has lifted itself one inch since last night," he said. "It is not my
fault," he added apologetically, like a parent who cannot make a child
obey. Then he showed me, by his clasped hands, how it opened; in a
series of spasmodic unclosings, as if by throes, at intervals of five
or six minutes; each unclosing revealing more and more of the petals,
till at last, at the end of a half-hour, the whole snowy blossom is
unfolded: one day open, then towards night, by a similar series of
throe-like movements, it closes, and the next morning, between nine
and eleven, opens again in the same way, but no longer white. In the
night it has changed its color. One look, one taste, one day, of life
has flushed it rose-red. As the old professor told me this tale, not
new, but always wonderful and solemn, his face kindled with delight
and awe. No astronomer reckoning the times and colors of a recurring
planet could have had a vivider sense of the beauty and grandeur of
its law. The last thing I did in Christiania was to drive for the
third time to see if this flower had unfolded. It had apparently made
no movement for twenty-four hours.
"I tought you not see dat flower," said Katrina, who had looked with
some impatience on the repeated bootless journeys. "I tink it is
hoombug. I tink it is all shtories."
To me there was a half-omen in the flower's delay. Norway also had
shown me only half its beauty; I was going away wistful and
unsatisfied. "You must have another Victoria next summer," I said to
the quaint old professor, when I bade him good-by; and as Katrina ran
swiftly off the deck of the steamer, that I might not see any tears in
her eyes, bidding me farewell, I said also to her, "Next summer,
Katrina. Study the Frithiof's Saga, and read me the rest of it next
summer."
I hope she will not study it so well as to improve too much in her
renderings. Could any good English be so good as this?
FRITHIOF AND INGEBORG.
Two trees growed bold and silent: never before the north never
seen such beauties; they growed nicely in the garden.
The one growed up with the strongth of the oak; and the stem
was as the handle of the spear, but the crown shaked in the
wind like the top on the helmet.
But the other one growed like a rose,--like a rose when the
winter just is going away; but the spring what stands in its
buds still in dreams childly is smiling.
The storm shall go round the world. In fight with the storm the
oak will stand: the sun in the spring will glow on the heaven.
Then the rose opens its ripe lips.
So they growed in joy and play; and Frithiof was the young oak,
but the rose in the green walley was named Ingeborg the Beauty.
If you seen dem two in the daylight, you would think of Freya's
dwelling, where many a little pair is swinging with yellow
hair, and vings like roses.
But if you saw dem in the moonlight, dancing easy around, you
would tink to see an erl-king pair dancing among the wreaths of
the walley. How he was glad--
"Dem's the nicest vairses, I tink."
--how he was glad, how it was dear to him, when he got to write
the first letter of her name, and afterwards to learn his
Ingeborg, that was to Frithiof more than the king's honor.
How nicely when with the little sail, ven they vent over the
surface of the water, how happy with her little white hands she
is clapping ven he turns the rudder.
How far up it was hanging in the top of the tree, to the
bird's-nest, he found up; sure was not either the eagle's nest,
when she stand pointing down below.
You couldn't find a river, no matter how hard it was, without
he could carry her over. It is so beautiful when the waves are
roaring to be keeped fast in little white arms.
The first flower brought up in the spring, the first strawberry
that gets red, the first stem that golden bended down, he happy
brought his Ingeborg.
But the days of childhood goes quickly away. There stands a
youth; and in a while the hope, the brave, and the fire is
standing in his face. There stands a maiden, with the bosom
swelling.
Very often Frithiof went out a-hunting. Such a hunting would
frighten many; without spear and sword the brave would fetch
the bear: they were fighting breast to breast; and after the
glory, in an awful state, the hunter went home with what he
got.
What girl wouldn't like to take that?
"Ven he had been fighting that way, you see, without any sword or
anyting."
Then dear to the women is the fierce of a man. The strongth is
wort the beauty, and they will fit well for another, as well as
the helm fits the brain of an hero.
But if he in the winter evening, with his soul fierce, by the
fire's beam was reading of bright Walhalla, a song, a song of
the gods--
"Veil, dat's the mans; vat's the vomens?"
"Goddesses?"
"Vell, dat's it."
--a song of the gods and goddesses' joy, he was tinking, Yellow
is the hair of Freya. My Ingeborg--
"Vat's a big field called when it is all over ripe?"
"Yellow?"
"No,"--a shake of the head.
