ACROSS THE VARANGER FJORD TO ELVENAES, WITH
SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE FISHING OF FINNER
WHALE, AND A NARRATIVE OF TRAVELS WITH A
JEW.
One of the most looked-forward-to items of our original programme had
been to see the _Windward_ pull her anchors out of European mud for the
last time before she went to wrestle with the Arctic floe. But the
ship's carpenter ashore who had in charge that new main-topsail yard was
slow even in his sober moments; and although every one in authority
raged at the delay, not even statements in Anglo-Saxon (or Scottish) as
to his personal worthiness could bustle him out of his dawdling gait. So
in the end the _Windwards_ saw us off, instead of our doing the like by
them.
We took passage across the broad Varanger fjord to Jarfjord in a little
coaster, and as she steamed out between the harbour walls and met the
roll outside, all hands on the _Windward_, both forward and aft, yelled
themselves hoarse, and we sent back our voices in reply. Then up and
down from their peak went the blue ensign, as the big expedition wished
the little one luck, and we found a Norwegian flag stopped on the rail,
and hoisted that up to the head of the poop-staff (which was as high as
my chin), and dipped it with all goodwill in reply. There were
Norwegians, and Finns, and Russians, and Lapps on the coaster, come from
the villages on the Varanger to do their marketing at the big town, and
at first I fancy they thought us Englishmen mad, but after half an hour
or so they most of them retired to the 'tween decks very sea-sick, and
after that they ceased to give us any thought at all.
We lolled down the northern coast of the Varanger in the trough of a
lusty swell, and periodically we called in at some small, bleak, dreary
harbour, where drying nets formed a festoon before the houses, and
drying cod on their wooden racks, and masses of gray inhospitable stone
blocked in the background. Then when we had negotiated all our ports of
call the helm was starboarded, and we stood out across the broad waters
of the fjord towards the gleaming snow mountains which hedged in the
country of the Lapps thirty miles away on the other side.
Fishers we passed on the way, Russians with long hair and Tartar faces,
clumsy high-booted Finns, and queer-garbed Lapps, swinging over the
swells in their viking boats, toiling at their miles of long-lines. And
then a rain squall drove down, blotting out the view, and we cowered
under the green canvas dodger in front of the wheel on the little
coaster's spar deck, and shivered at the chill.
But presently, out of the grayness of the rain squall there came an old
familiar scent, and the mate at the wheel pulled lustily at the syren
string to advertise our whereabouts. An answering hoot came back, and
then through the mist a small green-painted steamer of some thirty tons
burden loomed out, slowly bearing down upon us. Her pace was almost
imperceptible, but a cumbersome harpoon-shell gun on her stem-head gave
us the necessary hint as to her occupation, and presently we could make
out two towing hawsers astern of her, and a bloated finner whale made
fast, tail foremost, to each.
The fish were blown up like balloons with decomposition, and like
balloons they were striped with longitudinal gores. Their jaws were just
awash, and oil oozed from them in a slimy fan. The smell of them was
almost past endurance. The little green whaler had killed, perhaps,
three hundred miles away, and was towing her catch back to the home
factory for realisation. And a valuable catch it was too. The big black
bull was worth all of £250; and although the cow whale, which showed her
ivory-white belly, was smaller, she would probably fetch her £200 with
bone at its then enormous price.
This fishery of the blue-finned whale, or, as he is more technically
named, the finner, is an industry of comparatively modern birth, and
has its centre in these bleak Northern seas. The right whale and the
sperm whale have been hunted for how many centuries I do not know; the
mist of ages has closed over the first capture, and not many more years
will pass before the last score is nicked in the tally. The right whales
have been chased almost entirely from the face of known waters; they are
searched for from Davis Straits to the Kara Sea; ships have looked for
them amongst the tabular bergs of the Antarctic, but the fishery is on
its last legs. Even with bone at £40 a ton, the Nantucket and the
Peterhead owners are dropping out of what they consider a dying
business. This newer fishery has, however, increased by such leaps and
bounds that in 1894 the kill amounted to 1500 head. And all the credit
is due to a Norwegian skipper, one Svend Foyn.
[Illustration: TOWING HOME FINNER WHALES.]
The finner is no stranger in the North. Whalers of all countries have
seen him spout and gambol for three hundred years, and have cursed him
with maritime point and fluency. Occasionally some harpooner,
disbelieving tradition, made fast to a finner, and experienced that
sensation which the _vaquero_ found when he lassoed the Mexican State
Express. And as fishing implements developed, they shot at him with
harpoon guns and riddled him with explosive lances. But the end was
always the same, it was either "cut" or "swamp," and there was another
white-painted whale boat losing way over the swells, with a
white-faced crew, no harpoon, and an empty tub of line.
