[Illustration: “He picked his way, with much circumspection, between
the prostrate forms of the tiny people.”
_T. G. J._ VOL. I., p. 233.]
THE OXONIAN
IN
THELEMARKEN;
OR,
NOTES OF TRAVEL IN SOUTH-WESTERN NORWAY
IN THE SUMMERS OF 1856 AND 1857.
WITH GLANCES AT THE LEGENDARY LORE
OF THAT DISTRICT.
BY
THE REV. FREDERICK METCALFE, M.A.,
FELLOW OF LINCOLN COLLEGE, OXFORD,
AUTHOR OF
“THE OXONIAN IN NORWAY.”
“Auf den Bergen ist Freiheit; der Hauch der Grüfte,
Steigt nicht hinauf in die schönen Lüfte,
Die Welt is volkommen überall,
Wo der Mensch nicht hinein kömmt mit seiner Qual.”
“Tu nidum servas: ego laudo ruris amœni
Rivos, et musco circumlita saxa, nemusque.”
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,
SUCCESSORS TO HENRY COLBURN,
13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
1858.
[_The right of Translation is reserved._]
LONDON:
SAVILL AND EDWARDS, PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET,
COVENT GARDEN
PREFACE.
In the neighbourhood of Bayeux, in Normandy, it is said that there
still lingers a superstition which most probably came there originally
in the same ship as Rollo the Walker. The country folks believe in
the existence of a sprite (goubelin) who plagues mankind in various
ways. His most favourite method of annoyance is to stand like a horse
saddled and bridled by the roadside, inviting the passers-by to mount
him. But woe to the unlucky wight who yields to the temptation, for
off he sets--“Halloo! halloo! and hark away!” galloping fearfully
over stock and stone, and not unfrequently ends by leaving his rider
in a bog or horse-pond, at the same time vanishing with a loud peal
of mocking laughter. “A heathenish and gross superstition!” exclaims
friend Broadbrim. But what if we try to extract a jewel out of this
ugly monster; knock some commonsense out of his head. Goethe turned the
old fancy of _Der getreue Eckart_ to good account in that way. What
if a moral of various application underlies this grotesque legend.
Suppose, for the nonce, that the rider typify the writer of a book.
Unable to resist a strong temptation to bestride the Pegasus of his
imagination--whether prose or verse--he ventures to mount and go forth
into the world, and not seldom he gets a fall for his pains amid a loud
chorus of scoffs and jeers. Indeed, this is so common a catastrophe,
from the days of Bellerophon downwards (everybody knows that he was the
author of the _Letters_[1] that go by his name), so prone is inkshed to
lead to disaster, that the ancient wish, “Oh that mine adversary had
written a book,” in its usual acceptation (which entirely rests, be it
said, on a faulty interpretation of the original language), was really
exceedingly natural, as the fulfilment of it was as likely as not to
lead to the fullest gratification of human malice.
In defiance, however, of the dangers that threatened him, the writer
of these lines did once gratify his whim, and mount the goblin steed,
and as good luck would have it, without being spilled or dragged
through a horse-pond, or any mischance whatsoever. In other words,
instead of cold water being thrown upon his endeavours, _The Oxonian in
Norway_ met with so indulgent a handling from that amiable abstraction,
the “Benevolus Lector,” that it soon reached a second edition.
So far the author’s lucky star was in the ascendant. But behold his
infatuation, he must again mount and tempt his fate, “Ay! and on the
same steed, too,” cries Mr. Bowbells, to whom the swarming sound of
life with an occasional whiff of the sewers is meat, and drink, and all
things; who is bored to death if he sees more of the quiet country than
Brighton or Ramsgate presents, and is about as locomotive in his tastes
as a London sparrow.
“Norway again, forsooth--_nous revenons à nos moutons_--that horrid
bleak country, where the cold in winter is so intense that when you
sneeze, the shower from your olfactories rattles against the earth like
dust-shot, and in summer you can’t sleep for the brazen-faced sun
staring at you all the twenty-four hours. What rant that is about
The dark tall pines that plume the craggy ledge,
High over the blue gorge,
and all that sort of thing. Give me Kensington Gardens and Rotten Row!”
Still--in spite of Bowbells--we shall venture on the expedition, and
probably with less chance of a fiasco than if we travelled by the
express-train through the beaten paths of central Europe. There, all
is a dead level. Civilization has smoothed the gradients actually
and metaphorically--alike in the Brunellesque and social sense.
