women, past whose house an eccentric old bachelor used to walk every
day at a certain hour. When he came back from his walk, he always
stopped at their house and drank a cup of coffee. This he had done for
a great many years. "He was their watch to tell the time by," and when
he first passed the house they began to make the coffee, that it
should be ready on his return. At last he fell ill and died, and two
of these old women were hired to sit up one night and watch the
corpse. It is the custom in Norway to keep all dead bodies one week
before burial, if not in the house where they have died, then in the
chapel at the graveyard. "When we do die on a Wednesday, we shall not
be buried till another Wednesday have come," said the niece,
explaining this custom.
These old women were sitting in the room with the corpse, talking and
sipping hot coffee together, and saying how they should miss him; that
never more would he go by their house and stop to get his coffee.
"At any rate, he shall taste the coffee once more," said one of them,
and she put a spoonful of the hot coffee into the corpse's lips, at
which the old gentleman stirred, drew a long breath, and began to lift
himself up, upon which the women uttered such shrieks that the city
watchman, passing by, broke quickly into the house, to see what was
the matter. Entering the room, he found the watchers senseless on the
floor, and the corpse sitting bolt upright in his coffin, looking
around him, much bewildered. "And he did live many years after that
time,--many, many years. My aunt did know him well," said the niece.
Other of her stories were of the sort common to the whole
world,--stories of the love, sorrow, tragedy, mystery, which are
inwoven in the very warp and woof of human life; the same on the bleak
North Sea coast as on bright Southern shores. It seemed, however, a
little more desolate to have lived in the sunless North seventy years
of such life as had been dealt to one Bergen woman, who had but just
passed away. Seventy years she had lived in Bergen, the last thirty
alone, with one servant. In her youth she had been beautiful; and when
she was still little more than a child had come to love very dearly
the eldest son in a neighbor's house. Their parents were friends; the
young people saw each other without restraint, familiarly, fondly, and
a great love grew up between them. They were suffered to become
betrothed, but for some unassigned reason their marriage was
forbidden. For years they bore with strange patience their parents'
apparently capricious decision. At last the blow fell. One of the
fathers, lying at the point of death, revealed a terrible secret. This
faithful betrothed man and woman were own brother and sister. The
shame of two homes, the guilt of two unsuspected wrong-doers, was
told; the mystery was cleared up, and more than one heart broken.
Bitter as was the grief of the two betrothed, who could now never wed,
there must have been grief still more terrible in the hearts of those
long ago wedded, and so long deceived. The father died as soon as he
had confessed the guilty secret. The young man left Norway, and died
in some far country. The girl lived on,--lived to be seventy,--alone
with her sorrow and disgrace.
Two other Bergen lovers had had better fate. Spite of fathers and
mothers who had forbidden them to meet, it fell out for them to be
safely married, one night, in the very teeth of the closest watching.
The girl was permitted to go, under the escort of a faithful
man-servant, to a wedding dance at a friend's house. The man-servant
was ordered to stand guard at the door, till the dance was over; if
the lover appeared, the girl was to be instantly taken home. Strange
oversight, for parents so much in earnest as that, to forget that
houses have more than one door! When the mirth was at its height, the
girl stole away by the back door, and fled to her lover. At length the
dance was over, and the guests were leaving; anxiously the faithful
servitor, who had never once left the doorstep, looked for his young
mistress. The last guest departed; his mistress did not appear. In
great terror he entered; the house was searched in vain; no one knew
when she had taken her leave. Trembling, he ran back to the father
with the unwelcome news; and both going in hot haste to the lover's
house, there they found the two young people sitting gay and happy
over cake and wine, with the excellent clergyman who had that very
hour made them man and wife.
The old lady had a firm and unalterable belief in ghosts, as indeed
she had some little right to have, one was forced to admit, after
hearing her stories. "And could you believe that after a man is dead
he should be seen again as if he were alive?" said the niece. "My aunt
is so sure, so sure she have seen such; also my aunt's sister, they
did both did see him."
