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.
Bobbing my head low, I entered the châlet. One side of the small
interior was occupied by a bed, on which lay a woman with an infant
in her arms, while at the other end of the couch--heads and tails
fashion--were a little boy and girl. The other side of the den was
occupied by shelves covered with cheeses and vessels of milk, while
near the door was the hearth, on which some dried juniper and willow
bushes were crackling, under the superintendence of the stalwart Hans,
who had left his helpmate’s side. Of course the good folks bid me
welcome, and bewailed my mischance; and I felt as secure here, though
quite alone, and not a soul in England knew where I was, as if I had
been in my native country.
Taking a seat on the end of a box, which I turned up for the
purpose--the only seat in the place--I commenced warming my outer man
with the blaze and smoke of the cabin, and my inner with a kettle of
hot tea. How fortunate it was that I thought of taking a stock of it
with me.
“Did not you hear me cry out, last night?” asked I, when I had thawed a
little.
“We heard a noise outside, and peeped out. All the cattle sprang to
their feet in great alarm; so we thought it might be some wild animal.
Afterwards, we heard the sound repeated, and did not know what to make
of it. I didn’t like to venture out.”
“You thought it was a troll, no doubt,” suggested I, but did not press
him on this point.
Reader, if you lived the life of these people, I’ll venture to say
that, were you as matter-of-fact a body as ever lived, you would become
infected with a tinge of superstition in spite of yourself.
Presently Hans and his wife got up to milk the cows, and we resumed
our journey. There were trout of three pound weight, I learned, in the
dark lake close by, but I had had quite enough of mountain sojourn for
the present. The next two or three hours’ travel presented the same
scenes as before, savage in the extreme. Now snow, now ice, now rocks
splintered, riven asunder, cast upon heaps, and ranged in fantastic
groups, with now and then a delicate anemone, red or white, and other
Alpine plants peeping modestly out of the ruins.
At last, emerging on a grassy slope, we saw, five or six miles below
us, the arm of the Sogne Fjord, whither we were journeying. What a
pleasure it was to tread once more on a piece of flat road, which
we did at a place called Flom. More than one Bauta stone erected to
commemorate some event, about which nobody knows anything at all, is
to be found here. Not long ago they were very numerous; but these
relics of a heathen race have been gradually destroyed by the bonders.
Offensive and defensive armour is not unfrequently picked up in the
neighbourhood, so that this secluded valley must have been at one time
the scene of great events.
Over the stream to the left, I see one of those sand-falls so frequent
in this country, and more destructive to property than the snow
avalanche.[18] In an unlucky hour some sudden rain-storm washes off
the outer skin--_i.e._, grass, or herbage, of a steep hill of loam or
sand. From that hour the sides of the hill keep perishing--nothing will
grow upon them, and every rain the earthy particles keep crumbling off
from the slope: thus, not only curtailing the available land above, but
damaging the crops below. Woe to the farmer who has a mud or sand-fall
of this description on his property.
Not sorry was I to darken the doors of Thorsten Fretum, whose house
stood on an eminence, commanding a view up the valley and the Fjord.
Bayersk Oel and Finkel--old and good--raw ham, eggs, and gammel Ost--a
banquet fit for the gods--were set before me. Thorsten Fretum is a man
of substance, and of intelligence to boot. He has twice been member
of parliament--one of the twenty peasant representatives out of the
aggregate one hundred and four which compose the Storthing. A person of
enlightened views, he is especially solicitous about the improvement
of the means of road-communication. At present, between the capital,
Christiania, and Bergen there are no less than sixty miles of boating;
fancy there being sixty miles of sea voyage, and no other means of
transit between London and Aberdeen.
Mr. Fretum is well acquainted with the mountains, and from him I learn
that my guide has brought me some twenty miles out of the right way.
Mrs. Fretum, a nice-looking woman, wears the regular peasant cap of
white linen stiffly starched, but of lighter make than those used in
the Hardanger, while round the forehead is fastened a dark silk riband.
