation
for the night.
This, however, was of little importance to men whose last night’s abode
had been the shelter of the thickest tree; and they proceeded, with very
contented minds, to descend the steep hill-side, in order to reach the
path they ought to have taken, which they now discovered, far below them,
winding along the edge of the cultivated ground.
“And now,” said the Captain, as they reached it and rallied their forces,
which had been a good deal scattered during the sharp descent, “where to
bestow ourselves for the night? I should like to sleep in a bed, if it
were only for the novelty of the thing; and here, in good time, comes
Torkel, who looks as if he had made himself pretty well at home already.”
Torkel, considerably smartened up—however he had contrived it—and
sporting a clean white shirt-front, like a pouter pigeon, with his
silver shirt buttons newly polished, came up the church path in close
conversation with a respectable, fatherly, well-to-do-in-the-world sort
of farmer, or huusbonde as he was called, in whom, as he introduced him
by the name of Torgensen, the fishermen recognized the father of the
pretty hostess of the sœter. Not one word of English could the good-man
speak, though he looked as like an honest rough-handed English farmer
as one man could look to another; but he wrung their hands, as if, like
Holger, he meant to test their manhood by their powers of endurance, and
smiled, and looked pleasant, which Torkel interpreted to mean that he
heartily desired to see the whole party under his hospitable roof that
night, and would be right glad to make them all drunk in honour of his
roof-tree. And poor Torkel looked so excessively happy, that it was easy
to see that, in spite of the _Haabet_ and her skipper, he had not only
sped in his wooing at the sœter, but had contrived to ingratiate himself
with the elders of the household.
A grand place was that homestead, which, hidden by a projecting point,
and occupying a secluded valley of its own, had hitherto escaped their
observation,—a good, snug, wealthy farm it really was, even as compared
to others in the country; but in Norway, so much cover is always wanted;
and building—at least timber building—is so cheap, that moderate-sized
farm-houses, with their appurtenances, are little villages; and the house
itself looks always larger than it is, as an habitation, because the
whole upper storey, frequently called the rigging loft, is invariably
used as a store-room for their provisions, and hides, and wool, and flax,
and apples, and sometimes corn, in the winter, and not unfrequently as a
ball-room, when they have eaten out sufficient space in it.
The house, like all the rest, a wooden building with a planked roof and
gabled ends, was unusually painted. Torgensen, in his youth, had himself
commanded the _Haabet_, and had traded in her for provisions and corn
along the coast of Scånia, and from it had imported Scånian fashions.
Instead of the deep, dull red, which harmonizes so well with the tints
of the country, he had painted his house in figures, blue, and yellow,
and white, and black, which had a singular, but, upon the whole, a
not unpleasant effect. Texts of Scripture in rough black letter, and
dates, and monograms of himself, and wife, and children, were written
under every window and every gable; and the barge-boards and ridge
timber-ends, were carved as elaborately and grotesquely as those of the
church.
There was but little delicacy in accepting Torgensen’s hospitality; his
house was large enough for a barrack, and its doors were as wide open as
those of an inn. A large room, that could not exactly be called kitchen,
hall, workshop, or dining-room, but served equally for any one of these
offices (and occasionally for a ball-room also, when the store-room
was too full to be used in that capacity), was open to all comers;
half-a-dozen boards, as thick almost as baulks of timber, and placed
upon trestles that might have supported the house, formed the principal
table; two great chairs, like thrones, elaborately carved, and looking
as if they required a steam-engine to move them, stood on a sort of
dais;—these are not uncommon pieces of furniture in old houses; they are
called grandfather and grandmother chairs, and are the seats of honour,
though very seldom occupied at all, unless the master and mistress of the
house are old enough to have lost their active habits. The more ordinary
seats were substantial benches, with or without backs, and three-legged
stools. Here and there was a great chest, a sort of expense magazine for
stowing away the wool, and the flax, and the skins, which were in process
of being converted into linen, wadmaal, or shoes, by the farm servants.
Over these a series of shelves, like an ancient buffet, containing pewter
drinking-vessels, large brass embossed plates with the bunch of grapes
from the promised land or the expulsion of Adam and Eve glittering upon
them in all the brightness of constant polish. Over these, again, were
slung a row of copper cauldrons and pots; and on the opposite side
a chest of drawers, carved and painted with grotesque figures, was
ornamented with heaps of blue and white dishes, and pewter dinner-plates,
and rows of brass candlesticks.
