little hamlets and villages and clusters of houses, tucked in in nooks
among rocks and on rims of shore at the base of the high, stony walls
of mountains, and snugged away at the heads of inlets. Many of these
are places of summer resort for the Bergen people, who go out of town
into the country in summer, I fancy, somewhat as the San Francisco
people do, not to find coolness, but to find warmth; for the air in
these sheltered nooks and inlets of the fjords is far softer than it
is in Bergen, which has the strong sea wind blowing in its teeth all
the while. On Saturdays the steamers for the Hardanger country are
crowded with Bergen men going out to spend the Sunday with their
families or friends who are rusticating at these little villages. At
many of these spots there is no landing except by small boats; and it
was one of the pleasantest features of the sail, the frequent pausing
of the steamer off some such nook, and the putting out of the rowboats
to fetch or to carry passengers. They would row alongside, half a
dozen at a time, bobbing like corks, and the agile Norwegians would
skip in and out of and across them as deftly as if they were stepping
on firm floor. The Norwegian peasant is as much at home in a boat as a
snail in his shell,--women as well as men; they row, stand, leap,
gesticulate, lift burdens, with only a rocking plank between their
feet and fathomless water, and never seem to know that they are not on
solid ground. In fact, they are far more graceful afloat than on
ground: on the land they shuffle and walk in a bent and toil-worn
attitude, the result of perpetual carrying of loads on their backs;
but they bend to their oars with ease and freedom, and wheel and turn
and shoot and back their little skiffs with a dexterity which leaves
no room for doubt that they can do anything they choose on water. It
would not have astonished me, any day, to see a Norwegian coming
towards me in two boats at once, one foot in each boat, walking on the
water in them, as a man walks on snow in snow-shoes. I never did see
it, but I am sure they could do it.
When these boats came alongside, Bob peered wistfully over the
railings, but did not offer to stir. The connection between this new
variety of water craft and _terra firma_ he did not comprehend. But at
the first landing which we reached, he gazed for a moment intently,
and then bounded forward like a shot, across the gangway, in among the
crowd on the wharf, in a twinkling.
"Oh!" shrieked Sanna, "Bob is on shore!" And she rushed after him, and
brought him back, crestfallen. But he had learned the trick of it; and
after that, his knack at disappearing some minutes before we came to a
wharf--thereby luring us into a temporary forgetfulness of him--and
then, when we went to seek him, making himself invisible among the
people going on shore, was something so uncanny that my respect for
him fast deepened into an awe which made an odd undercurrent of
anxiety, mingling with my enjoyment of the beauties of the fjord. It
was strange, while looking at grand tiers of hills rising one behind
the other, with precipitous fronts, the nearer ones wooded, the
farther ones bare and stony, sometimes almost solid rock, walling the
beautiful green and blue water as if it had been a way hewn for it to
pass; shining waterfalls pouring down from the highest summits,
straight as a beam of light, into the fjord, sometimes in full
torrents dazzling bright, sometimes in single threads as if of
ravelled cloud, sometimes in a broken line of round disks of
glittering white on the dark green, the course of the water in the
intervals between being marked only by a deeper green and a sunken
line in the foliage,--it was strange, side by side with the wonder at
all this beauty, to be wondering to one's self also what Bob would do
next. But so it was hour by hour, all of our way up the Hardanger
Fjord, till we came, in the early twilight at half-past ten o'clock,
to Eide, our journey's end. The sun had set--if in a Norway summer it
can ever be truly said to set--two hours before, and in its slow
sinking had turned the mountains, first pink, then red, then to an
opaline tint, blending both pink and red with silver gray and white;
all shifting and changing so fast that the mountains themselves seemed
to be quivering beneath. Then, of a sudden, they lost color and turned
gray and dark blue. Belts and downstretching lines of snow shone out
sternly on their darkened summits; a shadowy half-moon rose above them
in the southeast, and the strange luminous night lit up the little
hamlet of Eide, almost light like day, as we landed.
At first sight Eide looked as if the houses, as well as the people,
had just run down to the shore to meet the boat: from the front
windows of the houses one might easily look into the cabin windows of
the boat,--so narrow strips of shore do the mountain walls leave
sometimes along these fjords, and such marvellous depth of water do
the fjords bring to the mountains' feet.