--is like the fields when easy waves the summer wind a golden
net round all the flower bundles.
Iduna's bosom is rich, and beautiful it waves under the green
satin. I know a twin satin wave in where light Alfs hid
themself.
And the eyes of Frigga are blue as the heavenly whole; still
often I looked at two eyes under the vault of heaven: against
dem are a spring day dark to look at.
How can it be they praise Gerda's white cheeks, and the
new-come snow in the north light beam?
I looked at cheeks, the snow mountain's beam ain't so beautiful
in the red of the morning.
I know a heart as soft as Nanna's, if not so much spoken of.
Well praised of the skalds you, Nanna's happy Balder!
Oh, that I as you could die missed of the soft and honest
maiden, your Nanna like. I should glad go down to Hell's the
dark kingdom.
But the king's daughter sat and sung a hero song, and weaved
glad into the stuff all things the hero have done, the blue
sea, the green walley, and rock-rifts.
There growed out in snow-white vool the shining shields of--
"Ain't there a word you say spinned?"
--spinned gold; red as the lightning flew the lances of the
war, and stiff of silver was every armor.
But as she quickly is weaving and nicely, she gets the heroes
Frithiof's shape, and as she comes farther into the weave, she
gets red, but still she sees them with joy.
But Frithiof did cut in walley and field many an I and F in the
bark of--
"He cut all round. Wherever he come, he cut them two."
--the trees. These Runes is healed with happy and joy, just
like the young hearts together.
When the daylight stands in its emerald--
Here we had a long halt, Katrina insisting on saying "smaragd," and
declaring that that was an English word; she had seen it often, and
"it could not be pronounced in any other way;" she had seen it in
"Lady Montaig in Turkey,"--"she had loads of smaragds and all such
things." Her contrition, when she discovered her mistake, was
inimitable.
She had read this account of "Lady Montagu in Turkey," in her "Hundred
Lessons," at school so many times she knew it by heart, which she
proceeded to prove by long quotations.
--and the king of the light with the golden hair, and the mens,
is busy wandering, then they did only think one on each other.
When the night is standing in its emerald, and the mother of
the sleep with dark hair and all are silent, and the stars are
wandering, den they only is dreaming of each other.
Thou Earth dat fix thee [or gets new] every spring, and is
braiding the flowers into your hair, the beautifullest of them,
give me friendly, for a wreath to reward Frithiof.
Thou Ocean, dat in thy dark room has pearls in thousands, give
me the best, the beautifullest, and the beautifullest neck I
will bind them to.
Thou button on Odin's king-chair, Thou World's Eye Golden Sun,
if you were mine, your shining round I would give Frithiof as
shield.
Thou lantern in the All-Father's Home, the moon with the pale
torch, if you were mine, I would give it as an emerald for my
beautiful hand-maiden.
Then Hilding said, "Foster son,
Your love wouldn't be any good to you.
Different lots Norna gives out.
That maiden is daughter to King Bele.
To Odin hisself in the Star-place
Mounts her family.
You, de son of Thorstein peasant,
Must give way, because like thrives best with like."
"He have to leave because he vas poor, you see."
But Frithiof smiled: "Very easy
My arm will win me king's race.
The king of the wood fall,
The king of the forest fall in spite of claw and howl;
His race I inherit with the Skin."
The free-born man wouldn't move,
Because the world belongs to the free.
Easy, courage can reconcile fortune,
And de Hope carries a king's crown.
Most noble is all Strongth. Because Thor--
"He was fader of all dem oder gods, you see."
The ancestor lives in Thrudvang,
He weighs not de burden, but de wort;
"Look now, all dese be strange words."
A mighty wooer is also the Sword.
I will fight for my young bride.
If it so were, vid de God of de Tunder;
Grow safe, grow happy, my white lily,
Our covenant are fast as the Norna's will.
This is her translation of the last stanzas of the account of
Ingeborg's marriage to Frithiof:--
In come Ingeborg in hermine sack, and bright jewels, followed
of a crowd of maids like de stars wid de moon. Wid de tears in
de beautiful eyes she fall to her brother's heart; but he lead
the dear sister up to Frithiof's noble breast; and over the
God's altar she reach-ched her hand to de childhood's friend,
to her heart's beloved.
A few days before I left Christiania, Katrina had come shyly up to my
table, one evening, and tossed down on it a paper, saying,--
"Dere is anoder. Dis one is for you."