At one time the two sisters hired a house in Bergen, and lived
together. In one of the upper halls stood a small trunk, which had
been left there by a sailor, in payment of a debt he had owed to the
owner of the house. One day, in broad daylight, there suddenly
appeared, before the younger sister, the shape of a man in sailor's
dress. He walked toward her, holding out a paper. She spoke to him
wonderingly, asking what he wanted. At the sound of her voice he
vanished into thin air. She fainted, and was for some weeks seriously
ill. A few months later, the same figure appeared in the bedroom of
the eldest sister (the old lady who told these stories). He came in
the night, and approached her bed holding out a white paper in his
hands. "My aunt say she could cut the shape in paper like the hat he
wore on his head; she did see it so plain to-day as she have seen it
then, and it shall be fifty years since he did come by her bed. She
was so scared she would not have the trunk of the sailor to stand in
the house longer; and after the trunk had gone away he did come no
more to their house."
Another instance of this ghost-seeing was truly remarkable, and not so
easily explained by any freak of imagination. Walking, one day, in a
public garden, with a friend, she saw coming down the path toward them
a singular old woman in a white nightcap and short white
bedgown,--both very dirty. The old woman was tossing her arms in the
air, and behaving so strangely that she thought she must be drunk, and
turned laughingly to her friend, about to say, "What can be the matter
with this old woman?" when, to her surprise, she saw her friend pale,
fainting, ready to fall to the ground. She seized her in her arms,
called for help, and carried her to a seat. On returning to
consciousness, her friend exclaimed, "It was my mother! It was my
mother!" The mother had been dead some months, had always worn in her
illness this white cotton nightcap and short bedgown, and had been, it
seemed, notoriously untidy.
"Now my aunt did never see that old woman in all her life," continued
the niece. "So what think you it was, in that garden, that both them
did see the same thing at one time? And my aunt's friend she get so
very sick after that, she were sick in bed for a long time. My aunt
will believe always she did see the mother's ghost; and she says she
have seen a great many more that she never tells to anybody."
All this ghost-seeing has not sobered or saddened the old lady a whit,
and she looks the last person in the world to whom sentimental or
mischief-making spirits would be likely to address themselves: but
there is certainly something uncanny, to say the least of it, in these
experiences of hers.
One of the most novel pleasures in Bergen is old-silver hunting. There
are shops where old silver is to be bought in abundance and at dear
prices: old belts, rings, slides, buttons, brooches, spoons, of quaint
and fantastic styles, some of them hundreds of years old. But the
connoisseur in old-silver hunting will not confine his search for
treasures to the large shops on the thoroughfares. He will roam the
city, keeping a sharp eye for little boxes tucked up on walls of
houses, far down narrow lanes and by-ways,--little boxes with glass
sides, and a silver spoon or two, or an old buckle or brooch, shining
through. This is the sign that somewhere in that house he will come on
a family that has tucked away in some closet a little box of old
silver that they will sell. Often they are workers in silver in a
small way; have a counter in the front parlor, and a tiny work-room
opening out behind, where they make thin silver spoons with twisted
handles, and brooches with dangling disks and crosses, such as all the
peasant women wear to-day, and a hundred years hence their
grandchildren will be selling to English and American travellers as
"old silver." The next century, however, will not gather such
treasures as this one; there is no modern silver to compare with the
ancient. It is marvellous to see what a wealth of silver the old
Norwegians wore: buckles and belts which are heavy, buttons which
weigh down any cloak, and rings under which nineteenth-century
fingers, and even thumbs, would ache. And the farther back we go the
weightier become the ornaments. In the Museum of Northern Antiquities
in Copenhagen are necklaces of solid gold, which it seems certain that
noble Norwegian women wore in King Olaf's time,--necklaces in shape of
a single snake, coiled, so heavy that they are not easily lifted in
one hand; bracelets, also of the same snake shape, which a modern
wrist could not wear half an hour without pain.