As people progress in civilization, the more prominent marks of
national character are planed off. Individuality is lost. The members
of civilized society are as like one another as the counters on a
draft-board. “They rub each other’s angles down,” and thus lose “the
picturesque of man and man.” The same type keeps repeating itself with
sickening monotony, like the patterns of paper-hangings, instead of
those delightfully varied arabesques with which the free hand of the
painter used to diversify the walls of the antique dwelling.
But it is not so with the population of a primitive country like
Norway. Much of the simplicity that characterized our forefathers
is still existing there. We are Aladdined to the England of three
centuries ago. Do you mean to say that you, a sensible man or woman,
prefer putting on company manners at every turn, being everlastingly
swaddled in the artificial restraints of society; being always among
grand people, or genteel people, or superior people, or people
of awful respectability? Do you prefer an aviary full of highly
educated song-birds mewed up so closely that they “show off” one
against another, filled with petty rivalries and jealousies, to the
gay, untutored melody of the woods poured forth for a bird’s own
gratification or that of its mate? Do you like to spend your time
for ever in trim gardens, among standards and espaliers, and spruce
flower-beds, so weeded, and raked, and drilled, and shaped, that you
feel positively afraid of looking and walking about for fear of making
a _faux pas_? Oh no! you would like to see a bit of wild rose or native
heather. (Interpret this as you list of the flowers of the field, or
a fairer flower still.) You prefer climbing a real lichened rock _in
situ_, that has not been placed there by Capability Brown or Sir Joseph
Paxton.
Indeed, the avidity with which books of travel in primitive
countries--whether in the tropics or under the pole--are now read,
shows that the more refined a community is, the greater interest it
will take in the occupation, the sentiments, the manners of people
still in a primitive state of existence. Our very over-civilization
begets in us a taste to beguile oneself of its tedium, its frivolities,
its unreality, by mixing in thought, at least, with those who are
nearer the state in which nature first made man.
“The manners of a rude people are always founded on fact,” said Sir
Walter Scott, “and therefore the feelings of a polished generation
immediately sympathize with them.” It is this kind of feeling that
has a good deal to do with urging men, who have been educated in all
the habits and comforts of improved society, to leave the groove, and
carve out for themselves a rough path through dangers and privations in
wilder countries.
“You will have none of this sort of thing,” said Dr. Livingstone, in
the Sheldonian theatre, while addressing Young Oxford on the fine
field for manly, and useful, and Christian enterprise that Africa
opens out,--“You will have none of this sort of thing there,” while he
uneasily shook the heavy sleeve of his scarlet D.C.L. gown, which he
had donned in deference to those who had conferred on him this mark of
honour. Yes, less comforts, perhaps, but at the same time less red tape.
“Brown exercise” is better than the stewy, stuffy adipocere state of
frame in which the man of “indoors mind” ultimately eventuates. Living
on frugal fare, in the sharp, brisk air of the mountain, the lungs
of mind and body expand healthfully, and the fire of humanity burns
brighter, like the fire in the grate when fanned by a draught of fresh
oxygen. Most countries, when we visit them for the first time, turn
out “the dwarfs of presage.” Not so Norway. It grows upon you every
time you see it. You need not fear, gentle reader, of being taken
over beaten ground. “The Oxonian” has never visited Thelemarken and
Sætersdal before. So come along with me, in the absence of a better
guide, if you wish to cultivate a nearer acquaintance with the roughly
forged, “hardware” sort of people of this district, content to forget
for a while the eternal willow-pattern crockery of home. Thelemarken is
the most primitive part of Norway; it is the real _Ultima Thule_ of the
ancients; the very name indicates this, and the Norwegian antiquaries
quote our own King Alfred in support of this idea. It is true, that on
nearer inspection, its physical geography will not be found to partake
of the marvellous peculiarities assigned to Thule by the ancient Greek
navigator, Pytheas, who asserts that it possessed neither earth, air,
or sea, but a chaotic mixture of all three elements. But that may
emphatically be said to be neither here nor there. Inaccessible the
country certainly is, and it is this very inaccessibility which has
kept out the schoolmaster; so that old times are not yet changed, nor
old manners gone, nor the old language unlearned under the auspices
of that orthoepic functionary. The fantastic pillars and arches of
fairy folk-lore may still be descried in the deep secluded glens of
Thelemarken, undefaced with stucco, not propped by unsightly modern
buttress. The harp of popular minstrelsy--though it hangs mouldering
and mildewed with infrequency of use, its strings unbraced for want of
cunning hands that can tune and strike them as the Scalds of Eld--may
still now and then be heard sending forth its simple music. Sometimes
this assumes the shape of a soothing lullaby to the sleeping babe, or
an artless ballad of love-lorn swains, or an arch satire on rustic
doings and foibles. Sometimes it swells into a symphony descriptive
of the descent of Odin; or, in somewhat of less Pindaric, and more
Dibdin strain, it recounts the deeds of the rollicking, death-despising
Vikings; while, anon, its numbers rise and fall with mysterious cadence
as it strives to give a local habitation and a name to the dimly seen
forms and antic pranks of the hollow-backed Huldra crew.