On looking at it, I found it contained four stanzas of Norwegian
verse, in which my name occurred often. No persuasions I could bring
to bear on her would induce her to translate it. She only laughed,
said she could not, and that some of my Norwegian friends must read it
to me. She read it aloud in the Norwegian, and to my ignorant ear the
lines had a rhythmical and musical sound. She herself was pleased with
it. "It is nice song, dat song," she said; but turn it into English
for me she would not. Each day, however, she asked if I had had it
translated, and finding on the last day that I had not, she darted
into her room, shut the door, and in the course of two hours came out,
saying, "I got it part done; but dey tell you better, as I tell you."
The truth was, the tribute was so flattering, she preferred it should
come to me second hand. She shrank from saying directly, in open
speech, all that it had pleased her affectionate heart to say in the
verses. Three of the stanzas I give exactly as she wrote them. The
rest is a secret between Katrina and me.
THANKS.
The duty command me to honor
You, who with me
Were that kind I set her beside
My parents. Like a sunbeamed picture
For my look, you painted stands.
My wishes here translated
With you to Colorado go.
Happy days! oh, happy memories
Be with me on the life's way.
Let me still after a while find or meet
You energisk. I wouldn't forget.
God, be thou a true guide
For her over the big ocean;
Keep away from her all torments
That she happy may reach her home.
Take my thanks and my farewell
As remembrance along with you home,
Though a stranger I am placed
And as servant for you,
The heaven's best reward I pray down
For all you did to me.
Good luck and honor
Be with you till you die.
The last verse seems to me to sound far better in Norwegian than in
English, and is it not more fitting to end the Katrina Saga in a few
of her words in her own tongue?
"Modtag Takken og Farvellet
Som Erindring med dem hjem,
Sjönt som Fremmed jeg er stillet
Og som Tjener kun for dem.
Himlen's rige Lön nedbeder
Jeg for Lidet og for Stort,
Mrs. Jackson, Held og Hæder
Fölge dem til Döden's Port."
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER.
I.
Dear People,--We had a fine send-off from Christiania. The landlord of
the Scandinavie sent up to know if we would do him the honor to drive
down to the steamer in his private carriage. Katrina delivered the
message with exultant eyes. "You see," she said, "he likes to show dat
he do not every day get such in de house." We sent word back that we
should consider ourselves most honored; and so when we went
downstairs, there stood a fine landau open, with bouquets lying on the
seats, and a driver in livery; and the landlord himself in the
doorway, and the landlord's wife, who had sent us the bouquets,
Katrina said, peering from behind the curtains. When she saw Katrina
pointing her out, she threw the curtains back and appeared full in
view, smiling and waving her hand; we lifted up our bouquets, and
waved them to her, and smiled our thanks. Katrina sprang up, with my
cloak on her arm, to the coachman's seat. "I tink I go down too," she
exclaimed, "I see you all safe;" and so we drove off, with as much
smiling and bowing and "fare-welling" as if we had been cousins and
aunts of everybody in the Scandinavie. How we did hate to leave our
great corner rooms, with five windows in them, the fifth window being
across the corner, which is not a right-angled corner, but like a huge
bay-window! This utilization of the corner is a very noticeable
feature in the streets of Christiania. In the greater part of the best
houses the corner is cut off in this way; the door into the room being
across the opposite corner (also cut off), thus making a six-sided
room. The improvement in the street-fronts of handsome blocks of
buildings made by this shape instead of the usual rectangular corner
is greater than would be supposed, and the rooms made in this fashion
are delightfully bright, airy, and out of the common.
I did not quite fancy sailing in a steamer named "Balder,"--one gets
superstitious in Norway,--but I think we had flowers enough on board
to have saved us if Loki herself had wished us ill. Nothing in all
Norway is more striking than the Norwegian's love of flowers. It is no
exaggeration to say that one does not see a house without flowers in
the window. In the better houses every window in the front, even up to
the little four-paned window in the gable, has its row of flower-pots;
and even in the very poorest hovels there will be at least one window
flower-filled. This general love and culture of flowers makes it the
most natural thing in the world for the Norwegian, when he travels, to
be carrying along something in the shape of a plant. He is either
taking it home or carrying it as a gift to some one he is going to
visit. I have not yet been on a steamboat where I did not see at least
a dozen potted plants, of one sort or another, being carefully carried
along, as hand luggage, by men or women; and as for bouquets, they are
almost as common as hats and bonnets. Of the potted plants, five out
of seven will be green myrtles, and usually the narrow leaf. There is
a reason for this,--the Norwegian bride, of the better class, wears
always a chaplet of green myrtle, and has her white veil trimmed with
little knots of it from top to bottom. The chaplet is made in front
somewhat after the shape of the high gilded crowns worn by the peasant
brides; but at the back it is simply a narrow wreath confining the
veil. After I knew this, I looked with more interest at the pots of
myrtle I met everywhere, journeying about from place to place; and I
observed, after this, what I had not before noticed, that every house
had at least one pot of myrtle in its windows.