She is the mother of fourteen sons, some of whose small white heads I
could see now and then protruded through a distant door to get a sight
of the stranger.
Mr. Fretum catches large salmon in the river, and exhibits flies of his
own construction. A few of mine will serve him as improved patterns,
and at the same time be an acknowledgment of his hospitality.
The lyster, I find, is used, but as the river is not of a nature to
admit of boats, the weapon is secured by a string to the wrist of the
caster. I must not omit to say that I deliberately fined my guide one
dollar for the injury I had sustained by his carelessness, which he
submitted to with a tolerably good grace, evidently thinking I had let
him off very cheaply.
An old man and a young girl row me in the evening to that most pretty
spot, Urland. Here I find shelter at the merchant’s, just close to the
whitewashed church, which, according to tradition, was originally a
depôt for merchandize, and belonged to the Hanse League. As I landed,
a crowd of peasants stood on the beach taking farewell of a lot of
drovers bound for the south. They wore, instead of the national red
cap, one of blue worsted, adorned with two parallel white lines.
This is peculiar to parts of the Sogne district. The Crown Prince,
by-the-bye, enchanted the peasants by purchasing one of the aforesaid
red nightcaps to take to Stockholm.
Didn’t I get up a good fire in the iron stove which garnished one
corner of the comfortable room upstairs. With a palpitating heart I
then opened my box to investigate the amount of damage done by the
immersion. What a sight! Those carefully starched white shirts and
collars which I had expressly reserved for the period when I should
get back to towns and cities, limper than the flexible binding of the
guide-book. The books, too, and maps humid throughout; the ammunition
nearly in the same plight; while those captain-biscuits, on which
I counted, were converted into what I should imagine was very like
baby-food, though I am not skilled in those matters.
There was no need of the cup of cold water, which travelling Englishmen
so often insist on placing near the red-hot thirty-six pounders
(_i.e._, iron German stoves) for the purpose of neutralising the
dryness of the atmosphere in the apartment, for I was soon in a cloud
of steam rising from the drying effects.
The _Morgen-Bladt_, I see, still continues to give accounts of the
Crown Prince’s progress. He has been examining some extensive draining
operations near Molde, much to the wonderment of the peasants.
“I trow the king’s son knows as much about these things as the best
farmer among us,” said a red-capped bonder to another in the crowd.
“Ay, and a vast deal more, let me tell thee, neighbour Ole.” And then a
strapping youth exclaims,
“How sorry I am that I’ve served out my time under the king (_i.e._,
as a soldier); I finished last year. It must be sheer holiday work to
serve under such a bonny lad as that.”
The Viceroy continually indulges in harmless pleasantries with the good
folks, without any loss of dignity by thus unbending. Can any one tell
me why things are so different in England? When Shakspeare said “that
a sort of divinity hedges a king,” he did not mean to say that royalty
should be iced. I remember many years ago being at a public masked
ball at a continental capital when the King, who was good humouredly
sauntering all among the maskers, came up and asked me what character
my dress represented, and then made some witty _apropos_ as he passed
on through the crowd.
The usual explanation given for the sharper distinction of ranks in
Great Britain is the vulgarity and want of _savoir faire_ of the less
elevated classes, who, if they get an inch, will take an ell. If this
is true, it is a great blot on the Anglo-Saxon, or whatever you call
it, character, that an Englishman cannot take some middle place between
flunkeyism and forwardness, sycophancy and rudeness.
During the evening I am favoured with a visit from the Lehnsman, who
informs me that the stream close by is rented by an Englishman, who
never comes, although it holds good salmon. I also learn, that by a
very wise regulation, which might be imitated with good effect in
England, he has to report annually to the chief government officer of
the district (1), upon the amount of grain sown; (2), the prospects
of the harvest; (3), on the result of the harvest. This enables the
authorities and merchants to regulate their measures accordingly, and
neither more nor less grain is imported than is necessary.