Until 1865 the finner whale defied the fishermen of the world, but in
that year Captain Svend Foyn went North with new ideas for conquering
the brute's prodigious vitality; and though he did not succeed at first,
though, indeed he was constantly at shoulder-touch with sudden death, he
figured out the right scheme at last, and then reaped a harvest well
earned. He died, only a year or two back, the richest man in Norway.
Captain Svend Foyn went into this matter in middle life and already
rich. He had two objects in view. In the first instance he wished to be
successful where all the world had failed, and conquer the only animal
remaining which man had not subdued. And in the second place he was
desirous of making money. He was a man scientifically ignorant; he was
quite uneducated beyond the narrow lines of his own craft; but he was
full of wooden-headed pluck, and possessed of a mule's determination.
He started in the right way. He discarded the slow, clumsy,
single-topsail, wooden barque, with auxiliary steam, and her fleet of
carvel-built rowing-boats, and set off in a steamer of fifty tons, which
would tow in the wake of a harpooned finner without breaking the line.
He believed that this would not only tire out the whale with quickness,
but would also prevent the carcase from sinking to the bottom when life
had gone, after its usual fashion.
Captain Svend Foyn's first experiences must have been exciting. He was
frequently towed by some maddened fish at a twenty-knot rate through a
heavy sea, with his fore-deck smothered with water up to the bridge. On
these occasions the engines would be rung to "full astern," and the
little steamer would hang on in tow for twelve hours at a stretch, and
to the jaded sportsman, in search of a new sensation, this method of
hunting may be recommended with confidence. But the conclusion was
always the same; either Captain Foyn was forced to cut, or the harpoon
drew; or the finner died and sunk: at any rate, he never gathered his
game.
Time after time his harpoons made fast, and ninety tons of agonised
living flesh plucked the little steamer, like a dragging child, across
those desolate plains of ocean. Years came and the years went, each dull
with disappointment. But yet he did not give in. He mounted artillery,
and bombarded the finner with heavy shot, and still without effect; he
tried plot after plan, and plan after plot; he expended £20,000 and
human limbs in his experiments, and finally, out of all the failures he
evolved success. He mounted on the stem-head of his steamer a stunted
heavy-breeched gun, which carried an explosive bomb with a huge harpoon,
weighing together over eighty English pounds. The idea of playing the
finner like a trout was abandoned once and for all. The explosion of the
bomb shot it dead; its huge vitality was snapped in a second, and a
three-inch warp made fast to the harpoon kept it from sinking, where a
thinner whale line would have been snapped.
The strongest fish that swam in all the seas was beaten, and Captain
Svend Foyn patented his tactics and took off his oilskins. Then the
business part of him came in, and, until his monopoly ceased, his
launches were catching a hundred finners a year, which may be valued at
£250 apiece.
The fishery has spread since that monopoly granted by law has run out,
and other people are permitted now to profit by the schemes evolved from
Captain Svend Foyn's brain. Anywhere where the rice-like animacula on
which the whale feeds are to be found, there the little whaling steamers
may be seen also, with a look-out man peering from the crow's nest at
their foremast head. In the fjords and bays which lie round that grim
coast to eastwards of the North Cape, in Iceland, and even up some of
the snug inlets of the Varanger Fjord, are numberless stations where the
little steamers can bring their catch for caldrons and axes to resolve
into its commercial elements. The finner soon swells after he is dead,
and lies on the water like a half-submerged balloon, striped, too,
balloon fashion, with gore-like seams. The tail flukes are cut adrift,
and he is towed ignominiously stern first, with a wake of oil fanning
out from his jaws, and a smell which grows with the days, and beats down
the crisp sea air. But when the finner is beached, and the axes and
spades strip off the blubber from the pink beef below, and cut away the
whalebone from the head, then there arises a stink which poisons heaven.
Still, custom is everything. The workers toil at the trying-out the oil,
at resolving the carcase into manure, and tinned meats, and cow-fodder,
and at packing the precious bone, and it never strikes them that a smell
is abroad which is almost palpable in its solidness. But use is
everything in tackling these sort of scents. We were beginning to find
that out for ourselves.
