We find little difference here in Trömso since we left for the cold
North. Then it was sunny but very cold, now all the snow has melted
away from the hills and they are green with belts of dark alders that
run up the corries from their reflections in the calm fiord. The rough
main street of wooden houses presents the same series of little wooden
doll houses, some made of upright planks, some of horizontal, in subdued
harmonies of weathered pale green, blue, and worn slate, which would be
a little sad but for the summer dresses of women and children, bright
splashes of colour—scarlets and pale blues, vivid but harmonious, only a
little noticeable on account of the uniformity of the black and dark blue
clothes of all the men.
Is it coming back from the Arctic, where there are no people, or is it
the atmosphere of Trömso that makes the character of each individual
seem so distinct? You could sketch any of the figures, men or women, in
the brightly painted street of doll houses, and the drawing would be
recognised by anyone in Trömso.
Everyone seems to be at least on a bowing acquaintance with every second
person he meets. Opposite this Grand (wooden) Hotel I see two of our
men in dark suits and bowlers, each has a little tobacco in his cheek.
I know this because I saw them put it in almost on the sly; each doffs
his bowler as some acquaintance comes up. Larsen has barely time for
one whiff of his cigarette between the sedate bows which they make to
passers-by. Who could believe that a few days ago he was in old blue
dungarees and sea-boots, hauling with us hand over hand on a narwhal
line—and Larsen—it is difficult to realise that a week or two ago we saw
him skeltering over a floe, a long, dark figure against the ice, blazing
black powder cartridges and splashing bullets at three yards’ range into
the ice in front of a three-year-old polar bear’s nose, to turn it. It
strikes me that the way these fair-haired men stand, and move their
heads, and their type of face, is rather like the men of Berwickshire or
Selkirkshire. You could hardly tell a Selkirk man here from a native, but
the average man of Trömso is perhaps smaller and thinner.
[Illustration]
The women here are not so well grown and good-looking as those in
Trondhjem. Half the men are teetotallers, at least in public. I saw
rather a remarkable sight here at the table d’hôte, six men at table
in a row, “travellers,” I think, each with a large burgundy or claret
glass full of new milk beside his plate—very different in habits and the
appearance we associate with their deep-drinking Viking forefathers. It
really does look as if with milk drinking we may yet have peace to be
amongst all men.
* * * * *
We go down the coast between the islands in sunshine—little cloudlets
round the greystone peaks in the blue sky. This day is the Glorious
12th, and we are far from home—and we are more than content, to be
comfortably on shipboard, glad to leave the northern ice regions, and yet
we know that in six months’ time we will long to return. We watch the
hills go past in luxurious repose from the luggage-covered decks—lovely
hill-faces, wooded elk ground below, and higher up, slopes, with scrub
and heather, just the place for dal ryper, the counterpart of our grouse,
bar the white flight feathers, and above, the heather-grey rocks and
stones, where you find the Norwegian ptarmigan; a glorious country, and
so like our own.
No wonder in the ancient days our forefathers exchanged visits from these
fiords to our Highland lochs and islands, and from old Alba to Lochlin,
as described in the tales of the Ossianic times—friendly visits for
feastings and marriages, and more often on bloody forays.
I wonder if the gentle ancestors of this little _smuke pige_ that waits
at our table formed one of the attractions of these round tours by our
fathers. How delighted she was to stand for a few minutes and to have her
portrait presented to her. On the previous page there is a fountain-pen
ink jotting of what I remember of the original. Is she not a familiar
type? We might meet her in Kent or Caithness.
[Illustration]
I forgot to say we made arrangements, before we left Trömso, about our
Port and Starboard bears. The Port bear goes to Spain, and Hamilton and
I take Starboard to Edinburgh, to present him, between us, to our new
Scottish Zoological Park, which promises to be the best in the world, and
of which this writer had the honour of being first Honorary Treasurer!
