and dangerous, and the Nerö Fjord water black. As we sailed out, the
walls of the valley closed up suddenly behind us, as with a snap which
might have craunched poor little Gudvangen to death. The fjord is as
wild as the pass; in fact, the same thing, only that it has water at
bottom instead of land, and you can sail closer than you can drive at
base of the rocky walls. Soon we came to the mouth of another great
fjord, opening up another watery road into the mountains; this was the
Aurland, and on its farther shore opened again the Sognedal Fjord, up
which we went a little way to leave somebody at a landing. Here were
green hills and slopes and trees, and a bright yellow church, shaped
like a blancmange mould in three pyramid-shaped cones, each smaller
than the one below.
"Here is the finest fruit orchard in all Scandinavia," said Sanna,
pointing to a pretty place just out of the town, where fields rose one
above the other in terraces on south-facing slopes, covered thick with
orchards. "It belongs to an acquainted with me: but she must sell it.
She is a widow, and she cannot take the care to herself."
Back again across the mouth of the Aurland Fjord, and then out into
the great Sogne Fjord, zigzagging from side to side of it, and up into
numerous little fjords where the boat looked to be steering straight
into hills,--we seemed to be adrift, without purpose, rather than on a
definite voyage with a fixed aim of getting home. The magnificent
labyrinths of walled waters were calm as the heavens they reflected;
the clouds above and clouds below kept silent pace with each other,
and we seemed gliding between two skies. Great snow fjelds came in
sight, wheeled, rose, sank, and disappeared, as we passed; sometimes
green meadows stretched on either side of us, then terrible gorges and
pinnacles of towering rock. Picture after picture we saw, of
gay-colored little villages, with rims of fields and rocky
promontories; snow fjelds above, and fir forests between; glittering
waterfalls shooting from the sky line to the water, like white
lightning down a black stone front, or leaping out in spaces of
feathery snow, like one preternatural blooming of the forests all the
way down the black walls rising perpendicularly thousands of feet;
tiers of blue mountains in the distance, dark blue on the nearest, and
shading off to palest blue at the sky line; the fjord dark purple in
the narrows, shading to gray in the opens; illuminated spaces of
green, now at the shore, now half-way up, now two-thirds-way up to the
sky; tops of hills in sunlight; bars of sunlight streaming through
dark clefts. Then a storm-sweep across the fjord, far in our
wake,--swooping and sweeping, and gone in a half-hour; blotting out
the mountains; then turning them into a dark-slate wall, on which
white sails and cross-sunbeams made a superb shining. And so, between
the sun and the storm, we came to Valestrand, and sent off and took on
boat-loads of pleasuring people,--the boats with bright flags at prow
and stern, and gay-dressed women with fantastic parasols like
butterflies poised on their edges,--Valestrand, where, as some say,
Frithiof was born; and as all say, he burnt one of Balder's great
temples. Then Ladvik, on a green slope turning to gold in the sun; its
white church with a gray stone spire relieved against a bank of purple
gloom; the lights sinking lower and the shadows stretching farther
every minute; shadows of hills behind which the sun had already gone,
thrown sharp and black on hills still glowing in full light; hills
before us, shimmering in soft silver gray and pale purple against a
clear golden west; hills behind us, folding and folded in masses of
rosy vapor; shining fosses leaping down among them; the colors
changing like the colors of a prism minute by minute along the tops of
the ranges,--this was the way our day on the Sogne Fjord drew near its
ending. Industriously knitting, with eyes firm fastened on her
needles, sat an English matron near us on the deck. Not one glance of
her eye did she give to the splendors of sky and water and land about
her.
"I do think that lady must be in want of stockings very much,"
remarked Sanna quietly; "but she need not to come to Norway to knit."
Far worse, however, than the woman who knitted were the women and the
men who talked, loudly, stupidly, vulgarly, around us. It was
mortifying that their talk was English, but they were not Americans.