Mons and Illing were the names of the two clever boatmen who manned
our skiff the next day to Leirdalsören, distant nearly forty miles.
Rounding a vast cliff, whose sides were so steep as not to afford a
particle of foothold in case of need, the bark bounds merrily along
before a regular gale, and we lose sight very soon of the peaceful
Urland, and descry another little green spot, Underdal, with its black
chapel of ease to the mother church. Lower down on the same side we
open the entrance to Neri Fjord, guarded by stupendous limestone
bluffs; one of these is black with the exposure of many thousand
years, and nearly perpendicular. But the most picturesque is the
western portal, where in parts the white rock has become turned into
a beautiful purple, diversified here and there by patches of green
foliage.
I should not have liked to be here on a sun-shiny day, just after dame
Nature had completed the operation of opening the white limestone. A
pair of green spectacles would have been much needed to take off the
edge of the glare. That street in Marseilles (see _Little Dorrit_), the
minute description of the glare and heat of which reminds one of the
tautological pie-man, “all hot, hot--hot again!” must have been nothing
to it.
Many eagles have made these fastnesses their dwelling-places, and I
hear from the boatmen they commit frequent ravages among the sheep and
goats.
Of aquatic birds, red-throated divers are the only ones we see. Indeed,
in this part of Norway, the traveller misses the feathered multitudes
that are to be seen within the Arctic circle.
But the wind has suddenly failed us, and the five hours, in which we
were to accomplish the distance, will infallibly expand into ten;
for to our left lies Simla Naze, which is only half way; and the sun
resting on its arid peak tells us it is already five o’clock, P.M.,
although we started before mid-day. Hence we see far down the Fjord
to seaward. Yonder is Fresvik, the snow lying on the mountain above
illuminated in a wonderful manner by the shooting rays of the sun,
which is itself hidden behind a mist-robe. Further seaward, at least a
dozen miles from here, may be plainly seen the yellow corn-fields about
Systrand, near which is Sognedal, famous for its large Bauta stones.
We now veer round sharp to the eastward, and enter another arm of the
immense Fjord. To our right lies the farm-house of Froningen, and
behind it a large pine-forest--a rare sight about here--where the
timber has been ruthlessly exterminated by the improvident peasants.
This forest, consequently, which is seven English miles square, and the
property of a single peasant, is of great value. Our mast, which has
hitherto been kept standing, in the vain hope of the breeze revisiting
us at this point, is now unshipped; and I unship that most astonishing
contrivance, the rudder, with its tiller a yard and a-half long. It was
with such an instrument that King Olaf split open the skull of the son
of Hacon Jarl.
As we approach Leirdal, the boat takes the ground a good distance from
the landing-place. The detritus brought down from the Fille-Fjeld by
the rapid Leirdal river, is gradually usurping the place of what was,
some years ago, deep water. And yet, notwithstanding the shallowness
and the great mass of fresh water coming in, there is less ice here
in winter than at Urland, where the water is immensely deep, and much
more salt. Indeed, the natural phenomena of this country are frequently
inexplicable.
The throng of great, ill-fed looking peasants, who crowded the humble
pier of piles, eager for a job, told tales of a numerous population
with little to do. Although it was already night in this dark defile,
jammed in between overshadowing mountains, I forthwith order a
carriole, and drive up the road.
“Do you go to school?” I asked of my boy-attendant.
“Yes,” replied Lars Anders. “We must all go for six years, from eight
to fourteen; that is to say, for the six winter months, from Martinmas
to Sanct Johann’s Tid (Midsummer.) After that, we go to the clergyman’s
for six months, to receive religious instruction.”
At Midlysne, where I spent the night, some hermetically sealed
provision boxes indicate a visit from Englishmen, who have been
catching salmon here. But the increased rate of charges would of itself
have suggested something of the kind.
