Dal is a modest hamlet consisting of but a few houses; some on
either side of a road that is little more than a bridle-path, others
scattered over the surrounding hills. But they all face the narrow
valley of Vesfjorddal, with their backs to the line of hills to the
north, at the base of which flows the Maan.
A little church erected in 1855, whose chancel is pierced by two
narrow stained-glass windows, lifts its square belfry from out a leafy
grove hard by. Here and there rustic bridges cross the rivulets that
dance merrily along toward the river. In the distance are two or three
primitive saw-mills, run by water-power, with a wheel to move the
saw, as well as a wheel to move the beam or the tree; and seen from a
little distance, the chapel, saw-mills, houses, and cabins, all seem
to be enveloped in a soft olive haze that emanates from the dark-green
firs and the paler birches which either singly or in groups extend
from the winding banks of the Maan to the crests of the lofty
mountains.
Such is the fresh and laughing hamlet of Dal, with its picturesque
dwellings, painted, some of them, in delicate green or pale pink
tints, others in such glaring colors as bright yellow and blood-red.
The roofs of birch bark, covered with turf, which is mown in the
autumn, are crowned with natural flowers. All this is indescribably
charming, and eminently characteristic of the most picturesque country
in the world. In short, Dal is in the Telemark, the Telemark is in
Norway, and Norway is in Switzerland, with thousands of fiords that
permit the sea to kiss the feet of its mountains.
The Telemark composes the broad portion of the immense horn that
Norway forms between Bergen and Christiania.
This dependency of the prefecture of Batsberg, has the mountains and
glaciers of Switzerland, but it is not Switzerland. It has gigantic
water-falls like North America, but it is not America. The landscape
is adorned with picturesque cottages, and processions of inhabitants,
clad in costumes of a former age, like Holland, but it is not Holland.
The Telemark is far better than any or all of these; it is the
Telemark, noted above all countries in the world for the beauty of
its scenery. The writer has had the pleasure of visiting it. He has
explored it thoroughly, in a kariol with relays of post-horses--when
he could get them--and he brought back with him such a vivid
recollection of its manifold charms that he would be glad to convey
some idea of it to the reader of this simple narrative.
At the date of this story, 1862, Norway was not yet traversed by the
railroad that now enables one to go from Stockholm to Drontheim, by
way of Christiania. Now, an extensive network of iron rails extends
entirely across these two Scandinavian countries, which are so averse
to a united existence. But imprisoned in a railroad-carriage, the
traveler, though he makes much more rapid progress than in a kariol,
misses all the originality that formerly pervaded the routes of
travel. He misses the journey through Southern Sweden on the curious
Gotha Canal, in which the steamboats, by rising from lock to lock,
manage to reach an elevation of three hundred feet. Nor does he have
an opportunity to visit the falls of Trolletann, nor Drammen, nor
Kongsberg, nor any of the beauties of the Telemark.
In those days the railroad existed only upon paper. Twenty years were
to elapse before one could traverse the Scandinavian kingdom from
one shore to the other in forty hours, and visit the North Cape on
excursion tickets to Spitzberg.
In those days Dal was, and may it long remain, the central point
for foreign or native tourists, these last being for the most part
students from Christiania. From Dal they could wander over the entire
Telemark and Hardanger region, explore the valley of Vesfjorddal
between Lakes Mjos and Tinn, and visit the wonderful cataracts of the
Rjukan Tun. The hamlet boasts of but one inn, but that is certainly
the most attractive and comfortable imaginable, and one of the
most important also, for it can offer four bed-chambers for the
accommodation of its guests. In a word, it is Dame Hansen's inn.
A few benches surround the base of its pink walls, which are separated
from the ground by a substantial granite foundation. The spruce
rafters and weather-boarding have acquired such hardness and toughness
with age that the sharpest hatchet can make little or no impression
upon them. Between the roughly hewn rafters, which are placed
horizontally one above the other, a mixture of clay and turf forms
a stanch roof, through which the hardest winter rains can not force
their way.
Upstairs, in the bedrooms, the ceilings are painted in dark red or
black tints to contrast with the more cheerful and delicate hues of
the wood-work.