Meanwhile the cold was making us blue. We had amplified our wardrobes by
the purchase of a leather coat apiece in Vardö, and we had on these, and
slop-chest oilskins, but the frosty gale beat through them all as though
they had been gossamer silk. To go below was impossible. The coaster's
'tween decks was an Aceldama of unfettered sea-sickness. The only warm
spot on the spar deck was the engine-room skylight, and that was
occupied by a festive Jew carousing with the skipper and a couple of
farmers from the Russian side. We did not feel inclined to rejoice with
them just then, for, to tell the truth, we were deadly tired. It was ten
o'clock at night, and staring daylight, of course. But then it had been
staring daylight with us continuously since we crossed the Arctic circle
a fortnight before, and as it is hard to put in regular sleep with the
sun burning high in the heavens, we had missed many a regular watch
below. And the reaction was on us then. So we turned in on the deck
planks below the green canvas dodgers in front of the coaster's wheel,
and slept solidly and refreshingly for two whole hours.
The hoot of the syren roused us. We had crossed the broad waters of the
fjord, and were close in to the other side. High bare mountains covered
with snow that was dappled with hummocky rock rose sheer up from the
surf. The sky above was gray and cold. The place was indescribably
sterile and savage. At one point, cowering at the foot of the mountains,
a little white building stood out like some roosting sea-fowl against a
background of dark craggy rock. We were heading towards it, and
gradually as we closed with the coast it shaped itself into a church. It
was Oscarkirche, which marks the sea end of the frontier line which
delimits Russia and Norway.
We shut off steam here, and a boat came out to us from the beach. There
is a Russian fishing village in a masked bay to the eastward, to which
we sent a pedlar ashore with a travelling box of buttons and German
knives. Poor man, he did not seem to anticipate a large rush of
business, if one could judge from his face as he lowered himself and his
pack into the dancing boat. And yet probably his coming was the event of
the summer. It is hard to conceive a more desolate place than that
Russian fishing village. But it was a summer settlement only. In winter
it was deserted. And the Russian Government do their best to foster its
puny trade. It is a free port; there is no customs duty on either
imports or exports: canny Russia does not wish to thrust available trade
into the hands of its Norwegian neighbour next door.
Away we steamed again just outside the spouting reefs, towards the
Jacob's Elv. The wind was blowing straight down on us from Polar ice,
and the cold was bitter. A whale swam parallel to us, some half mile to
seaward, sending up at intervals spouts of feathery gray-blue fog.
We put into many dreary little coves, where a handful of fisher-folk,
with their backs against the snow and the grim walls of stone, dragged a
small living from the cold waters which lapped against their thresholds.
We lay off the beaches whilst these came off and did their traffic, and
then on again through the reefs to the next stop. Wretched as these
villages were, their populace had always spirit on hand to wrangle over
politics, and no Irish Nationalist could hate his "dacent Protestant"
neighbour as thoroughly and efficiently as one of these semi-savages who
held "Left" opinions could loathe another who belonged to the "Right."
And they carried this distaste beyond their social relations. They had
the "boycott" in full working order; "Right" would not trade with "Left"
under any pretence whatever; and if Left could push "Right" a little
farther towards starvation than his normal half-fed average, he
considered he was doing the State a personal service.
At another time we could have moralised over this self-hindrance
principle with weight and dignity, but just then we were too wrapped up
in our own discomforts and the prospects of worse to follow to worry
very much over the foolishness of other fools. The chill was making us
shudder. The grim, savage hills of stone seemed to speak of an infinity
of hardships and wretchedness before we sighted the waters of the
Bothnia. And each of us told the other so often that he "liked it," that
the very repetition of the statement gave it the lie. Alone of all the
ship's company the Jew did not mind. He sat down below, and nipped
brandy all the live-long night, and roared songs in all the tongues of
Pentecost. He was a most cheery fellow.
We were off the entrance to Jarfjord a little after midnight. The sun
was high above the poop-staff. The air was clear and icy, and spray
leaped in jets from reefs on every side of us. The entrance to the fjord
lay amongst a huddle of glacier-worn rocks, with a great table mountain
set up in the middle of them, all snow-clad, all entirely sterile. The
little coaster wound in and out amongst the reefs with easy confidence.
Two small whitened islets, alive with sea-fowl, masked the entrance; and
spouts of mist like the blowing of whales rose up from reefs awash on
either beam. It was a giddy piece of pilotage. In the crevices, snow lay
down to the water's edge, all browned with dust. It was hard to imagine
any spot more savage, and grim, and desolate.