At last they drove us to another part of the deck, but not before a
few phrases of their conversation had been indelibly stamped on my
memory.
"Well, we were in Dresden two days: there's only the gallery there;
that's time enough for that."
"Raphaels,--lots of Raphaels."
"I don't care for Raphaels, anyhow. I'll tell you who I like; I like
Veronese."
"Well, I'm very fond of Tintoretto."
"I like Titians; they're so delicate, don't you know?"
"Well, who's that man that's painted such dreadful things,--all mixed
up, don't you know? In some places you see a good many of them."
"You don't mean Rembrandt, do you? There are a lot of Rembrandts in
Munich."
"There was one picture I liked. I think it was a Christ; but I ain't
sure. There were four children on the ground, I remember."
When the real sunset came we were threading the rocky labyrinths of
the Bergen Fjord. It is a field of bowlders, with an ocean let in;
nothing more. Why the bowlders are not submerged, since the water is
deep enough for big ships to sail on, is the perpetual marvel; but
they are not. They are as firm in their places as continents, myriads
of them only a few feet out of water; and when the sun as it sinks
sends a flood of gold and red light athwart them, they turn all
colors, and glow on the water like great smoke crystals with fire
shining through. To sail up this fjord in the sunset is to wind
through devious lanes walled with these jewels, and to look off, over
and above them, to fields of purple and gray and green, islands on
islands on islands, to the right and to the left, with the same
jewel-walled lanes running east and west and north and south among
them; the sky will stream with glowing colors from horizon to horizon,
and the glorious silence will be broken by no harsher sound than the
low lapsing of waters and the soft whirr of gray gulls' wings.
And so we came to Bergen in the bright midnight of the last of our
four days.
Months afterwards Sanna sent me a few extracts from descriptions given
by a Norwegian writer of some of the spots we had seen in the dim
upper distances along the fjords,--some of those illuminated spaces
of green high up among the crags, which looked such sunny and peaceful
homes.
Her English is so much more graphic than mine that I have begged her
permission to give the extracts as she wrote them:--
"Grand, glorious, and serious is the Sogne Fjord. Serious in
itself, and still more serious we find it when we know where
and how people do live there between mountains. And we must
wonder or ask, Is there really none places left, or no kind of
work for those people to get for the maintenance of the life,
but to go to such desolate and rather impassable a place?...
"More than half of the year are the two families who live on
the farm of Vetti separated from all other human beings. During
the winter can the usual path in the grass not be passed in
case of snow, ice, and perpetual slips, which leave behind
trace long out in the summer, because the sun only for a short
time came over this long enormous abyss, and does not linger
there long, so that the snow which has been to ice do melt very
slow, and seldom disappear earlier than in July. The short time
in the winter when the river Utla is frozen may the bottom of
the pass well be passed, though not without danger, on account
of the mentioned slips, which, with the power of the hurricane,
are whizzing down in the deep, and which merely pressure of the
air is so strong that it throw all down.
"Late in the autumn and in the spring is all approach to and
from Vetti quite stopped; and late in the autumn chiefly with
ground and snow slips, which then get loosened by the frequent
rain. The farm-houses is situate on a steep slope, so that the
one end of the lowest beam is put on the mere ground, and the
other end must be put on a wall almost three yards high. The
fields are so steep, and so quite near the dreadful precipice,
that none unaccustomed to it do venture one's self thither; and
when one from here look over the pass, and look the meadows
which is more hanging than laying over the deep, and which have
its grass mowed down with a short scythe, then one cannot
comprehend the desperate courage which risk to set about and
occupy one's self here, while the abyss has opened its swallow
for receiving the foolhardy.
"A little above the dwelling-houses is a quite tolerable plain;
and when one ask the man why he has not built his houses there,
he answers that owing to the snow-slips it is impossible to
build there.