The author thinks that no apology is needed for working in some of the
legendary interludes which the natives repeated to him, so curious and
interesting, most of which he believes never appeared before in an
English dress, and several of them in no print whatever. Legends are
an article much in request just now; neither can they be considered
trifling when viewed in the light thrown upon the origin of this
branch of popular belief and pastime by the foremost men of their time,
_e.g._, Scott, and more especially Jacob Grimm. Frivolous, indeed! not
half so frivolous as the hollow-hearted, false-fronted absurdities
of the “great and small vulgar,” is the hollow-backed elf, with the
grand mythological background reaching into the twilight of the
earth’s history, nor so trifling the simple outspoken peasant, grave,
yet cheery, who speaks as he thinks, and actually sometimes laughs a
good guffaw, as the stuck-up ladies and gentlemen of a section of the
artificial world, with their heartless glitter, crocodile tears, their
solemn pretence, their sham raptures.
I must not omit to say that the admirable troll-drawing, which forms
the frontispiece of the first volume, is one selected from a set of
similar sketches by my friend, T. G. Jackson, Esq., of Wadham College,
Oxford. It evinces such an intimate acquaintance with the looks of
those small gentry that it is lucky for him that he did not live in the
days when warlocks were done to death.
F. M.
LINCOLN COLLEGE, OXFORD,
_May, 1858_.
CONTENTS TO VOL. I.
CHAPTER I.
The glamour of Norwegian scenery--A gentle angler in a
passion--The stirring of the blood--A bachelor’s wild scream
of liberty--What marriage brings a salmon-fisher to--Away,
for the land of the mountain and the flood--“Little” circle
sailing--The Arctic shark--Advantages of gold lace--A lesson
for laughers--Norwegian coast scenery--Nature’s grey friars--In
the steps of the Vikings--The Norwegian character--How the
Elves left Jutland--Christiansand harbour pp. 1-15
CHAPTER II.
Disappointed fishermen--A formidable diver--Arendal, the
Norwegian Venice--A vocabulary at fault--Ship-building--The
Norwegian Seaboard--Sandefjord, the Norwegian Brighton--A
complicated costume--Flora’s own bonnet--Bruin at large--Skien
and its saw-mills--Norway cutting its sticks--Wooden
walls--Christopher Hansen Blum--The Norwegian phase of
religious dissent--A confession of faith--The Norsk Church the
offspring of that of Great Britain pp. 16-28
CHAPTER III.
A poet in full uniform--The young lady in gauntlet gloves
again--Church in a cave--Muscular Christianity in the
sixteenth century--A miracle of light and melody--A romance
of bigotry--How Lutheranism came in like a lion--The Last
of the Barons--Author makes him bite the dust--Brief
burial-service in use in South-western Norway--The
Sörenskriver--Norwegian substitute for Doctors’ Commons--Grave
ale--A priestly Samson--Olaf’s ship--A silent woman--Norwegian
dialects--Artificial salmon-breeding--A piscatorial prevision pp. 29-47
CHAPTER IV.
Mine host at Dal--Bernadotte’s prudent benignity--Taxing the
bill of costs--Hurrah for the mountains--Whetstones--Antique
wooden church--A wild country--“Raven depth”--How the
English like to do fine scenery--Ancient wood-carving--A
Norwegian peasant’s witticism--A rural rectory--Share and
chair alike--Ivory knife-handles--Historical pictures--An
old Runic Calendar--The heathen leaven still exists in
Norway--Washing-day--Old names of the Norsk months--Peasant
songs--Rustic reserve--A Norsk ballad pp. 48-68
CHAPTER V.