But a change came swiftly. Once we had passed the mouth of this
sea-river, and green tints grew on the rock walls, which deepened as we
steamed on. It was only slime at first, but then came patches of moss,
then bosky lawns of grass, and dwarf shrubs in the more sheltered
corries. The snow line on the hillsides rose towards the summits. The
snow patches in the crevices below grew smaller and more few. Then in a
tiny bay we saw a cabin of logs set in a glow of green. Here was young
rye sprouting. And yet that horrible coast line of the Varanger which we
had just left was only two miles distant, and by straining the eye we
could see the horizon whiten where the seas creamed over the guardian
reefs.
[Illustration: THE GATES OF RUSSIAN LAPLAND.]
The walls of the fjord were still high and some quarter of a mile apart.
The lane of water ran between them, straight as a canal. But always as
we went on mountains grew lower. Presently at the mouth of a
contributory valley we opened out on a small settlement of felt-roofed
wooden houses, with what looked like colossal pink sausages drawn up on
the beach before them. As we drew nearer a waft of odour came to us down
a slant of the wind, and we laughed in pleasure because we were going to
meet again old friends that we thought we had left behind for good. The
pink sausages were flensed Finner whales. In the wooden buildings they
were trying out the blubber, sorting and packing the precious bone,
and working up the beef into its many useful shapes. And the smell of it
all filled the air till one could almost dredge it out in handfuls.
Once more we steamed on, beyond sight of the sea now, with the mountains
drooping to mere uplands on the fjord sides, with the scrub trees
replaced by forests of graceful twenty-foot birches, which covered the
gentle slopes. The air was warm--warm as an English summer. And, note
well the occasion, the first mosquito came to us. We hailed him as a
friend then. Hayter had seen him last in Florida, I had heard his music
a year before on the Gold Coast, and we both mentioned that the
mosquitoes had no power over us, that our skins were invulnerable.
Little did we know the biting power of this Northern monster; bitterly
were we to learn it.
The fjord narrowed, the little steamer anchored, and we put ashore with
some score of others. Our slender baggage was to go round to Elvenaes,
on the Syd Varanger, but we had elected to walk across the intervening
neck of land.
And now with the memory big in us of that grim savage coast not a dozen
miles away, we stepped out down a veritable country lane between slender
birches, with linnets singing behind the foliage on either hand. There
were oak ferns and bracken under the trees, and in the open meads,
buttercups, pansies, cow-parsley, forget-me-nots, wild pelargonium,
dandelions, ranunculi, bright pink campions, and cranberries, with
everlasting moss, and other mosses, and grotesque lichens in all
abundance. The comely woods were musical with birds, and portioned off
by rustic fences. Here and there were gates, slung on hinges, and then
would come a fine trim house of logs covered with painted weather
boarding. We might have been walking in the Tyrol. And when we
remembered that the Arctic circle was over two hundred miles farther to
the southward, and the desolation we had come through still close at
hand to the north, we had to grant that Nature could perform more white
magic than we ever credited her with before.
The narrowing fjord ended in a rolling bay, and against a boat-house
built there was a great cemetery of reindeer horns, heaped up as things
of no beauty or value. A stream went on beside the road, babbling into
idyllic trout-pools. Cow-bells tinkled from within the woods. The
passengers from the coaster had branched off singly and in groups till
only seven of us were left: the roystering Jew, a gloomy young farmer in
high boots, with his sick wife, a nondescript girl, and our two selves.
At intervals we talked, and the Jew gathered flowers for the women, and
then we came to a large house of wood.
It was exactly three o'clock in the morning, but in this sunlit land no
one troubles much with bed, and the owner was standing in his doorway to
take the air. The Jew made discourse--all tongues seemed equally facile
to him,--and the householder came out and shook us all by the hand, and
insisted that we should come inside. The women went off in charge of his
women-kind, but us men he took into the parlour, where we gazed upon a
picture of Martin Luther, some Sloyd work, and an elaborate stove, and
watched the farmer grow drowsy over yarns of bear-hunting in the winter
months. But presently our host set before us beer--delicious Bayersk
öl--which we all drank standing, with a heartfelt cry of "skaal"! We
wanted that beer badly, and it came to us as a pleasant surprise. We
fancied we had left such luxuries behind us for many a long week; for
Lapland is what they call in America "a Prohibition State."