"Through the valley-streams the Afdals River comes from the
mountains, run in a distance of only twenty yards from the
farm-houses, and about one hundred yards from the same pour
out itself with crash of thunder in a mighty foss. The rumble
of the same, and that with its hurling out caused pressure of
the air, is in the summer so strong that the dwelling-houses
seems to shiver, and all what fluids there in open vessels get
placed on the table is on an incessant trembling, moving almost
as on board a ship in a rough sea. The wall and windows which
turns to the river are then always moistened of the whipped
foam, which in small particles continually is thrown back from
the foss.
"By the side of this foss, in the hard granite wall which it
moisten, is a mined gut (the author says he can't call it a
road, though it is reckoned for that), broad enough that one
man, and in the highest one small well-trained horse, however
not by each other's side, can walk therein. This gut, which
vault is not so high that an full-grown man can walk upright,
is the farm's only road which rise to a considerable height.
"But as this gut could not get lightened in a suitable height,
one has filled up or finished the remaining gap with four
timber beams, four or five yards long, which is close to the
gut, and with its upper end leans on a higher small mountain
peak, which beside this is the fastening for the bridge over
the waterfall. In these beams is cut in flukes, just as the
steps of a staircase, and when one walks up these flukes one
looks between the beams the frothing foss beneath one's self,
while one get wrapped up of its exhalation clouds.
"The man told me that the pass also is to be passed with horse,
the time of the summer, and that all then is to be carried in a
pack-saddle to the farm, of his own horse, which is accustomed
to this trip. And when one know the small Lærdalske horses'
easiness, and the extraordinary security wherewith they can go
upon the most narrow path on the edge of the most dreadful
precipices, in that they place or cast the feet so in front of
each other that no path is too narrow for them, then it seems a
little less surprising.
"From the Vetti farm continues the pass in a distance of about
twenty-one English miles, so that the whole pass, then, is a
little more than twenty-four miles, and shall on the other side
of the farm be still more narrow, more difficult, and more
dreadful. The farmer himself and his people must often go there
to the woods, and for other things for his farm. There belongs
to this farm most excellent sæter and mountain fields,
wherefore the cattle begetting is here of great importance; and
also the most excellent tract of firs belong to this farm.
"I was curious to know how one had to behave from here to get
the dead buried, when it was impossible that two men could walk
by the side of each other through the pass, and I did even not
see how one could carry any coffin on horseback. I got the
following information: The corpse is to be laid on a thin
board, in which there is bored holes in both ends in which
there is to be put handles of rope; to this board is the corpse
to be tied, wrapped up in its linen cloth. And now one man in
the front and one behind carry it through the pass to the farm
Gjelde, and here it is to be laid into the coffin, and in the
common manner brought to the churchyard. If any one die in the
winter, and the bottom of the pass must be impassable then as
well as in the spring and in the autumn, one must try to keep
the corpse in an hard frozen state, which is not difficult,
till it can be brought down in the above-mentioned manner.
"A still more strange and sad manner was used once at a
cottager place called Vermelien. This place is lying in the
little valley which border to the Vetti's field. Its situation
by the river deep down in the pass is exceedingly horrid, and
it has none other road or path than a very steep and narrow
foot-path along the mountain wall side with the most dreadful
precipice as by the Vetti.
"Since the cottager people here generally had changed, no one
had dead there. It happened, then, the first time a boy, on
seventeen years old, died. One did not do one's self any
hesitation about the manner to bring him to his grave, and they
made a coffin in the house. The corpse was put in the coffin,
and then the coffin brought outside; and first now one did see
with consternation that it was not possible to carry the corpse
with them in this manner. What was to do then?
"At last they resolved to let the coffin be left as a _memento
mori_, and to place the dead upon a horse, his feet tied up
under the belly of the horse; against the mane on the horse was
fastened a well-stuffed fodder bag, that the corpse may lean to
the same, to which again the corpse was tied. And so the dead
must ride over the mountain to his resting-place by Fortun's
church in Lyster."