A lone farm-house--A scandal against the God Thor--The
headquarters of Scandinavian fairy-lore--The legend of Dyrë
Vo--A deep pool--A hint for alternate ploughboys--Wild
goose geometry--A memorial of the good old times--Dutch
falconers--Rough game afoot--Author hits two birds with one
stone--Crosses the lake Totak--A Slough of Despond--An honest
guide--A Norwegian militiaman--Rough lodgings--A night with the
swallows--A trick of authorship--Yea or Nay pp. 69-81
CHAPTER VI.
No cream--The valley of the Maan--The Riukan foss--German
students--A bridge of dread--The course of true love never
did run smooth--Fine misty weather for trout--Salted
provisions--Midsummer-night revels--The Tindsö--The priest’s
hole--Treacherous ice--A case for Professor Holloway--The
realms of cloud-land--Superannuated--An ornithological
guess--Field-fares out of reach of “Tom Brown”--The best
kind of physic--Undemonstrative affection--Everywhere the
same--Clever little horses pp. 82-96
CHAPTER VII.
An oasis--Unkempt waiters--Improving an opportunity--The church
in the wilderness--Household words--A sudden squall--The
pools of the Quenna--Airy lodgings--Weather-bound--A
Norwegian grandpapa--Unwashed agriculturists--An uncanny
companion--A fiery ordeal--The idiot’s idiosyncrasy--The
punctilious parson--A pleasant query--The mystery of making
flad-brod--National cakes--The exclusively English phase of
existence--Author makes a vain attempt to be “hyggelig”--Rather
queer pp. 97-113
CHAPTER VIII.
Northwards--Social colts--The horse shepherd--The tired
traveller’s sweet restorer, tea--Troll-work--Snow
Macadam--Otter hunting in Norway--Normaends Laagen--A vision
of reindeer--The fisherman’s hut--My lodging is on the cold
ground--Making a night of it--National songs--Shaking down--A
slight touch of nightmare pp. 114-128
CHAPTER IX.
The way to cure a cold--Author shoots some dotterel--Pit-fall
for reindeer--How mountains look in mountain air--A
natural terrace--The meeting of the waters--A phantom
of delight--Proves to be a clever dairymaid--A singular
cavalcade--Terrific descent into Tjelmö-dal--A volley of
questions--Crossing a cataract--A tale of a tub--Author reaches
Garatun--Futile attempt to drive a bargain pp. 129-141
CHAPTER X.
The young Prince of Orange--A crazy bridge--At the foot of
the mighty Vöring Foss--A horse coming downstairs--Mountain
greetings--The smoke-barometer--The Vöring waterfall--National
characteristics--Paddy’s estimate of the Giant’s
Causeway--Meteoric water--New illustrations of old
slanders--How the Prince of Orange did homage to the glories
of nature--Author crosses the lake Eidsfjord--Falls in
with an English yacht and Oxonians--An innkeeper’s story
about the Prince of Orange--Salmonia--General aspect of
a Norwegian Fjord--Author arrives at Utne--Finds himself
in pleasant quarters--No charge for wax-lights--Christian
names in Thelemarken--Female attire--A query for Sir Bulwer
Lytton--Physiognomy of the Thelemarken peasants--Roving
Englishmen--Christiania newspapers--The Crown
Prince--Historical associations of Utne--The obsequies of Sea
Kings--Norwegian gipsies pp. 142-160
CHAPTER XI.
From Fairy-lore to Nature-lore--Charming idea for stout
folk--Action and reaction--Election-day at Bergen--A laxstie--A
careless pilot--Discourse about opera-glasses--Paulsen Vellavik
and the bears--The natural character of bears--Poor Bruin
in a dilemma--An intelligent Polar bear--Family plate--What
is fame?--A simple Simon--Limestone fantasia--The paradise
of botanists--Strength and beauty knit together--Mountain
hay-making--A garden in the wilderness--Footprints
of a celebrated botanist--Crevasses--Dutiful snow
streams--Swerre’s sok--The Rachels of Eternity--A Cockney’s
dream of desolation--Curds-and-whey--The setting-in of
misfortunes--Author’s powder-flask has a cold bath--The shadows
of the mountains--The blind leading the blind--On into the
night--The old familiar music--Holloa--Welcome intelligence pp. 161-187
CHAPTER XII.