In one corner of the large hall stands a huge cylinder stove, the
pipe of which rises nearly to the ceiling, before it disappears in the
kitchen chimney. In another corner stands a tall clock which emits
a sonorous tick-tack, as its carved hands travel slowly around its
enameled face. Here is a secretary, black with age, side by side
with a massive iron tripod. Upon the mantel is an immense terra-cotta
candlestick which can be transformed into a three-branched candelabrum
by turning it upside down. The handsomest furniture in the house
adorns this spacious hall--the birch-root table, with its spreading
feet, the big chest with its richly wrought brass handles, in which
the Sunday and holiday clothing is kept, the tall arm-chair, hard
and uncomfortable as a church-pew, the painted wooden chairs, and
the spinning-wheel striped with green, to contrast with the scarlet
petticoat of the spinner.
Yonder stands the pot in which the butter is kept, and the paddle with
which it is worked, and here is the tobacco-box, and the grater of
elaborately carved bone.
And, finally, over the door which opens into the kitchen is a large
dresser, with long rows of brass and copper cooking-utensils and
bright-colored dishes, the little grindstone for sharpening knives,
half-buried in its varnished case, and the egg-dish, old enough to
serve as a chalice.
And how wonderful and amusing are the walls, hung with linen
tapestries representing scenes from the Bible, and brilliant with all
the gorgeous coloring of the pictures of Epinal.
As for the guests' rooms, though they are less pretentious, they are
no less comfortable, with their spotless neatness, their curtains of
hanging-vines that droop from the turf-covered roof, their huge beds,
sheeted with snowy and fragrant linen, and their hangings with verses
from the Old Testament, embroidered in yellow upon a red ground.
Nor must we forget that the floor of the main hall, and the floors of
all the rooms, both upstairs and down, are strewn with little twigs
of birch, pine, and juniper, whose leaves fill the house with their
healthful and exhilarating odor.
Can one imagine a more charming _posada_ in Italy, or a more seductive
_fonda_ in Spain? No. And the crowd of English tourists have not yet
raised the scale of prices as in Switzerland--at least, they had not
at the time of which I write. In Dal, the current coin is not the
pound sterling, the sovereign of which the travelers' purse is
soon emptied. It is a silver coin, worth about five francs, and its
subdivisions are the mark, equal in value to about a franc, and the
skilling, which must not be confounded with the English shilling, as
it is only equivalent to a French _sou_.
Nor will the tourist have any opportunity to use or abuse the
pretentious bank-note in the Telemark. One-mark notes are white;
five-mark notes are blue; ten-mark notes are yellow; fifty-mark notes,
green; one hundred mark notes, red. Two more, and we should have all
the colors of the rainbow.
Besides--and this is a point of very considerable importance--the
food one obtains at the Dal inn is excellent; a very unusual thing
at houses of public entertainment in this locality, for the Telemark
deserves only too well its surname of the Buttermilk Country. At
Tiness, Listhus, Tinoset, and many other places, no bread is to be
had, or if there be, it is of such poor quality as to be uneatable.
One finds there only an oaten cake, known as _flat brod_, dry, black,
and hard as pasteboard, or a coarse loaf composed of a mixture of
birch-bark, lichens, and chopped straw. Eggs are a luxury, and a most
stale and unprofitable one; but there is any quantity of poor beer to
be had, a profusion of buttermilk, either sweet or sour, and sometimes
a little coffee, so thick and muddy that it is much more like
distilled soot than the products of Mocha or Rio Nunez.
In Dame Hansen's establishment, on the contrary, cellar and larder
were alike well-stored. What more could the most exacting tourist
ask than salmon, either salt or smoked--fresh salmon that have never
tasted tainted waters, fish from the pure streams of the Telemark,
fowls, neither too fat nor too lean, eggs in every style, crisp
oaten and barley cakes, fruits, more especially strawberries,
bread--unleavened bread, it is here, but of the very best
quality--beer, and some old bottles of that Saint Julien that have
spread the fame of French vineyards even to this distant land?
And this being the case, it is not strange that the inn at Dal is well
and favorably known in all the countries of Northern Europe.
One can see this, too, by glancing over the register in which many
travelers have not only recorded their names, but paid glowing
tributes to Dame Hansen's merits as an inn-keeper. The names are
principally those of Swedes and Norwegians from every part of
Scandinavia; but the English make a very respectable showing; and one
of them, who had waited at least an hour for the summit of Gousta to
emerge from the morning mist that enveloped it, wrote upon one of the
pages:
"Patientia omnia vincit?"