THE KATRINA SAGA.
I.
"Forr English Ladies." This was the address on the back of a
much-thumbed envelope, resting on top of the key-rack in the
dining-room of our Bergen hotel. If "For" had been spelled correctly,
the letter would not have been half so likely to be read; but that
extra outsider of an _r_ was irresistibly attractive. The words of the
letter itself were, if not equally original in spelling, at least as
unique in arrangement, and altogether the advertisement answered its
purposes far better than if it had been written in good English. The
_naïveté_ with which the writer went on to say, "I do recommend me,"
was delicious; and when she herself appeared there was something in
her whole personal bearing entirely in keeping with the childlike and
unconscious complacency of her phraseology. "I do recommend me" was
written all over her face; and, as things turned out, if it had been
"I do guarantee me," it had not been too strong an indorsement. A more
tireless, willing, thoughtful, helpful, eager, shrewd little creature
than Katrina never chattered. Looking back from the last day to the
first of my acquaintance with her, I feel a remorseful twinge as I
think how near I came to taking instead of her, as my maid for a
month's journeying, a stately young woman, who, appearing in answer to
my advertisement, handed me her card with dignity, and begged my
pardon for inquiring precisely what it would be that she would have to
do for me, besides the turning of English into Norwegian and _vice
versa_. The contrast between this specific gravity and Katrina's
hearty and unreflecting "I will do my best to satisfy you in all
occasions," did not sufficiently impress me in the outset. But many a
time afterward did I recall it, and believe more than ever in the
doctrine of lucky stars and good angels.
When Katrina appeared, punctually to the appointed minute, half an
hour before the time for setting off, I saw with pleasure that she was
wrapped in a warm cloak of dark cloth. I had seen her before, flitting
about in shawls of various sorts, loosely pinned at the throat in a
disjointed kind of way, which gave to her appearance an expression
that I did not like,--an expression of desultory if not intermittent
respectability. But wrapped in this heavy cloak, she was decorum
personified.
"Ah, Katrina," I said, "I am very glad to see you are warmly dressed.
This summer you keep in Norway is so cold, one needs winter clothes
all the time."
"Yes, I must," she replied. "I get fever and ague in New York, and
since then it always reminds me. That was six years ago; but it
reminds me,--the freezing at my neck," putting her hand to the back of
her neck.
It was in New York, then, that she had learned so much English. This
explained everything,--the curious mixture of volubility and
inaccuracy and slang in her speech. She had been for several months a
house-servant in New York, "with an Irish lady; such a nice lady. Her
husband, he took care of a bank: kept it clean, don't you see, and all
such tings. And we lived in the top in the eight story: we was always
going up and down in the elewator."
After this she had been a button-hole maker in a great clothing-house,
and next, had married one of her own countrymen; a nephew, by the way,
of the famous Norwegian giant at Barnum's Museum,--a fact which
Katrina stated simply, without any apparent boast, adding, "My
husband's father were guyant, too. There be many guyants in that part
of the country."
Perhaps it was wicked, seeing that Katrina had had such hopes of
learning much English in her month with me, not to have told her then
and there that _g_ in the English word _giant_ was always soft. But I
could not. Neither did I once, from first to last, correct her
inimitable and delicious pronunciations. I confined my instructions to
the endeavor to make her understand clearly the meanings of words, and
to teach her true synonymes; but as for meddling with her
pronunciations, I would as soon have been caught trying to teach a
baby to speak plain. I fear, towards the last, she began to suspect
this, and to be half aware of the not wholly disinterested pleasure
which I took in listening to her eager prattle; but she did not accuse
me, and I let her set off for home not one whit wiser in the matter of
the sounds of the English language than she had been when she came
away, except so far as she might have unconsciously caught them from
hearing me speak. It is just as well: her English is quite good enough
as it is, for all practical purposes in Norway, and would lose half
its charm and value to English-speaking people if she were to learn to
say the words as we say them.