The lonely châlet--The Spirit of the
hills--Bauta-stones--Battlefields older than
history--Sand-falls--Thorsten Fretum’s hospitality--Norwegian
roads--The good wife--Author executes strict
justice--Urland--Crown Prince buys a red nightcap--A melancholy
spectacle--The trick of royalty--Author receives a visit
from the Lehnsman--Skiff voyage to Leirdalsören--Limestone
cliffs--Becalmed--A peasant lord of the forest--Inexplicable
natural phenomena--National education--A real postboy--A
disciple for Braham--The Hemsedal’s fjeld--The land
of desolation--A passing belle--The change-house of
Bjöberg--“With twenty ballads stuck upon the wall”--A story
about hill folk--Sivardson’s joke--Little trolls--The way to
cast out wicked fairies--The people in the valley--Pastor
Engelstrup--Economy of a Norwegian change-house--The Halling
dance--Tame reindeer--A region of horrors pp. 188-214
CHAPTER XIII.
Fairy-lore--A wrestle for a drinking-horn--Merry time is
Yule time--Head-dresses at Haga--Old church at Naes--Good
trout-fishing country--A wealthy milkmaid--Horses subject
to influenza--A change-house library--An historical
calculation--The great national festival--Author threatens,
but relents--A field-day among the ducks--Gulsvig--Family
plate--A nurse of ninety years--The Sölje--The little fat
grey man--A capital scene for a picture--An amazing story--As
true as I sit here--The goat mother--Are there no Tusser
now-a-days?--Uninvited guests--An amicable conversation about
things in general--Hans saves his shirt--The cosmopolitan
spirit of fairy-lore--Adam of Bremen pp. 215-241
CHAPTER XIV.
A port-wine pilgrimage--The perfection of a landlady--Old
superstitious customs--Levelling effects of unlevelled roads--A
blank day--Sketch of an interior after Ostade--A would-be
resurrectionist foiled--The voices of the woods--Valuable
timber--A stingy old fellow--Unmistakeable symptoms of
civilization--Topographical memoranda--Timber-logs on
their travels--The advantages of a short cut--A rock-gorge
swallows a river--Ferry talk--Welcome--What four years can
do for the stay-at-homes--A Thelemarken manse--Spæwives--An
important day for the millers--How a tailor kept watch--The
mischievous cats--Similarity in proverbs--“The postman’s
knock”--Government patronage of humble talent--Superannuated
clergymen in Norway--Perpetual curates--Christiania
University examination--Norwegian students--The Bernadotte
dynasty--Scandinavian unity--Religious parties--Papal
propagandists at Tromsö--From fanaticism to field-sports--The
Linnæa Borealis pp. 242-276
CHAPTER XV.
Papa’s birthday--A Fellow’s sigh--To Kongsberg--A word for
waterproofs--Dram Elv--A relic of the shooting season--How
precipitous roads are formed in Norway--The author does
something eccentric--The river Lauven--Pathetic cruelty--The
silver mine at Kongsberg--A short life and not a merry
one--The silver mine on fire--A leaf out of Hannibal’s book--A
vein of pure silver--Commercial history of the Kongsberg
silver mines--Kongsberg--The silver refining works--Silver
showers--That horrid English pp. 277-296
CHAPTER XVI.
A grumble about roads--Mr. Dahl’s caravansary--“You’ve waked
me too early”--St. Halvard--Professor Munck--Book-keeping
by copper kettles--Norwegian society--Fresh milk--Talk
about the great ship--Horten the chief naval station of
Norway--The Russian Admiral--Conchology--Tönsberg the
most ancient town in Norway--Historical reminiscences--A
search for local literature--An old Norsk Patriot--Nobility
at a discount--Passport passages--Salmonia--A tale for
talkers--Agreeable meeting--The Roman Catholics in Finmark--A
deep design--Ship wrecked against a lighthouse--The courtier
check-mated pp. 297-317
THE OXONIAN IN THELEMARKEN.
CHAPTER I.
The glamour of Norwegian scenery--A gentle angler in a
passion--The stirring of the blood--A bachelor’s wild scream
of liberty--What marriage brings a salmon-fisher to--Away,
for the land of the mountain and the flood--“Little” circle
sailing--The Arctic shark--Advantages of gold lace--A lesson
for laughers--Norwegian coast scenery--Nature’s grey friars--In
the steps of the Vikings--The Norwegian character--How the
Elves left Jutland--Christiansand harbour.