We will hand it over with the greatest pleasure, and then modestly
withdraw; for the more you know of these two bears, the more you become
of a retiring nature. I think we must have our Lord Provost to grace the
ceremony of its presentation to the Park. The Right Honourable the Lord
Provost, in his scarlet and ermine, and all the bailies, in reds and
purples of various tints, what a grand spectacular effect! (Our company,
we hope, would be excused.) And the Lord Lyon King-at-Arms we would have
to come too, for colour effect, vermilion and gold, in his English
tabard.—Ghost of Sir David Lindsay! with only one wee lion; and in the
second quartering!
Fancy the bear’s contemplative pause after the address of welcome and
before it has decided what part it will take in the ceremony. I must make
a picture of this in oils.
Our Spanish comarados intended to take their bear to Madrid, but they
hear the temperature there has lately been one hundred and twenty degrees
in the shade, so they fear it would melt, consequently they decide to
build a large iron enclosure across a small river which runs through
their estancia and the cork woods of their northern hills. There was such
a den or prison already in Spain, where I am told the bear, also a polar
bear, worked out an honourable old age, fishing salmon and trout for the
family of its owner. It must be a pretty sight to see a white bear beside
the foam of a fall, waiting its time to clip out a silvery grilse or
salmon.
The process of discharging a cargo of live polar bears is fraught with
considerable interest. If they escape their captors’ ropes and chains
they go overboard, and as happened here, two got loose and landed at the
fish-market steps. Trömso natives are accustomed to visits from all sorts
and kinds of people and beasts. Grand Dukes and Laps, walrus, whales, and
bears, but not bears at large. They fled, and the bears tucked into the
fish stalls, and the bill for their lunch amounted to one hundred kroner
(£5, 10s.)—probably any other visitors might have bought all the fish in
the market that day for ten kroner. They fortunately took to the water
again after their meal, and were recaptured. Once a walrus escaped at
Trömso from board-ship, and it also took to the water, and it was also
recaptured! It loved the captain’s wife and she whistled to it and it
came back.
Our bears’ cages, all tattered wood and iron bars, were lifted, bears
and all, by the winch over the side, and of course sank almost to
water-level. One of the iron bars was levered up a little with a crowbar,
which gave, in Starboard’s case, an opening for his delicate paw, which
instantly came out and tore the cage to smithereens, and out he came,
and, evidently to his great content, wallowed about in the sea and washed
his face, and took a dive or two and rubbed his paws, saying “Bé-waugh”
and “B-e-a-r” frequently, and looked perfectly happy and amiable. Just
to prevent him swimming ashore and going into the fish-market, we put a
stout little rope round his neck, and he continued to enjoy his bath,
whilst we made ready a new cage, each batten of which is covered with
sheet iron on the inside and has the appearance of strength which I
should desire for such an opening ceremony as I have above suggested, if
I have to be present. When this cage was in order, our duty was to get
the big strop or ring of heavy rope round his waist, so as to haul him
out of his bath with our sixty-horse-power winch, and this was done with
some escape of steam and some splashing and profuse remarks from the
bear. Now he is in his new quarters, into which he cannot get his teeth,
and he ruminates peacefully and eats and drinks what is given him. I
wonder what his teeth will go into when he first comes out.
Christabel and William we are selling for much moneys by telegraph to a
certain millionaire. They will make charming pets and William, as already
mentioned, promises to be a musician as well, but they will never attain,
in captivity, to the size that Port and Starboard may be expected to
attain, for the latter have already spent several years on the floes
eating seal galore.
Bears have gone up in price; very few have lately been landed, as far
as we can hear, in Northern Europe. Recent years have been rather bad
for expeditions. We know of several which have been wrecked; some of the
crews are dead.[17] Gisbert is going to hang on with the Fonix at Trömso
and may go North again in search of survivors.