A boy met us on the road next morning with three fine salmon on his
back. He had caught them in a deep hole, near Seltum Bridge, and offers
them for sale at twopence a pound. The salmon go up as far as Sterne
Bridge, and are then stopped by a defile, where the torrent is choked
up by masses of fallen rock.
From Husum station my attendant is a very small boy, who with
difficulty manages to clamber up on his seat behind. As we commence
the ascent of the remarkable road which surmounts the tremendous pass
beyond, a deep bass voice sounds close to my ear, startling me not a
little. I’ll tell you what, reader, you would have started too, if a
voice like that had sounded in your ears on such a spot, with no person
apparently near, or in sight, that could be the owner of it. Could it
come from that tiny urchin? Yet such was the case. Halvor Halvorsen
was sixteen years of age, although no bigger than a boy of eight. The
cause of his emitting those hollow tones was, that he wished to descend
from his perch and walk up the pass, which he cannot do unless the
vehicle is stopped; as if such a shrimp as that would make any possible
difference to the horse. I suppose he has heard that the last ounce
will break the camel’s back. His nickname is Wetle, the sobriquet of
all misbegotten imps in this country. He cannot spell, and is nearly
daft, poor child; but for voice, commend me to him. The whip he
carries is nearly as long as himself; while his dress is exactly of the
fashion worn by adults.
Further on the road branches in two directions; that to the left
goes over the Fille-Fjeld. We take that to the right, and mount the
Hemsedal’s Fjeld, and are soon on the summit. Some miserable-looking
châlets dot the waste. One of these, Breitestöl, professes to give
refreshment; but I did not venture within its forbidding precincts. The
juniper scrub has in many places been caught by the frost, studding the
wilderness of grey rock, and yellow reindeer moss, with odd-looking
patches of russet. A series of sleet showers, which the wind is driving
in the same direction as I am going, ever and anon spit spitefully at
me. High posts at intervals indicate the presence here, for many months
in the year, of deep, deep snow, when everything is under one uniform
white, wedding-cake covering; funeral crust, I should rather say, to
the unfortunate traveller, who chances to wander from the road, and
gets submerged. Everything looks dreary in the extreme; the very brooks
seem no longer to laugh joyously as they come tumbling down from the
heights. There is a dull hoarse murmur about them to-day, whether it is
the state of the atmosphere, or the state of the wind, or the state of
my own spirit at the moment, I know not; perhaps they are loth to leave
the parental tarns for the lowlands. The bosom of mamma yonder is also
ruffled, I see, into uneasy motion. The writer of _Undine_ ought to
have been here to embody the imaginings suggested by the scene.
I was all alone, my attendant having gone back with another traveller.
Presently, I meet a solitary peasant girl, sitting in masculine fashion
on a white pony. The stirrups are too long, so she has inserted her
toes in the leathers. It struck me that the lines in the nursery rhyme--
This is the way the ladies ride,
This is the way the gentlemen ride,
will have to be inverted for the benefit of Norsk babies. The damsel
stares at me with much astonishment, and I stare at her, and, as we
pass each other, a “good morning” is exchanged. And now the water-shed
is passed, as I reach an old barrow, which appears to have been opened;
and I dart down hill in company with a swiftly coursing stream, the
beginning of the Hemsedal River.
Yonder to the left, auspicious sight, stands the change house of
Bjöberg. I am soon in the Stuê, eating mountain trout, and regaling
myself with Bayersk Öl, and then coffee. The biting cold, although
August was not yet over, sharpened my appetite. The waiters, who
alternately bustled in and out of the room, were a thickset burly man,
wearing a portentously large knife, with a weather-beaten, “old red
sandstone” sort of countenance; and a female, dressed in the hideous
fashion of the country, her waist under her armholes; a fashion none
the less hideous from her being in an interesting condition. These two
were the landlord, Knut Erickson Bjöberg, and his spouse, Bergita.