A strange attraction has Norway for one who has once become acquainted
with it: with its weird rocks and mountains--its dark cavernous
fjords--its transparent skies--its quaint gulf-stream warming
apparatus--its “Borealis race”--its fabulous Maelstrom--its “Leviathan
slumbering on the Norway foam”--its sagas, so graphically portraying
the manners and thoughts of an ancient race--its sturdy population,
descendants of that northern hive which poured from the frozen loins
of the north, and, as Montesquieu says, “left their native climes
to destroy tyrants and slaves, and were, a thousand years ago, the
upholders of European liberty.”
“Very attractive, no doubt,” interrupts Piscator. “In short, the
country beats that loadstone island in the East hollow, which extracted
the bolts out of the ships’ bottoms; drawing the tin out of one’s
pockets, and oneself thither every summer without the possibility of
resistance. But a truce to your dithyrambs on scenery, and sagas, and
liberty. Talk about the salmon-fishing. I suppose you’re coming to
that last--the best at the end, like the postscript of a young lady’s
letter.”
Well, then, the salmon-fishing. A man who has once enjoyed the thrill
of _that_ won’t so easily forget it. Here, for instance, is the month
of June approaching. Observe the antics of that “old Norwegian,” the
Rev. Christian Muscular, who has taken a College living, and become a
sober family man. See how he snorts and tosses up his head, like an
old hunter in a paddock as the chase sweeps by. He keeps writing to
his friends, inquiring what salmon rivers are to be let, and what time
they start, and all that sort of thing, although he knows perfectly
well he can’t possibly go; not even if he might have the priest’s water
on the Namsen. But no wonder Mr. Muscular is growing uneasy. The air
of Tadpole-in-the-Marsh becomes unhealthy at that season, and he feels
quite suffocated in the house, and prostrated by repose; and as he
reads Schiller’s fresh ‘Berglied,’ he sighs for the mountain air and
the music of the gurgling river.
But there are mamma and the pledges; so he must resign all hope of
visiting his old haunts. Instead of going there himself, in body, he
must do it in spirit--by reading, for instance, these pages about the
country, pretty much in the same way as the Irish peasant children,
who couldn’t get a taste of the bacon, pointed their potatoes at it,
and had a taste in imagination. Behold, then, Mr. Muscular, with all
the family party, and the band-boxes and bonnet-boxes, and umbrellas
and parasols numbered up to twenty; and last, not least, the dog “Ole”
(he delights to call the live things about him by Norsk names), bound
for the little watering-place of Lobster-cum-Crab. Behold him at the
“Great Babel junction,” not far from his destination, trying to collect
his scattered thoughts--which are far away--and to do the same by his
luggage, two articles of which--Harold’s rocking-horse and Sigfrid’s
pap-bottle--are lost already. Shall I tell you what Mr. Muscular is
thinking of? Of “the Long,” when he shut up shop without a single care;
feeling satisfied that his rooms and properties would be in the same
place when he came back, without being entrusted to servants who gave
“swarries” above-stairs during his absence.
Leaving him, then, to dredge for the marine monstrosities which abound
at Lobster-cum-Crab, or to catch congers and sea-perch at the sunken
wreck in the Bay--we shall start with our one wooden box, and various
other useful articles, for the land of the mountain and the flood--pick
up its wild legends and wild flowers, scale its mountains, revel in the
desolation of its snowfields, thread its sequestered valleys--catching
fish and shooting fowl as occasion offers; though we give fair notice
that on this occasion we shall bestow less attention on the wild
sports than on other matters.
On board the steamer that bore us away over a sea as smooth as a
mirror, was a stout English lady, provided with a brown wig, and who
used the dredging-box most unsparingly to stop up the gaps in her
complexion.
“A wild country is Norway, isn’t it?” inquired she, with a sentimental
air; “you will, no doubt, have to take a Lazaroni with you to show you
the way?” (? Cicerone).
“The scenery,” continued she, “isn’t equal, I suppose, to that of
Hoban. Do you know, I was a great climber until I became subject to
palpitations. You wouldn’t think it, so robust as I am; but I’m very
delicate. My two families have been too much for me.”
I imagined she had been married twice, or had married a widower.
“You know,” continued she, confidentially, “I had three children, and
then I stopped for some years, and began again, and had two more.
Children are such a plague. I went with them to the sea, and would you
believe it, every one of them took the measles.”