"Have you written for rooms? Where are you going? There isn't a bed in
Eide," were the first words that greeted us from some English people
who had left Bergen days before, and whom we never expected to see
again. The disappearing, reappearing, and turning up of one's
travelling acquaintances in Norway is one of the distinctive
experiences of the country. The chief routes of tourist travel are so
involved with each other, and so planned for exchange, interchange,
and succession of goers and comers, that the perpetual _rencontres_ of
chance acquaintances are amusing. It is like a performance of the
figures of a country-dance on a colossal scale, so many miles to a
figure; and if one sits down quietly at any one of the large inns for
a week, the great body of Norway tourists for that week will be pretty
sure to pass under his inspection.
At Holt's, in Bergen, one sees, say forty travellers, at breakfast,
any morning. Before supper at eight in the evening these forty have
gone their ways, and a second forty have arrived, and so on; and
wherever he goes during the following week he will meet detachments of
these same bands: each man sure that he has just done the one thing
best worth doing, and done it in the best way; each eloquent in praise
or dispraise of the inns, the roads, and the people, and ready with
his "Oh, but you must be sure to see" this, that, or the other.
There were those who sat up all night in Eide, that night, for want of
a bed; but Bob and we were well lodged in a pretty bedroom, with two
windows white-curtained and two beds white-ruffled to the floor, on
which were spread rugs of black-and-white goatskins edged with coarse
home-made blue flannel. In the parlor and the dining-room of the
little inn, carved book-cases and pipe-cases hung on the walls; ivies
trained everywhere; white curtains, a piano, black-worsted-covered
high-backed chairs, spotless table linen, and old silver gave an air
of old-fashioned refinement to the rooms, which was a surprise.
The landlady wore the peasant's costume of the Hardanger country: the
straight black skirt to the ankles, long white apron, sleeveless
scarlet jacket, with a gay beaded stomacher over a full white blouse,
shining silver ornaments at throat and wrists, and on her head the
elegant and dignified head-dress of fine crimped white lawn, which
makes the Hardanger wives by far the most picturesque women to be seen
in all Norway.
At seven in the morning a young peasant girl opened our bedroom door
cautiously to ask if we would have coffee in bed. Bob flew at her with
a fierce yelp, which made her retreat hastily, and call for
protection. Being sharply reproved by Sanna, Bob stood doggedly
defiant in the middle of the floor, turning his reproachful eyes from
her to the stranger, and back again, plainly saying, "Ungrateful one!
How should I know she was not an enemy? That is the way enemies
approach." The girl wore the peasant maiden's dress: a short black
skirt bound with scarlet braid, sewed to a short sleeveless green
jacket, which was little wider than a pair of suspenders between the
shoulders behind. Her full, long-sleeved white blouse came up high in
the throat, and was fastened there by two silver buttons with Maltese
crosses hanging from them by curiously twisted chains. Her yellow hair
was braided in two thick braids, and wound tight round her head like a
wreath. She had a fair skin, tender, honest blue eyes, and a face
serious enough for a Madonna. But she laughed when she brought us the
eggs for our breakfast, kept warm in many folds of linen napkin held
down by a great motherly hen of gray china with a red crest on its
head.
The house was a small white cottage; at the front door a square porch,
large enough to hold two tables and seats for a dozen people; opposite
this a vine-wreathed arch and gate led into a garden, at the foot of
which ran a noisy little river. An old bent peasant woman was always
going back and forth between the house and the river, carrying water
in two pails hung from a yoke on her shoulders. A bit of half-mowed
meadow joined the garden. It had been mowed at intervals, a little
piece at a time, so that the surface was a patchwork of different
shades of green. The hay was hung out to dry on short lines of fence
here and there. Grass is always dried in this way in Norway, and can
hang on the fences for two weeks and not be hurt, even if it is
repeatedly wet by rain. One narrow, straggling street led off up the
hillside, and suddenly disappeared as if the mountains had swallowed
it. The houses were thatched, with layers of birch bark put under the
boards; sods of earth on top; and flowers blooming on them as in a
garden. One roof was a bed of wild pansies, and another of a tiny pink
flower as fine as a grass; and young shoots of birch waved on them
both. The little river which ran past the inn garden had come down
from the mountains through terraced meadows, which were about half and
half meadow and terrace; stony and swampy, and full of hillocks and
hollows. New England has acres of fields like them; only here there
were big blue harebells and pink heath, added to clover and
buttercups, wild parsley and yarrow. On tiny pebbly bits of island
here and there in the brook grew purple thistles, "snow flake," and
bushes of birch and ash.