There were a dozen different varieties of carnations in our bouquets.
The first thing I saw as we moved off from the wharf was a shabbily
dressed little girl with a big bouquet entirely of carnations, in
which there must have been many more. In a few minutes a woman, still
shabbier than the little girl, came down into the cabin with a great
wooden box of the sort that Norwegian women carry everything in, from
potatoes up to their church fineries: it is an oval box with a little
peak at each end like a squirrel cage; the top, which has a hole in
the middle, fits down around these peaks so tight that the box is
safely lifted by this handle; and, as I say, everything that a
Norwegian woman wants to carry, she puts into her _tine_ (pronounced,
"teener"). Some of them are painted in gay colors; others are left
plain. Setting down the box, she opened it, and proceeded to sprinkle
with water one of the most beautiful wreaths I have ever seen,--white
lilies, roses, and green myrtle. I think it came from a wedding; but
as she knew no English, and I no Norwegian, I could not find out. Two
nights and a day she was going to carry it, however, and she sprinkled
it several times a day. An hour later, when I went down into the
cabin, there was a row of bouquets filling the table under the
looking-glass; five pots of flowers standing on the floor, and in
several staterooms whose doors were standing open I saw still more of
both bouquets and plants. This is only a common illustration of the
universal custom. It is a beautiful one, and in thorough keeping with
the affectionate simplicity of the Norwegian character.
Christiania looked beautiful as we sailed away. It lies in the hollow,
or rather on the shore rim of the fine amphitheatre of hills which
makes the head of the Christiania Fjord. _Fjord_ is a much more
picturesque word than _bay_; and I suppose when a bay travels up into
the heart of a country scores of miles, slips under several narrow
strips of land one after the other, making lakes between them, it is
entitled to be called something more than plain _bay_; but I wish it
had been a word easier to pronounce. I never could say "fjord," when I
read the word in America; and all that I have gained on the
pronouncing of it by coming to Norway is to become still more
distinctly aware that I always pronounce it wrong. I do not think
Cadmus ever intended that _j_ should be _y_, or that one should be
called on to pronounce _f_ before it.
The Christiania Fjord has nothing of grandeur about it, like the
wilder fjords on the west coast of Norway. It is smiling and gracious,
with beautifully rounded and interlocking hills,--intervals of pine
woods, with green meadows and fields, pretty villages and hamlets,
farm-houses and country-seats, and islands unnumbered, which deceive
the eye continually, seeming to be themselves the shore. We left
Christiania at two o'clock; at that hour the light on a Norway summer
day is like high noon in other parts of the world,--in fact, it's noon
till four o'clock in the afternoon, and then it is afternoon till ten,
and then a good, long, very light twilight to go to bed by at eleven
or twelve, and if you want to get up again at three o'clock in the
morning you can wake without any trouble, for it is broad daylight:
all of which is funny for once or twice, or perhaps for ten times, but
not for very long.
It was not till four or five o'clock that we began to see the full
beauty of the fjord; then the sun had gone far enough over to cast a
shadow,--soften all the forest tops on the west side, and cast shadows
on the east side. The little oases of bright green farm-lands, with
their clusters of houses, seemed to sink deeper and deeper into their
dark pine-tree settings,--the fjord grew wider and wider, and was as
smooth as a lake: now and then we drew up by a little village and half
stopped,--it seemed no more than that,--and somebody would climb on or
off the steamer by little cockles of boats that bobbed alongside.