But there was a little countrywoman of ours on board whose vivacity
and freshness made up for the insipidity of the “Hoban lady.” She
can’t bear to think that she is doing no good in the world, and spends
much of her time in district visiting in one of the largest parishes
of the metropolis. Not that she had a particle of the acid said to
belong to some of the so-called sisters of mercy--reckless craft that,
borne along by the gale of triumphant vanity, have in mere wantonness
run down many an unsuspecting vessel--I mean trifled with honest
fellows’ affections, and then suddenly finding themselves beached, in a
matrimonial sense, irretrievably pronounce all men, without exception,
monsters. And, thus, she whose true mission it was to be “the Angel in
the House,” presiding, ministering, soothing, curdles up into a sour,
uneasy devotee.
At sea, a wise traveller will be determined to gather amusement
from trifles; nay, even rather than get put out by any delay or
misadventure, set about performing the difficult task of constructing
a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. For instance, our vessel, being
overburdened, steered excessively ill, as might be seen from her
wake, which, for the most part, assumed the shape of zigzags or arcs
of circles. This disconcerted one grumpy fellow uncommonly. But we
endeavoured to restore his good humour by telling him that we were not
practising the “great” but the “little” circle sailing. His mantling
sulkiness seemed to evaporate at this pleasantry; and, subsequently,
when, on the coal lessening, and lightening our craft astern, she
steered straighter, he facetiously apostrophized the man at the wheel--
“You’re the man to take the kinks out of her course; we must have you
at the wheel all night, and as much grog as you like, at my expense,
afterwards.”
The captain, who was taken prisoner on returning from the Davis’
Straits fishery, during the French wars, and was detained seven years
in France, gives me some information about the Arctic shark (Squalus
Arcticus), which is now beginning to reappear on the coast of Norway.
“We used to call them the blind shark, sir--more by token they would
rush in among the nets and seize our fish, paying no more attention to
us than nothing at all. They used to bite pieces out of our fish just
like a plate, and no mistake, as clean as a whistle, sir. I’ve often
stuck my knife into ’em, but they did not wince in the least--they did
not appear to have no feeling whatsomdever. I don’t think they had any
blood in ’em; I never saw any. I’ve put my hand in their body, and it
was as cold as ice.”
“By-the-bye, captain,” said I, to our commander, who was a fubsy,
little round red-faced man, with a cheery blue eye, “how’s this? Why,
you are in uniform!”
“To be sure I am. Th’ Cumpany said it must be done. Those furriners
think more of you with a bit of gowd lace on your cap and coat. An
order came from our governor to wear this here coat and cap--so I put
’em on. What a guy I did look--just like a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
“Or a daw in borrowed plumes,” suggested I.
“But I put a bould face on’t, and came a-board, and walked about just
as if I had the old brown coat on, and now I’ve got quite used to the
change.”
Now this little fellow is as clever as he is modest--every inch
a seaman. I’ve seen him calm and collected in very difficult
circumstances on this treacherous old North Sea.
Last year, in the autumn, the captain tells me he was approaching the
Norwegian coast in the grey of the morning when he descried what he
took to be a quantity of nets floating on the water, and several boats
hovering about them. He eased the engine for fear of entangling the
screw. Some Cockneys on board, who wore nautical dresses, and sported
gilt buttons on which were engraved R. T. Y. C., laughed at the captain
for his excessive carefulness. Presently it turned out that what had
seemed to be floating nets were the furniture and hencoops of the
ill-fated steamer _Norge_, which had just been run down by another
steamer, and sunk with a loss of some half a hundred lives. A grave
Norwegian on board now lectured the young men for their ignorance and
bravado.
“They just did look queer, I’ll a-warrant ye,” continued our
north-country captain. “They laughed on t’other side of their mouths,
and were mum for the rest of the voyage.”
“What vessel’s that?” asked I.
“Oh! that’s the opposition--the Kangaroo.”
This was the captain’s pronunciation of _Gangr Rolf_ (Anglicè, Rollo,
the Walker), the Norwegian screw, which I hear rolls terribly in a
sea-way.
“Hurrah!” I exclaimed. “Saall for Gamle Norge,” as we sighted the loom
of the land. How different it is from the English coast. The eye will
in vain look for the white perpendicular cliffs, such as hedge so much
of old Albion, their glistening fronts relieved at intervals by streaks
of darker hue, where the retreating angle of the wall-like rock does
not catch the sun’s rays; while behind lie the downs rising gently
inland, with their waving fields of corn or old pastures dotted with
sheep. Quite as vainly will you cast about for the low shores of other
parts of our island--diversified, it may be, by yellow dunes, with the
sprinkling of shaggy flag-like grass, or, elsewhere, the flat fields
terminating imperceptibly in flatter sands, the fattening ground of
oysters.