Warmed by the repast, I have leisure to survey the apartment. There
were the usual amount of carved wooden spoons, painted bowls and
boxes, but the prints upon the log-walls were what chiefly engaged
my attention. One of these was “The Bible map of the way to Life and
Death.” A youth, in blue coat and red stockings, is beheld on the one
side, bearing a cross. After a series of most grotesque adventures,
he arrives at heaven’s gate, and is admitted by angels, who crown him
with a chaplet. On the other side of the picture is a sort of “Rake’s
Progress.” A man is seen dancing with a lady in a flame-coloured dress.
Garlands, drinking, and fighting, are the order of the day. At last
a person in black, with red toes and red horns, appears. There is a
door into a lion’s mouth, and, amid flames burning, evil spirits are
descried. In another picture the “Marriage of Cana,” is described
not less graphically, and with equal attention to costume. The
_bizarre_--an educated person would pronounce it profane--treatment,
one would think, must sadly mar the good moral of the story. Knut was a
most intelligent fellow, as I detected at a glance, and so I prevailed
upon him to schuss me to the next station, Tuf, instead of sending a
stupid lad.
“This is a strange wild country you live in, Knut,” said I, when we
had driven a little distance.
“Well, sir, it is rather. What countryman are you, if I may be so bold?”
“Guess.”
“To judge from the fishing-rod and the gun, you must be an Englishman.
I once guided an Englishman--let me see--one Capitan Biddul (Biddulph?)
over the mountains to the Sogne Fjord. Capitan Finne, too, the
Norwegian Engineer, when he was surveying, I was a good deal with him.”
“Do the people hereabouts believe in the hill-folk?” (Haugefolk =
fairies).
“To be sure. There used to be a strange man living at Bjöberg before my
father took to the place; one Knut Sivardson Sivard. His head was full
of those hill-people. He used to tell an odd tale of a circumstance
that happened to him years ago. One Yule, when he was just going to
rest, came a tap at the door. ‘Who is there?’ he asked. ‘Neighbours,’
was the reply. Opening the door, he let in three queer-looking people,
with pointed white caps and dark clothes. ‘I’m Torn Hougesind,’ said
one, with a swarthy face and a hideous great tooth in the middle of
his upper jaw. ‘I’m your nearest neighbour.’ ‘I’m Harald Blaasind,’
said another. ‘I’m’--I forget what the other called himself, but it was
like the other two names, the name of some of those mountains near by.
‘Strange that I never saw you before,’ said Sivard, doubtfully. ‘But
we don’t live so far off; we’ve called in to see how you do this Yule
time.’ Sivard did not like the appearance of matters, but said nothing,
and set before them some Yule ale in a large birch bowl, such as we
use for the purpose in these parts. How they did drink, those three
fellows! But Hougesind beat the rest hollow. Every now and then, as the
ale mounted to his brain, the creature laughed, and showed his monster
tooth.”
“A modern _Curius Dentatus_,” mused I.
“Presently, in mere wantonness, he bit the board, saying, he would
leave a mark of his visit. Sivard’s son, Knut, who was a determined
young fellow, lay in bed all this while, and rightly judged that if
the ale flowed at this pace, there would be very little left for the
remainder of the Christmas festivities. So he slily reached his gun,
which hung on the wall, and taking good aim, fired right at Hougesind,
him with the tooth, when the whole three vanished in a twinkling!
Sivard used to show the mark of the tooth in the board, but I have
heard that it looked just as if it had been made by a horse tooth
hammered into it. However, the tale got all over the country, and folks
used to come up from Christiania to see Sivardson Sivard, and hear the
description of what he had seen.
“Fond of a joke was Sivard. There is a patch of grass you passed up
the road--a very scarce article hereabouts. Drovers used to stop there
unbeknown to him, and give their cattle a bellyful, and then came and
took a glass at the house, and said nothing about it. He was determined
to be even with them; so he dressed up a guy with an old helmet on,
and a sword in his hand, and placed the figure close by a hovel there.