In these out-of-the-way houses where old silver is to be bought one
sees often picturesque sights. Climbing up a narrow stairway, perhaps
two, you find a door with the upper half glass, through which you look
instantly into the bosom of the family,--children playing, old ladies
knitting, women cooking; it seems the last place in the world to come
shopping; but at the first glimpse of the foreign face and dress
through the window, somebody springs to open the door. They know at
once what it means. You want no interpreter to carry on your trade:
the words "old silver" and "how much?" are all you need. They will not
cheat you. As you enter the room, every member of the family who is
sitting will rise and greet you. The youngest child will make its
little bow or courtesy. The box of old silver will be brought out and
emptied on a table, and you may examine its miscellany as long as you
like. If an article pleases you, and you ask its price, it is taken
into the work-room to be weighed; a few mysterious Norsk words come
back from the weigher, and the price is fixed. If you hesitate at the
sum, they will lower it if they can; if not, they will await your
departure quietly, with a dignity of hospitable instinct that would
deem it an offence to betray any impatience. I had once the good luck
to find in one of these places a young peasant woman, who had come
with her lover to bargain for the silver-and-gilt crown without which
no virtuous Bergen bride will wed. These crowns are dear, costing
often from fifty to a hundred dollars. Sometimes they are hired for
the occasion; but well-to-do families have pride in possessing a crown
which is handed down and worn by generation after generation. These
lovers were evidently not of the rich class: they wore the plainest of
clothes, and it was easy to see that the prices of the crowns
disquieted them. I made signs to the girl to try one of them on. She
laughed, blushed, and shook her head. I pressed my entreaties as well
as I could, being dumb; but "Oh, do!" is intelligible in all
languages, if it is enforced by gesture and appealing look. The old
man who had the silver to sell also warmly seconded my request, lifted
the crown himself, and set it on the girl's head. Turning redder and
redder, she cried, "Ne, ne!" but did not resist; and once the crown
was on her head she could not leave off looking at herself in the
glass. It was a very pretty bit of human nature. The lover stole up
close behind her, shy, but glowing with emotion, reached up, and just
touched the crown timidly with one finger: so alike are men in love
all the world over and all time through. The look that man's face wore
has been seen by the eyes of every wife since the beginning of Eden,
and it will last the world out. I slipped away, and left them standing
before the glass, the whole family crowding around with a chorus of
approving and flattering exclamations. Much I fear she could not
afford to buy the crown, however. There was a hopeless regret in her
pretty blue eyes. As I left the house I stepped on juniper twigs at
the very next door; the sidewalk and the street were strewn thick with
them, the symbol of death either in that home or among its friends.
This is one of the most simple and touching of the Norwegian customs:
how much finer in instinct and significance than the gloomy streamer
of black crape used by the civilization calling itself superior!
The street was full of men and women going to and from the
market-place: women with big wooden firkins strapped on their backs,
and a firkin under each arm (these firkins were full of milk, and the
women think nothing of bringing them in that way five or six miles);
men with big sacks of vegetables strapped on in the same way, one
above another, almost as high as their heads. One little girl, not
nine years old, bore a huge basket of green moss, bigger than herself,
lashed on her fragile shoulders. The better class brought their things
in little two-wheeled carts, they themselves mounted up on top of
sacks, firkins, and all; or, if the cart were too full, plodding along
on foot by its side, just as bent as those who were carrying loads on
their back. A Bergen peasant man or woman who stands upright is a rare
thing to see. The long habit of carrying burdens on the back has given
them a chronic stoop, which makes them all look far older than they
are.
The sidewalks were lined with gay displays of fruit, flowers, and
wooden utensils. Prettiest among these last were the bright wooden
trunks and boxes which no Norwegian peasant will be without. The
trunks are painted bright scarlet, with bands and stripes of gay
colors; small boxes to be carried in the hand, called _tines_
(pronounced teeners), are charming. They are oval, with a high perch
at each end like a squirrel trap; are painted bright red, with wreaths
of gay flowers on them, and mottoes such as "Not in every man's garden
can such flowers grow," or, "A basket filled by love is light to
carry." Bowls, wooden plates, and drinking-vessels, all of wood, are
also painted in gay colors and designs, many of which seem to have
come from Algiers.