As far as I can judge at this distance, instead of the coast forming
one sober businesslike line of demarcation, with no nonsense about it,
showing exactly the limits of land and ocean, as in other countries,
here it is quite impossible to say where water ends and land begins. It
is neither fish nor fowl. Those low, bare gneiss-rocks, for instance,
tumbled, as it were, into a lot of billows. One would almost think
they had got a footing among the waves by putting on the shape and
aspect of water. Well, if you scan them accurately you find they are
unmistakeably bits of islands. But as we approach nearer, look further
inland to those low hills covered with pine-trees, which somehow or
other have managed to wax and pick up a livelihood in the clefts and
crannies of the rocks, or sometimes even on the bare scarps. While
ever and anon a bald-topped rock protruding from the dark green masses
stands like a solitary Friar of Orders Grey, with his well shaven
tonsure, amid a crowd of black cowled Dominicans.
“Surely that,” you’ll say, “is the coast line proper?”
“Wrong again, sir. It is a case of wheels within wheels; or, to be
plain, islands within islands. Behind those wooded heights there are
all sorts of labyrinths of salt water, some ending in a _cul-de-sac_,
others coming out, when you least expect it, into the open sea again,
and forming an inland passage for many miles. If that myth about King
Canute bidding the waves not come any further, had been told of this
country, there would have been some sense in it, and he might have
appeared to play the wave-compeller to some purpose. For really, in
some places, it is only by a nice examination one can say how far the
sea’s rule does extend.”
The whole of the coast is like this, except between the Naze and
Stavanger, rising at times, as up the West Coast, into magnificent
precipices, but still beaded with islands from the size of a pipe
of port to that of an English county. Hence there are two ways of
sailing along the coast, “indenskjærs,” _i.e._, within the “skerries,”
and “udenskjærs,” or outside of the “skerries,” _i.e._, in the open
sea. The inner route has been followed by coasters from the days of
the Vikings. Those pilots on the Norwegian Government steam-vessels
whom you see relieving each other alternately on the bridge, spitting
thoughtfully a brown fluid into a wooden box, and gently moving their
hand when we thread the watery Thermopylæ, are men bred up from boyhood
on the coast, and know its intricacies by heart. The captain is, in
fact, a mere cypher, as far as the navigation is concerned.
“You’ve never been in Norway before?” I inquired of the fair Samaritan.
“No; this is my first visit. I hope I shall like it.”
“I can imagine you will. If you are a lover of fashion and formality,
you will not be at ease in Norway. The good folks are simple-minded and
sincere. If they invite you to an entertainment, it is because they are
glad to see you. Not to fill up a place at the table, or because they
are obliged to do the civil, at the same time hoping sincerely you won’t
come. Their forefathers were men of great self-denial, and intensely
fond of liberty. When it was not to be had at home, they did what those
birds were doing that rested on our mast during the voyage, migrated
to a more congenial clime--in their case to Iceland. The present
Norwegians have a good deal of the same sturdy independence about them;
some travellers say, to an unpleasant degree. It’s true they are rather
rough and uncouth; but, like their forefathers, when they came in
contact with old Roman civilization in France and Normandy, they will
progress and improve by intercourse with the other peoples of Europe.
“Their old mythology is grand in the extreme. Look at that rainbow,
yonder. In their eyes, the bow in the cloud was the bridge over which
lay the road to Valhalla. Then their legends. Do you know, I think that
much of our fairy lore came over to us from Norway, just as the seeds
of the mountain-flowers in Scotland are thought by Forbes to have come
over from Scandinavia on the ice-floes during the glacial period. If I
had time, I could tell you a lot of sprite-stories; among others, one
how the elves all left Jutland one night in an old wreck, lying on the
shore, and got safe to Norway. To this country, at all events, those
lines won’t yet apply:--
“The power, the beauty, and the majesty
That had her haunts in dale, or fairy fountain,
Or forest, by slow stream, or pebbly spring,
Or chasms, or watery depths; all these have vanished.
They live no longer in the faith of reason.”
“But here we are in Christiansand harbour, and yonder is my steamer,
the _Lindesnaes_, which will take me to Porsgrund, whither I am bound;
so farewell, and I hope you will not repent of your visit to Norway!”