Bob rollicked in the lush grass, as we picked our way among the moist
hollows of this flowery meadow. In Sanna's hand dangled a bit of rope,
which he eyed suspiciously. She had brought it with her to tie him up,
when the hour should come for him to be carried on board the steamer.
He could not have known this, for he had never been tied up in his
life. But new dangers had roused new wariness in his acute mind: he
had distinctly heard the word "steamer" several times that morning,
and understood it. I said to him immediately after breakfast, "Bob,
you have to go home by the steamer this morning." He instantly crept
under the sofa, his tail between his legs, and cowered and crouched in
the farthest corner; no persuasions could lure him out, and his eyes
were piteous beyond description. Not until we had walked some distance
from the house, in a direction opposite to the steamer wharf, did he
follow us. Then he came bounding, relieved for the time being from
anxiety. At last Sanna, in a feint of play, tied the rope around his
neck. His bewilderment and terror were tragic. Setting all four feet
firmly on the ground, he refused to stir, except as he was dragged by
main force. It was plain that he would be choked to death before he
would obey. The rope project must be abandoned. Perhaps he could be
lured on board, following Sanna. Vain hope! Long before we reached the
wharf, the engine of the boat gave a shrill whistle. At the first
sound of it Bob darted away like the wind, up the road, past the
hotel, out of sight in a minute. We followed him a few rods, and then
gave it up. Again he had outwitted us. We walked to the steamer,
posted a letter, sat down, and waited. The steamer blew five
successive signals, and then glided away from the wharf. In less than
three minutes, before she was many rods off, lo, Bob! back again,
prancing around us with glee, evidently keeping his eye on the
retreating steamboat, and chuckling to himself at his escape.
"O Bob, Bob!" groaned Sanna. "What is to do with you?"
We were to set off for Vossevangen by carriage at three; at half-past
two poor Bob was carried, struggling, into the wood-shed, and tied up.
His cries were piteous, almost more than we could bear. I am sure he
understood the whole plot; but the worst was to come. By somebody's
carelessness, the wood-shed door was opened just as we were driving
away from the porch. With one convulsive leap and cry, Bob tore his
rope from the log to which it was tied, and darted out. The stable
boys caught him, and held him fast; his cries were human. Sanna buried
her face in her hands and exclaimed, "Oh, say to the driver that he go
so fast as he can!" And we drove away, leaving the poor, faithful,
loving creature behind, to be sent by express back to Bergen on the
steamer the next day. It was like leaving a little child alone among
strangers, heart-broken and terrified. When we returned to Bergen we
learned that he had touched neither food nor drink till he reached
home, late the next night.
To go from Eide to Vossevangen, one must begin by climbing up out of
Eide. It is at the bottom of a well, walled by green hills and
snow-topped mountains; at the top of the well the country spreads out
for a little, only to meet higher hills, higher mountains. Here lies a
great lake, rimmed by broad borders of reeds, which shook and
glistened in the wind and sun like the spears of half-drowned armies
as we passed. Clumps and groves of ash-trees on the shores of this
lake looked like huge clumsy torches set in the ground: their tops had
been cut down again and again, till they had grown as broad as they
were high. The leaves are used for the feed of sheep, and the boughs
for firewood; and as in the frugal Norwegian living nothing that can
be utilized is left to lie idle, never an ash-tree has the chance to
shoot up, become tall and full of leaf. Magpies flitted in and out
among them.
"One is for sorrow, and two are for joy, three must be a marriage, and
four do bring good fortune, we do say in Norway," said Sanna. "But I
think we shall have all sorrow and joy, and to be married many times
over, if it be true," she added, as the noisy, showy creatures
continued to cross our road by twos and threes.
High up on the hills, just in the edge of snow patches, sæters were
to be seen, their brown roofs looking as much a part of the lonely
Nature as did the waterfalls and the pine-trees. On all sides shone
the water,--trickling fosses down precipices, outbursting fosses from
ravines and dells; just before us rose a wall some three thousand feet
high, over which leaped a foaming cataract.