The Jew by this time had quite assumed our chaperonage, and though
inclined to linger over his beer and to hint at another bottle, said he
would come with us when we decided to start. Our fellow-travellers came
to the door to see us off. The sick woman had grown quite a pretty
colour from her walk and from the mild excitement of drinking milk. And
we took leave of them all with handshakes as though they were ancient
friends. Finally, the Jew tore himself away, and we set out again
towards Elvenaes under his convoy.
He was a truly joyous creature, this strayed Hebrew, full of carnal
appetites, but revelling in the beauties of this Arctic oasis which we
were passing through. He discoursed poetry, time-tables, natural
history, and the price of furs all in the same breath. He was full of
surprising moods (and I fear a trifle drunk), and he swung his
brandy-bottle in one hand, and carried a black umbrella tucked under the
other arm. He knew all about our expedition and bubbled with advice:
there were no horses procurable even if horses would have been any good;
there was a Russian Boundary Commission at work in the neighbourhood,
which had mopped up all the horses, and all the boats, and all the
available men; the Neiden route to Enare was quite impracticable: our
way was to push up the Pasvik Elv, and if we would leave it to him he
would see that we got both boats and men, even if he had to impress
Russian soldiers for our carriers. He was a most liberal Jew--with
promises, and other people's beer.
Pines were growing by the wayside now, and heath, and delicate shrubs.
The road was a real road, metalled and embanked, with wooden bridges
over the streams, and stone culverts to carry away the water. Low wooded
hills rose on either side, and the notes of cuckoos floated down to us
faintly over their tree-tops. The scenery was delicately beautiful. We
might have been walking through a park, suitable (as the advertisements
say) for a nobleman or country gentleman.
The one drawback to our perfect pleasure were the thickening swarms of
mosquitoes. The Jew suffered from them terribly. But even they did not
damp his spirits. He slapped the insect pests from his crimson face with
a whisk of green leaves, whistled a stirring march, waved the
brandy-bottle as a drum major waves his cane, and stepped out finely.
As we went on, higher mountains came into view ahead, violet-tipped on
their wooded summits. The road wound stolidly on over bridges, and
embankments, and hollows. Lakes appeared round which we had to skirt,
and then other lakes with wooded islands, and cascades tinkling down
into them from the hills. The Jew struck up the Soldier's March out of
Gounod's _Faust_ to words of his own to put spirit into the pace, and
grew more hot, and slapped at the mosquitoes more busily than ever. He
gave us names for all the lakes we passed, and all the rivers, and all
the hills, and even went so far in his courtesy as to invent titles for
streams that did not negotiate a dozen gallons of water to the hour. The
guide mania was strong in him, and he was touching us on a tender place.
Gradually, by failing to notice his remarks, and by skirmishing off the
road to hunt for the nests of birds, we contrived to let the festive one
draw ahead, and for the next two miles we marched on together in
peaceful enjoyment. We had crossed the divide; we were heading down into
the beautiful valley of the Pasvik Elv where it joins the Syd Varanger;
and we were almost within touch of this mysterious Lapland, which the
wise of Vardö had done so much to keep us away from.
But we had not done with the Jew yet. A dip of the road and a sudden
turn brought us in view of a gorgeous vista up the wooded Pasvik valley.
The silver river sat between two sloping walls of greenery, from which
the cuckoos called; and where it forked, a white turreted chapel reared
up from beneath an umber cliff. In the distance beyond, the whole river
leaped down rocks in a cascade of foaming cream. And there on a bench by
the roadside sat our Hebrew incubus waiting for us. He raised the brandy
bottle, swigged out the dregs, and quoted Heine. Then "Boris Gleb" said
he, and waved the empty flagon towards the pure white tracery of the
chapel. And "Russia" quoth he, and flung the bottle towards the rearing
wall of trees beyond the river. He slid off on to the turf, and settled
himself luxuriously for a doze, and we annexed the bench. We stayed
there an hour absorbing the beauties of that scene, and I think
speculating not a little on the unknown Lapland which lay beyond. And
then the tinkle of a bell roused us. A horse came past, trotting up the
road; and after him came a Lapp, with a bridle in his hand, trying to
catch the horse.
We got up and moved away. The Jew was still sleeping on the turf under
the sunlight. It was the last we ever saw of him, and although we are in
his debt for beer and fiction, I do not think we ever want to see him
more. A little farther on we came across a big shingle-roofed house with
outbuildings, set on a neck of land above the narrows, which commands a
prospect up and down the river; and there we found entertainment. It was
half-past seven in the morning, so we had supper and went to bed.
We made the most of those two unexpected beds. We did not come across
beds again for many a weary mile.
[Illustration: Deep-sea Fishing]