To set off by boat from Bergen means to set off by boats; it would not
be an idle addition to the phrase, either, to say, not only by boats,
but among boats, in, out, over, and across boats; and one may consider
himself lucky if he is not called upon to add,--the whole truth being
told,--under boats. Arriving at the wharf, he is shown where his
steamer lies, midway in the harbor; whether it be at anchor, or
hoisted on a raft of small boats, he is at first at a loss to see.
However, rowing alongside, he discovers that the raft of small boats
is only a crowd, like any other crowd, of movable things or creatures,
and can be shoved, jostled, pushed out of the way, and compelled to
give room. A Norwegian can elbow his boat through a tight-packed mass
of boats with as dexterous and irresistible force as another man can
elbow his way on foot, on dry land, in a crowd of men. So long as you
are sitting quiet in the middle of the boat, merely swayed from side
to side by his gyrations, with no sort of responsibility as to their
successive direction, and with implicit faith in their being right, it
is all very well. But when your Norwegian springs up, confident,
poises one foot on the edge of his own boat, the other foot on the
edge of another boat, plants one of his oars against the gunwale of a
third boat, and rests the other oar hard up against the high side of a
steamboat, and then authoritatively requests you to rise and make
pathway for yourself across and between all these oars and boats, and
leap varying chasms of water between them and the ladder up the
steamer's side, dismay seizes you, if you are not to the water born.
I did not hear of anybody's being drowned in attempting to get on
board a Bergen steamer. But why somebody is not, every day in the
week, I do not know, if it often happens to people to thread and
surmount such a labyrinth of small rocking boats as lay around the
dampskib "Jupiter," in which Katrina and I sailed for Christiania.
The Northern nations of Europe seem to have hit upon signally
appropriate names for that place of torment which in English is called
steamboat. There are times when simply to pronounce the words
_dampskib_ or _dampbaad_ is soothing to the nerves; and nowhere
oftener than in Norway can one be called upon to seek such relief. It
is an accepted thing in Norway that no steamboat can be counted on
either to arrive or depart within one, two, or three hours of its
advertised time. The guide-books all state this fact; so nobody who,
thus forewarned, has chosen to trust himself to the dampskib has any
right to complain if the whole plan of his journey is disarranged and
frustrated by the thing's not arriving within four hours of the time
it had promised. But it is not set down in the guide-books, as it
ought to be, that there is something else on which the traveller in
Norwegian dampskibs can place no dependence whatever; and that is the
engaging beforehand of his stateroom. To have engaged a stateroom one
week beforehand, positively, explicitly, and then, upon arriving on
board, to be confronted by a smiling captain, who states in an
off-hand manner, as if it were an every-day occurrence, that "he is
very sorry, but it is impossible to let you have it;" and who, when he
is pressed for an explanation of the impossibility, has no better
reason to give than that two gentlemen wanted the stateroom, and as
the two gentlemen could not go in the ladies' cabin, and you, owing to
the misfortune of your sex, could, therefore the two gentlemen have
the stateroom, and you will take the one remaining untenanted berth in
the cabin,--this is what may happen in a Norwegian dampskib. If one is
resolute enough to halt in the gangway, and, ordering the porters
bearing the luggage to halt also, say calmly, "Very well; then I must
return to my hotel, and wait for another boat, in which I can have a
stateroom; it would be quite out of the question, my making the
journey in the cabin," the captain will discover some way of
disposing of the two gentlemen, and without putting them into the
ladies' cabin; but this late concession, not to the justice of your
claim, only to your determination in enforcing it, does not in any
wise conciliate your respect or your amiability. The fact of the
imposition and unfairness is the same. I ought to say, however, that
this is the only matter in which I found unfairness in Norway. In
regard to everything else the Norwegian has to provide or to sell, he
is just and honest; but when it comes to the question of dampskib
accommodations, he seems to take leave of all his sense of obligation
to be either.