"We shall go there," said Sanna, pointing up to it. Sure enough, we
did. By loops so oval and narrow they seemed twisted as if to thread
their way, as eyes of needles are threaded, the road wound and
doubled, and doubled and wound, six times crossing the hill front in
fifteen hundred feet. At each double, the valley sank below us; the
lake sank; the hills which walled the lake sank; the road was only a
broad rift among piled bowlders. In many places these bowlders were
higher than our heads; but there was no sense of danger, for the road
was a perfect road, smooth as a macadamized turnpike. Along its outer
edge rows of thickly set rocks, several feet high, and so near each
other that no carriage could possibly fall between; in the most
dangerous places stout iron bars were set from rock to rock; these
loops of chain ladder up the precipice were as safe as a summer
pathway in a green meadow. On a stone bridge of three arches we
crossed the waterfall: basins of rocks above us, filled with spray;
basins and shelves and ledges of rocks below us, filled with spray;
the bridge black and slippery wet, and the air thick with spray, like
a snow-storm; precipices of water on the right and the left. It was
next to being an eagle on wing in a storm to cross that bridge in
upper air. At the sixth turn we came out abreast of the top of the
waterfall, and in a moment more had left all the stress and storm and
tumult of waters behind us, and glided into a sombre, still roadway
beside a calm little river deep in a fir forest. Only the linnæa had
won bloom out of this darkness; its courageous little tendrils
wreathed the tree trunks nestled among the savage rocks, and held up
myriads of pink cups wet with the ceaseless spray. It was a dreary,
lonely place; miles of gaunt swamp, forest, and stony moor; here and
there a farm-house, silent as if deserted.
"Where are all the people? Why do we not see any one moving about the
houses?" I asked.
"In the house, reading, every one," replied Sanna. "On a Sunday
afternoon, if there is no service in church, all Norwegian farm people
do go into their houses, and spend all afternoon in reading and in
religion."
At last we reached a more open country,--an off look to the west; new
ranges of snow-topped mountains came in sight. We began to descend;
another silent river slipping down by our side; two more dark, shining
lakes. On the shore of one, a peasant man--the first living creature
we had seen for ten miles--was taking his cart out of a little shed by
the roadside. This shed was the only sign of human habitation to be
seen in the region. His horse stood near by, with a big barrel slung
on each side: they were barrels of milk, which had just been brought
down in this way from a sæter which we could see, well up in the
cloud region, far above the woods on the left. Down the steep path
from this sæter the man had walked, and the horse bearing the
barrels of milk had followed. Now the barrels were to be put in the
cart, and carried to Eide. Ten miles more that milk was to be carried
before it reached its market; and yet, at the little inn in Eide, for
a breakfast, at which one may drink all the milk he desires, he will
be asked to pay only thirty-five cents. What else beside milk? Fresh
salmon, trout, two kinds of rye bread and two of white, good butter,
six kinds of cheese, herrings done in oil and laurel leaves in tiny
wooden barrels, cold sausage, ham, smoked salmon (raw), coffee and
tea, and perhaps--wild strawberries: this will be the Eide
summer-morning breakfast. The cheese feature in the Norwegian
breakfast is startling at first: all colors, sizes, shapes, and smells
known of cheese; it must be owned they are not savory for breakfast,
but the Norwegian eats them almost as a rite. He has a proverb in
regard to cheese as we have of fruit: "Gold in the morning, silver at
noon, and lead at night;" and he lives up to it more implicitly than
we do to ours.
As we neared Vossevangen, the silent river grew noisier and noisier,
and at last let out all its reserves in a great torrent which leaped
down into the valley with a roar. This torrent also was bridged at its
leap; and the bridge seemed to be in a perpetual quiver from the shock
of it. The sides of the rocky gorge below glistened black like ebony;
they had been worn into columnar grooves by the centuries of whirling
waters; the knotted roots of a fir forest jutted out above them, and
long spikes of a beautiful white flower hung out from their crevices
in masses of waving snowy bloom. It looked like a variety of the
house-leek, but no human hand could reach it to make sure.