Everybody who can sell anything, even the smallest thing, runs, or
stands, or squats in the Bergen streets to sell it. Even spaces under
high doorsteps are apparently rented for shops, rigged up with a sort
of door, and old women sit crouching in them, selling blueberries and
dark bread. One man, clad in sheepskin that looked a hundred years
old, I saw trying to sell a bit of sheepskin nearly as old as that he
was wearing; another had a basket with three bunches of wild
monkshood, pink spiræa, and blue larkspur, and one small saucer full
of wild strawberries; boys carrying one pot with a plant growing in
it, or a tub of sour milk, or a string of onions, or bunch of juniper
boughs; women sitting on a small butter-tub upside down, their butter
waiting sale around them in tubs or bits of newspaper, they knitting
for dear life, or sewing patches on ragged garments; other groups of
women sitting flat on the stones, surrounded by piles of juniper,
moss, green heath, and wreaths made of kinni-kinnick vines, green
moss, and yellow flowers. These last were for graves. The whole
expression of the scene was of dogged and indomitable thriftiness, put
to its last wits to turn a penny and squeeze out a living. Yet nobody
appeared discontented; the women looked friendly, as I passed, and
smiled as they saw me taking out my note-book to write them down.
The Bergen fish-market is something worth seeing. It isn't a market at
all; or rather it is a hundred markets afloat and bobbing on water, a
hundred or more little boats all crowded in together in an armlet of
the sea breaking up between two quays. To see the best of it one must
be there betimes in the morning, not later than seven. The quays will
be lined with women, each woman carrying a tin coal-scuttle on her
arm, to take home her fish in. From every direction women are coming
running with tin scuttles swinging on their arms; in Bergen, fish is
never carried in any other way. The narrow span of water between the
quays is packed as close as it can be with little boats shooting among
the sloops and _jagts_, all pushing up to the wharf. The steps leading
down to the water are crowded with gesticulating women; screaming and
gesticulating women hang over the railings above, beckoning to the
fishermen, calling to them, reaching over and dealing them sharp
whacks with their tin scuttles, if they do not reply. "Fisherman! I
say, Fisherman! Do you hear me or not?" they shout. Then they point to
one particular fish, and insist on having it handed up to them to
examine; if it does not please them, they fling it down with a jerk,
and ask for another. The boats were full of fish: silver-skinned
herring, mackerel, salmon, eels, and a small fish like a perch, but of
a gorgeous dark red color; others vermilion and white, or iridescent
opal, blue, and black; many of them writhing in death, and changing
color each second. Every few minutes a new boat would appear darting
in, wriggling its way where it had seemed not one boat more could
come; then a rush of the women to see what the new boat had brought,
a fresh outburst of screams and gesticulations; then a lull and a
sinking back to the noisy monotone of the previous chaffering. Some of
the boats were rowed by women,--splendid creatures, in gay red bodices
and white head-dresses, standing with one foot on the seat, and
sculling their little craft in and out, dexterously shoving everybody
to make way.
On the wharf were a few dealers with stands and baskets of fish; these
were for the poorer people. "Fish that have died do be to be brought
there," said my guide, with a shudder and an expressive grimace, "for
very little money; it is the poor that take." Here were also great
tubs of squirming eels, alive in every inch from tip to tip. "Too
small to cook," said one woman, eying them contemptuously; and in a
twinkling she thrust her arm into the squirming mass, grasped a dozen
or more at once, lifted them out and flirted them into the seller's
face, then letting them fall back with a splash into the tub, "H'm,
pretty eels those are!" she said. "Put them back into the water with
their mothers:" at which a great laugh went up, and the seller
muttered something angrily which my guide would not translate for me.