Sometimes we came to a full stop, and lay several minutes at a wharf,
loading or unloading bags of grain. I think we took on just as many as
we took off,--like a game of bean-bags between the villages. The
sailors carried them off and on their backs, one set standing still in
their places to lift the bags up on their comrades' backs; they lifted
with a will, and then folded their arms and waited till the
bag-carriers came back to be loaded up again. If I could have spoken
Norwegian, I should have asked whether those sets of men took turn and
turn about, or whether one set always lifted up the loads and the
others lugged them,--probably the latter. That's the way it is in
life; but I never saw a more striking example of it than in the
picture these sailors made standing with folded arms doing nothing,
waiting till their fellows came back again to be loaded down like
beasts of burden. It was at "Moss" we saw this,--a pretty name for a
little town with a handful of gay-colored houses, red, yellow, and
white, set in green fields and woods. Women came on board here with
trays of apples and pears to sell,--little wizened pears red high up
on one side, like some old spinsters' cheeks in New England. Children
came too, with cherries tied up in bunches of about ten to a bunch;
they looked dear, but it was only a few hundredths of a quarter of a
dollar that they cost. Since I have found out that a kroner is only
about twenty-seven cents, and that it takes one hundred ore to make a
kroner, all the things that cost only a few ore seem to me so
ridiculously cheap as not to be worth talking about. These children
with the cherries were all barefoot, and they were so shy that they
curled and mauled their little brown toes all the time they were
selling their cherries, just as children one shade less shy twist and
untwist their fingers.
We left Moss by a short cut, not overland exactly, but next door to
it,--through land. The first thing we knew we were sailing through a
bridge right into the town, in a narrow canal,--we could have thrown
an apple into the windows of some of the houses as we glided by; then
in a few moments out we were again into the broad open fjord.
At six o'clock we went down to our first Danish supper. The "Balder"
is a Danish boat, and sailed by a Danish captain, and conducted on
Danish methods; and they pleased us greatly. The ordinary Norwegian
supper is a mongrel meal of nobody knows how many kinds of sausage,
raw ham, raw smoked salmon, sardines, and all varieties of cheese. The
Danish we found much better, having the addition of hot fish, and
cutlets, and the delicious Danish butter. One good result of Denmark's
lying low, she gets splendid pasturage for her cows, and makes a
delicious butter, which brings the highest prices in the English and
other markets.
When we came up from supper we found ourselves in a vast open sea; dim
shores to be seen in the east and west,--in the east pink and gray, in
the west dark with woods. The setting sun was sinking behind them, and
its yellow light etched every tree-top on the clear sky. Here and
there a sail gleamed in the sun, or stood out white in the farther
horizon. A pink halo slowly spread around the whole outer
circumference of the water; and while we were looking at this, all of
a sudden we were not in an open sea at all, but in among islands
again, and slowly coming to a stop between two stretches of lovely
shore,--big solid green fields like America's on one side, and a low
promontory of mossy rocks on the other. A handful of houses, with one
large and conspicuous one in the centre, stood between the green
fields and the shore. A sign was printed on this house in big letters;
and as I was trying to spell it out, a polite Norwegian at my elbow
said, "Shoddy factory! We make shoddy there; we call it so after the
English," bowing flatteringly as if it were a compliment to the
English. _Kradsuld_ is Norwegian for shoddy, and sounds worlds more
respectable, I am sure.
The roof of this shoddy factory had four dormer windows in it, with
their tiled roofs running up full width to the ridge-pole, which gave
the roof the drollest expression of being laid in box-plaits. I wish
somebody would make a series of photographs of roofs in Norway and
Denmark. They are the most picturesque part of the scenery; and as for
their "sky-line," it is the very poetry of etching. I thought I had
seen the perfection of the beauty of irregularity in the sky-line in
Edinburgh; but Edinburgh roofs are monotonous and straight in
comparison with the huddling of corners and angles in Scandinavian
gables and ridges and chimneys and attics. Add to this freaky and
fantastic and shifting shape the beauty of color and of fine
regularity of small curves in the red tile, and you have got as it
were a mid-air world of beauty by itself. As I was studying out the
points where these box-plaited dormer windows set into their roof, the
same polite Norwegian voice said to a friend by his side, "I have read
it over twenty-five ones." He pronounced the word _read_ as for the
present indicative, which made his adverbs of time at the end still
droller. Really one of the great pleasures of foreign travel is the
English one hears spoken; and it is a pleasure for which we no doubt
render a full equivalent in turn when we try speaking in any tongue
except our own. But it is hard to conceive of any intelligible English
French or German being so droll as German or French English can be and
yet be perfectly intelligible. Polite creatures that they all are,
never to smile when we speak their language!