All this was beautifully clean and tidy, for the Norse men and women keep
all their cleanliness for their ships and houses, and waste none of it on
their persons.
A strong aromatic smell pervaded the whole room, from the fresh sprigs of
fir and juniper with which it was strewn every morning, as old English
halls were with rushes; it might indeed have well passed muster for
an English hall in the olden times, but for the absence of the great
gaping fire-place with its cozy chimney-corner and fire-side benches; the
place of all this was ill supplied by the pride of Torgensen’s heart,
which he pointed out before they had been in the room for five minutes,
and called his “pot-kakoluvne”—a great pyramidal heap of glazed tiles,
portraying Scripture subjects in Dutch costumes, and doing duty as a
stove. This being an importation from foreign parts was of course of
additional value; its pyramidal shape indicated Denmark as the country
of its manufacture, for in Sweden the corresponding piece of furniture
is cubical; and both are great improvements on the cast-iron stoves of
Norway, which get nearly red hot, dry and parch the skin, crack the
furniture, and fill the rooms with a description of gas, which, whatever
it may do to a native, ensures to the stranger a perpetual headache.
It is rare to find in Norway a farm, and consequently an establishment
of the size of Torgensen’s, though in Sweden it is common enough. The
Odal law, which enforces equal division of property among the children,
prevents any accumulation of territorial property, and will ultimately
reduce Norway to a population of agricultural peasants with a commercial
aristocracy. The homesteads of the old Norwegian nobility are deserted
and decaying, like their families, but Torgensen had been educated as a
merchant and shipowner, as elder sons frequently are, and having been
fortunate in his speculations, had been able to buy out his brothers, and
to keep up unimpaired the old hospitalities of his father’s mansion; and
thus fourteen or sixteen farm-servants, and as many girls, with, it must
be confessed, an indefinite number of children that had found themselves
by chance in the establishment without any fathers at all, sat daily
round that mass of timber which was called the meal-board (_mad borden_),
and supped their daily gröd and drank their daily brandy.
Although the head of so great an establishment, Frue[30] Kerstin—as
Madame Torgensen was usually called, though in truth she had no great
right to the title—did not consider herself exempt from household duties;
in fact she was but the principal housekeeper of the establishment, and
wore a bunch of keys big enough for an ordinary jail as a badge of this
distinction. It was not a very easy matter to catch her unprepared, for
frugality was by no means the order of the house; but this day was really
an exception to the general rule, and she saw with some dismay the party
which her husband was bringing home with him. Lota was at the sœter, and
with her were most of the young girls and, of course, their admirers.
There had been hay-making at the Præstgaard during the past week, and,
it being Saturday night, two-thirds of the remainder were dancing and
drinking there, and thus the party at the homestead being a small one,
the supper was none of the best. Good humour and real welcome, however,
supplied all deficiencies, which after all, were more in Frue Kerstin’s
imagination than in reality. The evening passed off admirably in songs
and conversation; Torkel was an evident favourite,—and indeed his manly
character, his ready stories and songs, his fine voice and constant and
cheerful good humour well entitled him to the distinction, to say nothing
of a broad strath in the higher Tellemark, and a lake, and a stream, and
a saw-mill, and a “hammer” as it was called, that is to say, a smelting
furnace for iron, to which, being the only son, he was undoubted heir, a
qualification which prudent parents are not apt to overlook; but he had
evidently risen in their esteem from the fact of his having brought such
popular characters as English gentlemen to the homestead, and from the
consideration with which those gentlemen treated him.
Torgensen might have been better pleased had more justice been done to
his brandy, which was real Cognac and admirable, and might have been a
little scandalized at the admixture of water, but his broad, jolly face
never lost that glow of good humour which made his guests feel they were
doing him a pleasure by drinking his brandy and eating his good cheer. A
lively conversation was kept up through Birger and Torkel till late at
night, and when the fishermen, having duly thanked their hostess, after
the customs of the country, retired to rest in the great square boxes of
fragrant poplar leaves, they sank into such a mass of eider down, that
told well for the _ci-devant_ attractions of the Lady Christina.