On our way home I stopped to look at a group of peasant women in gay
costumes. Two of them were from the Hardanger county, and wore the
beautiful white head-dress peculiar to that region: a large triangular
piece of fine crimped dimity pinned as closely as a Quaker cap around
the face; the two corners then rolled under and carried back over a
wooden frame projecting several inches on each side the head; the
central point hanging down behind, over the shoulders,--by far the
most picturesque of all the Norwegian head-dresses. A gentleman
passing by, seeing my interest in these peasant dresses, spoke to the
friend who was with me, whom he knew slightly, and said that if the
American lady would like to examine one of those peasant costumes he
had one which he would be happy to show to me.
The incident is worth mentioning as a fair illustration of the quick,
ready, and cordial good-will of which Norwegians are full. Is there
any other country in the world where a man would take that sort and
amount of trouble for a chance traveller, of whom he knew nothing?
This Norwegian led us to his house, and opened two boxes in which were
put away the clothes of his wife, who had been dead two years. This
peasant costume which he showed to us she had had made to wear to the
last ball she had attended. It was a beautiful costume; strictly
national and characteristic, and made of exquisite materials. The belt
was of silver-gilded links, with jewels set in them; the buttons for
wrists and throat of the white blouse were of solid silver, with gold
Maltese crosses hanging from them; the brooches and vest ornaments the
same; the stomacher of velvet, embroidered thick with beads and gold;
the long white apron with broad lace let in. All were rich and
beautiful. It was strange to see the dead woman's adornments thus
brought out for a stranger to admire; but it was done with such
simplicity and kindliness that it was only touching, as no shadow of
disrespect was in it. I felt instantly, like a friend, reverent toward
the relics of the woman I had never seen.
One of our pleasantest Bergen days was a day that wound up with a
sunset picnic on the banks of a stray bit of sea, which had gone so
far on its narrow roadway east, among hill and meadow and rock, that
it was like an inland lake; and the track by which its tides slipped
back and forth looked at sunset like little more than a sunbeam,
broader and brighter than the rest which were slanting across. We had
come to it by several miles' driving to the north and east, over steep
and stony hills, up which the road wound in loops, zigzagging back and
forth, with superb views out seaward at every turn; at the top,
another great sweep of view away from the sea, past a desolate lake
and stony moor, to green hills and white mountains in the east. We
seemed above everything except the snow-topped peaks. At our feet, to
the west, lay the little sunny fjord; green meadows and trees and a
handful of houses around it; daisies and clover and tangles of
potentilla by the roadside; clumps of ragged robin also, which goes
better named in Norway, being called "silken blossom;" mountain ash,
larch, maple, and ash trees: bowlders of granite covered with mosses
and lichens, bedded on every side,--it was as winning a spot as sun
and sea and summer could make anywhere. On the edge of the fjord,
lifted a little above it, as on a terrace, was a small white cottage,
with a bit of garden, enclosed by white palings, running close to the
water. Roses, southernwood, currants, lilacs, cherry-trees, potatoes,
and primroses filled it full. We leaned over the paling and looked. An
old woman, with knitting in her hand, came quickly out, and begged us
to come in and take some flowers. No sooner had we entered the garden
than a second old woman came hurrying with scissors to cut the
flowers; and in a second more a third old woman with a basket to hold
them. It was not easy to stay their hands. Then, nothing would do but
we must go into the house and sit down, and see the brothers: two old
men, one a clergyman, the other stone blind. "I can English read in my
New Testament," said the clergyman, "but I cannot understand." "Yes,
to be sure," said the blind brother, echoing him. And it was soon
evident to us that it was not only sight of which the old man had been
bereft; his wits were gone too; all that he could do now was to echo
in gentle iteration every word that his brother or sisters said. "Yes,
to be sure," was his instantaneous comment on every word spoken. "I
think they are all just a little crazy. I am more happy now that we
are away," said my friend, as we departed with our roses. "I do know I
have heard that to be crazy is in that family." Crazy or not, they
were a very happy family on that sunny terrace, and sane enough to
have chosen the loveliest spot to live in within ten miles of Bergen.