Not many nights after, a drover came rushing into the house almost
senseless with fright. ‘He is coming, he is coming! the Lord deliver
me!’ ‘What now?’ exclaimed Sivard. The drover explained that he was
coming along, when he spied a man in armour, with dreadful glaring
eyes and sword, rushing after him. He ran for his life. It was one of
the Hill folk. ‘Are you certain he moved?’ inquired Sivard, ready to
burst with laughter. ‘Quite certain.’ ‘But where were you?’ ‘Oh! I
had just turned out of the road a bit, to give the horses a bite of
grass’--‘that did not belong to you,’ continued the other. ‘Serve you
right for trespassing.’
“But we all believe in these people up here,” continued my companion.
“Not so very long ago, Margit and Sunniva--two sæter girls--just when
they were leaving with the cattle for home, at the end of the summer,
saw two little trolls steal into the deserted hut. They observed them
accurately. They were dressed in red, with blue caps, and each had a
pipe and a neat little cane.”
“And do these people ever do harm?”
“Oh, yes! Sometimes they injure the cattle, and make people ill. There
are some women who are skilled in breaking the charm. They are called
‘Signe-kone’ (from signe, to exorcise, and kone, woman). One or two
such live in the valley. They are considered better than any doctor for
a sore.”
“And what is their method of cure?”
“Why, they smear something over the place, and say a few words, and
blow (blaese). Blowing is an important part of the ceremony. They
measure children, too, from head to foot; that is a good thing.”
“And what sort of people,” asked I, “are there in the valley?”
“Oh! I can’t say much for them. I’m the vorstand (a kind of
churchwarden or parish trustee), so I know something about it. The
priest, not long ago, told them from the pulpit that there were more
bastards born, than children in lawful wedlock. But they don’t care.
It’s all Brantvun that does it. I’ve seen lads come to church with a
bottle of brandy, and, directly it’s over, give the girls a drink. Hard
work for the clergyman, I believe you. But Pastor Engelstrup--you’ve
heard of him no doubt;--he was the man to manage them. Prodigiously
strong he was. When he was building his gaard at Gool, there was a beam
three of them were trying to lift on the roof, but couldn’t. ‘Let me
try,’ said he, and raised the timber without more ado. He is gone up to
Aal, in Hallingdal now. We missed him very much. He was as good as he
was strong.”
“Is he a big man?”
“No, not so very; but he is very thickset, with curly black hair, now
got grey.”
I find that Knut gets pretty well paid for maintaining a change-house
in such a solitary spot as Bjöberg. The Government allows him three
hundred dollars per annum for keeping the house open for travellers
through the year, besides thirty dollars for every horse. He and
others, he tells me, are endeavouring to get the Storthing to advance
money for the purpose of rendering the river navigable to Naes, which
might be done at an inconsiderable expense.
After a continued descent, we arrive at Tuff. Here a pale-faced
little tatterdemalion offers to dance the Halling dance for the sum
of two skillings. They have a marvellous way in this national dance
of flinging their legs high up into the air (the Hallingkast), and
twisting the body a couple of times round, horizontally, in the air.
Some peasant girls in green skirts, with no cincture, fastened over
their shoulders with braces,--their yellow hair surmounted by a red
‘buy-a-broom-girl’-shaped cap, are among the bystanders. The first
course over, the lad tells me he is very poor, and begs me for some
pig-tail tobacco to chew, which I was unable to give him.
I find that the peasants hereabouts keep two thousand tame reindeer,
but they are not found to answer.
As we coursed down the road from Tuff to Ekre, a new station, my
schuss, Ingval Olsen, points out by the waning light, to some large
stones that strewed the Fjeld to the left.
“There was a gaard there, Gytogaard, under the mountain fifty years
ago,” said he; “but one night, when all were a-bed, the mountain came
down and buried them all. Some human voices were heard for a day or
two, and the cock kept crowing for eight days long, and then all was
still. No human labour could have extricated them.”
Further in the wood a spot was shown me where a man was found murdered
some time back, and nobody ever found out who did it, or who the
murdered man was--a region of horrors.