BY ROAD.
_July 14._--We arose pretty early, wishing to get over thirty-eight
miles of ground before evening, which with the canoes would be a long
day's work; as we had the natives to contend with, who by reason of
their dreadfully lazy habits are most difficult to 'bring to the
scratch.'
We have decided, after long experience, that nothing that you can do has
any effect in hurrying them; but that it is quite possible to make them
slower by losing your temper, or taking any vigorous measures of
acceleration. They seem to get more deliberate and aggravatingly slow as
they grow older.
Norwegian boys are distractingly restless and full of energy, and look
as if they have had nothing to eat, which is generally the actual fact,
judging by an English standard of what constitutes food. At the age of
fifteen they become better fed, and their energy departs altogether,
and after entirely disappearing it keeps getting less every year.
A full-grown man does not seem to need much food, certainly not as much
as an Englishman, and prefers that of the worst kind, conveyed to the
mouth at the end of a knife-blade. We have never noticed any description
of food which he does not make sour, rather than eat it when sweet.
Bread, milk, cream, and cheese, jam and cabbages, for instance, are
articles which he prefers fermented or sour. He reminds one of the
cockney who complained that the country eggs had no flavour, or of the
Scotchman who, replying to the apologies of a friend in whose house he
happened to get a bad egg, said, 'Ma dear freend, ah _prefair_ 'em
rotten.'
But his laziness and love of nasty food are almost the only bad
qualities that we have discovered in him. He is ridiculously honest,[*]
and his kindness and hospitality are beyond praise. This morning,
however, the laziness was the quality chiefly conspicuous, and though we
ordered our conveyances last night and got up early (for us), we did not
succeed in starting till twelve o'clock.
[Footnote: Save, perhaps, on three points--fishing tackle,
strong drinks, and straps or pieces of cord, which may be
committed to memory as 'a fly, a flask, and a fastener.']
We first despatched the canoes and baggage packed on a kind of low
waggon, and then got into a double cariole (which is something like a
gig) ourselves, and drove gaily off along the Throndhjem road. We did
not, however, follow it far, but turning to the left down a steep hill,
we crossed the Laagen by a long and rather handsome bridge, and then up
a winding road on the further side, all looking very pretty on such a
glorious day. The road became more picturesque the further we got from
Lillehammer, every turn bringing us to some fresh combination of
mountain, pine-trees, rock, and waterfall--especially rock. There are so
many tracts of country in Norway entirely composed of rock, that, as
Esau remarked, 'probably no one will ever find a use for it all.'
We lunched at a nice little station called 'Neisteen;' a delicious meal
off trout, strawberries and cream, and fladbrod, for which they charged
us a shilling each.
'Fladbrod' is the staple food of the country folk in Norway; they make
it of barley-meal, rye-meal, or pea-meal, but the best and commonest is
that composed of barley-meal. It is simply meal and water baked on a
large, flat, circular iron, and is about the thickness of cardboard, of
a brownish colour, and very crisp. The taste for it is easily acquired
in the absence of other food, and with butter it becomes quite
delicious--to a _very_ hungry man.
At Neisteen there was a little shop where the Skipper at last obtained
his violet ink, but Esau was foiled in his dastardly attempt at
retaliation with anchovy paste.
After this our road lay along a lovely river for fishing, and we were
much tempted to stop and try a cast in it, especially as we saw natives
luring fish from their rocky haunts by the time-honoured Norwegian
method. They first settle how far they want to cast--say thirty feet.
Then cut down a thirty-foot pine tree; take the bark off it; tie a
string to the thin end and a hook to the string; stick a worm on the
hook, and go forth to the strife. When the fish bites, they strike with
great rapidity and violence, and _something_ is bound to go; generally
it is the fish, which leaves its native element at a speed which must
astonish it; describes half of a sixty-foot circle at the same rate,
and lands either in a tree or on a rock with sufficient force to break
itself.
But we had no time to spare, especially as for this stage we had a bad,
shying, jibbing horse, and a perfect fool of a driver.
Near the last station we passed three English people on the road, who
our driver informed us lived near there. He told us their name was
Wunkle, but the man at the next station said it was Punkum, and we could
not decide which of these two common English names it was most likely
to be.
Kvisberg, the last station on this road, was reached at 9 P.M., but
before this the road, which had gradually got worse all the way from
Lillehammer, had faded away and disappeared: and as the road got worse,
so did the hired conveyances; so that we were gradually reduced from the
gorgeous double cariole with red cushions with which we started, and a
horse that could hardly be held in, to a springless, jolting stolkjær
(country cart), and a pony that required much persuasion to induce him
to boil up a trot.
Kvisberg is situated, with peculiar disregard for appropriateness of
position, on the side of an almost unclimbable hill, about a quarter of
a mile from the place where the road departs into the Hereafter. No
English horse would take a cart up such a hill, but Norwegian ponies are
like the Duke's army, and 'will go anywhere and do anything,' only you
must give them plenty of time. We mounted to the station, a wretched
little place, and being hungry ordered coffee and eggs, for which repast
we paid twopence-halfpenny each, and then at ten o'clock got a man to
carry our few small things the last six miles to Dalbakken, where we
intended to sleep the night. The walk was delightful, through a
precipitous thickly wooded gorge, at the bottom of which the river which
we had followed all day went leaping and foaming along, though it was
now reduced to a mere mountain torrent.
About a mile from our journey's end we were overtaken by a Norwegian
student on a walking tour, who spoke a little English and walked with us
the rest of the way, as he too was bound for Dalbakken.
[Illustration: Midnight Study of Stockings at Dalbakken]
We reached it at midnight, and were not much gratified to find that it
was a very small poor building, and that our luggage had not arrived. We
had been hoping against hope that it might have done so, as we had not
seen it anywhere on the road. The next pleasant discovery was that four
other travellers had arrived before us and taken all the rooms. This
fact was first conveyed to our minds by seeing four pairs of socks
hanging out of the upstair windows to dry; at which sight we began to
suspect that things were going to turn out unpleasant for us; but at
last we got a room with one very small bed between us. We tossed for
this bed, and the Skipper won; so Esau passed the night on the floor, on
a sheepskin, and was very comfortable--at least he said so next morning.
The natives here were much impressed by all our habits and belongings,
but especially by our sleeping with the window open; wherefore the old
woman of the Sæter[*] below kept bouncing into the room at intervals
during the night to see us perform that heroic feat; and though it was
flattering to be made so much of, still fame has its drawbacks.
[Footnote: A Sæter is a mountain farm, to which all the cattle
are driven during the summer, so that the lowland pastures can
be mown for hay.]
The general appearance of the place caused us to expect nightly
visitations from other foes, not human, but to our surprise there were
none.
Dalbakken is only three quarters of a mile from a lake called Espedals
Vand, where we propose to commence our cruise. It is beautifully
situated on a small flat bit of ground halfway up the north side of the
gorge: the hills on the south side not far away are so steep that they
could not be climbed by all the branded alpenstocks that Switzerland
ever produced. Looking to the east the gorge is very wild and grand,
covered with pine trees and steep crags, and no dwelling in sight; while
to the west, in which direction Espedals Vand lies, it is more level and
open, and slopes gradually downwards again, Dalbakken itself being the
highest point in the track.