Slipping down the Norwegian coast amongst the islands in a passenger
steamer feels very luxurious after being in such a small vessel with
always a certain amount of risk; and after views of ice and sea, bears
and seals day after day, rocks and trees and little farms or fishermen’s
houses nestling in the greenery, with mountains and snow-fjeld far behind
them are very welcome. There is the “human interest,” which I have
previously said has been remarked for its absence in the polar regions by
careful observers.
[Illustration: “STARBOARD”
Photographed by Mr. C. T. McKechnie soon after its arrival in the
Edinburgh Zoological Park.]
... What a country this is to breed real men. Every boy in every one of
these isolated farms must of necessity learn to row, to ride, to sail,
to hunt, ski, handle an axe, do iron and wood work, besides his farming;
and for one pound sterling a year he can be in touch with the centres
of European news and civilisation. On the telephone—eighteen kroner a
year they pay to send messages under the sea and over forests and fjelds
to their township, say forty or fifty miles distant, whilst we belated
people in these backwoods of Berwickshire have to pay nine pounds a year
for the same convenience.
As I write we see two such natives enviably employed—two small boys—the
day’s work done on the farm, they don’t go to school in summer—they are
now managing a boat and fishing. With the glass I can see the bow is
almost full of cod, haddock, and some codling. The elder boy looks about
twelve years old. He pulls up two at a time, shimmering, iridescent,
pink-tinted haddock. Who could believe the rather plain grey fish we see
in the fishmonger’s could ever look like a chunk of mother-of-pearl?
Woods and islands, rugged mountains, grey fjelds, with snow in
patches, pass hour after hour, till we come to the fiord of the old
capital—Trondhjem Fiord. It reminds us of our Firth of Forth, on a larger
scale, with more woods. For me Norway begins at Trondhjem going north,
and ends there coming south. Southern Norway seems to have no tradition,
no direct appeal to me. In the soft distance I can see height after
height fading into the distance; to the north and east with the glass I
can see the woods of Sundal in Stordal, where we have hunted elk, and
seen the golden birch leaves falling, and the snowflakes drifting down
into the green depths of the swaying fir woods. The water of the fiord
is tinted with Stordal River. I recall its salmon and hear again its
solemn roar when the mist hung low in the glen. What days of exertion
these were, climbing and descending under the dripping pines, two men and
a hound, stealthily, silently, with hardly a word for hours, watching
through the woods for the gaunt form of a bull elk, days of such fatigue
and nights of profound repose, alike haunted with the sweet melancholy of
the saetar songs.
Why do such merry, cheerful people as bonders’ daughters sing such sad
songs? Here is what I remember of one that haunts me now.
[Music]
Its rhythm just suits your steps if you hum it, not loud enough to
disturb an elk as you slowly ascend, step by step, through the wet
pines in the morning to the high grounds, and the quick part helps you
returning as you swing down the last of the hill-side from one red-leafed
rowan to the next, down to the level; and months after, it comes to you
when you are in a street and you see the woods and the river winding
a silver thread at the foot of the glen and the welcome smoke of the
log-built farm. Once I hummed it unconsciously on a dull, wet day at the
quayside in Hull, standing amongst emigrants looking at the swirling and
muddy river, and a Norse woman standing near with a white handkerchief
for headdress began to hum it too—we could not speak to each other, but
our thoughts were harking back to saetar and glen and hill—the charm of
Norway.
Another haunting folk-song I heard here years ago—I must put it down
to preserve it—at Vibstadt, Namsen Valley, on a hot midday I heard the
bonders’ daughters sing it as they weeded lettuce in the blaze of light.
They called it _Barden’s Dod_ (The Death of the Bard), and we have the
same air in our Highlands; it dates back to prehistoric times; and we
call it “The Minstrel of the MacDonalds.” No one that I know sings or
plays it now at home. But a year or two ago, on the top of a mountain in
Southern Norway, as we rested at lunch, a Norse hunting companion began
singing it, and I started, and he smiled and explained his wife was one
of the little girls who had given it to me in Northern Norway twenty
years before. The Norwegian words, I am told by a Norwegian antiquarian,
belong to the Viking period.