Vossevangen is a little farming hamlet on the west shore of a
beautiful lake. The region is one of the best agricultural districts
in western Norway; the "Vos" farmers are held to be fortunate and well
to do, and their butter and cheese always bring high prices in market.
On the eastern shore of the lake is a chain of mountains, from two to
four thousand feet high; to the south, west, and north rise the green
hills on which the farms lie; above these, again, rise other hills,
higher and more distant, where in the edges of the snow tracts or
buried in fir forests are the sæters, the farmers' summer homes.
As we drove into the village we met the peasants going home from
church: the women in short green or black gowns, with gay jackets and
white handkerchiefs made into a flying-buttress sort of head-dress on
their heads; the men with knee-breeches, short vests, and jackets
thick trimmed with silver buttons. Every man bowed and every woman
courtesied as we passed. To pass any human being on the highway
without a sign or token of greeting would be considered in Norway the
height of ill manners; any child seen to do it would be sharply
reproved. Probably few things would astonish the rural Norwegian more
than to be told that among the highly civilized it is considered a
mark of good breeding, if you chance to meet a fellow-man on the
highway, to go by him with no more recognition of his presence than
you would give to a tree or a stone wall.
It is an odd thing that a man should be keeping the Vossevangen Hotel
to-day who served in America's civil war, was for two years in one of
the New York regiments, and saw a good deal of active service. He was
called back to Norway by the death of his father, which made it
necessary for him to take charge of the family estate in Vossevangen.
He has married a Vossevangen woman, and is likely to end his days
there; but he hankers for Chicago, and always will. He keeps a fairly
good little hotel, on the shores of the lake, with a row of
willow-trees in front; dwarf apple-trees, gooseberry and currant
bushes, and thickets of rhubarb in his front yard; roses, too, besides
larkspur and phlox; but the rhubarb has the place of honor. The
dining-room and the parlor were, like those at Eide, adorned with
ivies and flowering plants; oleanders in the windows and potted
carnations on the table. In one corner of the dining-room was a large
round table covered with old silver for sale: tankards, chains, belts,
buttons, coins, rings, buckles, brooches, ornaments of all
kinds,--hundreds of dollars' worth of things. There they lay, day and
night, open to all who came; and they had done this, the landlady
said, for years, and not a single article had ever been stolen: from
which it is plain that not only is the Norwegian honest himself, there
must be a contagion in his honesty, which spreads it to all travellers
in his country.
The next morning, early, we set off in a peasant's cart to visit some
of the farm-houses.
"Now you shall see," said Sanna, "that it was not possible if you had
all day to ride in this kind of wagon."
It did not take long to prove the truth of her remark. A shallow
wooden box set on two heavy wheels; a wooden seat raised on two
slanting wooden braces, so high that one's feet but just reach the
front edge of the box; no dasher, no sides to seat, no anything,
apparently, after you are up, except your hard wooden seat and two
pounding wheels below,--this is the peasant wagon. The horse, low down
between two heavy thills, is without traces, pulls by a breast collar,
is guided by rope reins, and keeps his heels half the time under the
front edge of the box. The driver stands up in the box behind you, and
the rope reins are in your hair, or on your neck, shoulders, ears, as
may be. The walloping motion of this kind of box, drawn by a frisky
Norwegian horse over rough roads, is droll beyond description. But
when it comes to going down hills in it, and down hills so steep that
the box appears to be on the point of dumping you between the horse's
ears at each wallop, it ceases to be droll, and becomes horrible. Our
driver was a splendid specimen of a man,--six feet tall, strong built,
and ruddy. When he found that I was an American, he glowed all over,
and began to talk rapidly to Sanna. He had six brothers in America.
"They do say that they all have it very good there," interpreted
Sanna; "and he thinks to go there himself so soon as there is money to
take all. It must be that America is the best country in the world, to
have it so good there that every man can have it good."
The roads up the hills were little more than paths. Often for many
rods there was no trace of wheels on the stony ledges; again the track
disappeared in a bit of soft meadow. As we climbed, the valley below
us rounded and hollowed, and the lake grew smaller and smaller to the
eye; the surrounding hills opened up, showing countless valleys
winding here and there among them. It was a surpassingly beautiful
view. Vast tracts of firs, inky black in the distances, emphasized the
glittering of the snow fields above them and the sunny green of the
nearer foregrounds below.