A GLIMPSE OF THE FJELDS
"Fjeld-weather" is the Norwegian term for fine, warm, bright days. It
implies that the weather is suitable for a tour on the mountains. But,
alas! it is not the weather that is always encountered there, for
even in the summer the climate of the high plateau is ever varying,
and though there may be a long spell of fine, hot weather, with
a glorious crisp air, yet at any moment a change of the wind may
bring a week of soaking rain, sleet, possibly snow, and a fall of
temperature by twenty degrees. That is no time for the fjelds, and
the traveller is better off in a fjordside hotel.
Given fine weather, there is no more splendid touring ground than the
highlands of Norway, where, at a height of anything up to 4,000 or
5,000 feet above the sea, stretch thousands of square miles of wild and
uninhabited moorland, cut up with numerous large lakes, and clothed
only with a dwarf vegetation. Such parts usually lie off the beaten
track, and to reach them means an expedition--heavy, uphill walking
for two or three days, with the baggage carried on the backs of ponies.
If you were going to undertake an expedition to these high fjelds,
you would probably make a start from the lowlands by following
some well-worn track leading to a sæter. In nine cases out of ten
the track will be running by the side of a river, at first wide and
flowing lazily through the valley, but soon narrowing, until its upper
waters become a rushing mountain torrent, swishing between mighty
boulders. After a while you find that the path gradually begins to
ascend by zigzags up the mountain-side, and the scenery, whenever
you pause to look down, is magnificent. In time you reach the upland
pastures, with here and there a sæter-dwelling, and this is the end
of the first stage of your journey, for you probably will have climbed
some 2,000 feet and walked a dozen miles or more. Thus you will be glad
enough to accept the hospitality offered to you by the simple peasants.
All these sæter-huts are much alike, though, of course, they vary
in size and in the way in which they are fitted up; but as they are
only occupied during the summer months, luxurious fittings are not
considered a necessity. The outer walls are constructed of fir-trunks,
let into one another at the corners on the log-hut principle, and
the interior is lined with boarding. In some parts, however, where
timber is scarce the buildings are of stone.
The roof consists of rough planks, on which is placed a layer of
birch-bark to fill in the cracks; and on the top, again, are laid
sods of earth to a thickness of about a foot. Grass and weeds soon
cover the roof, binding it together and keeping the rain out.
The door opens into a dark hall or chamber, which serves as a
receptacle for rubbish of all kinds--fishing-nets, tools, skins,
empty milk-pans, and the like; and in the corner is a roughly-built
fireplace for boiling the milk and for cooking. On one side of this
hall is the door into the sole living apartment, which possesses
a window at one end, and against one of the side walls a couple of
bunks, wherein three or four dairymaids sleep.
Sometimes there is a separate room, or even a detached hut,
for the dairy work; but there is generally only the one room,
the milk being set in large, shallow wooden vessels on a number of
shelves fixed against one of the walls. Everything is scrupulously
clean, and the cattle women are working hard all the long daylight
hours. Periodically a man from the farm in the lowlands comes up to
the sæter with a couple of ponies and takes down butter and cheese,
and such visits are the only excitement in sæter-life.
If you have time to linger here for a day or two you will be made
welcome, and you will find plenty to interest you. The views down into
the deep valleys and away to the fjords in the distance are always
delightful, and there may be a stream with pools holding trout worth
trying for. The tiny rivulets which trickle down from the hills are
lined with ferns and forget-me nots, and elsewhere may be seen flowers
of every hue--red Alpine catchfly, blue meadow cranesbill, hawksweed,
wild radis, and a score of other pretty things.
But the greatest joy of all is the sight of a wide marsh covered with
the delicious _multebær_, whose luscious, yellow fruit and gold-red
leaves brighten the country-side. This is the cloudberry, found in
Scotland and in the North of England, and to come on a stretch of
this fruit after a long, hot walk is a thing worth living for. Besides
this best of all Norse wild fruits, the fjelds produce many excellent
berries, such as crowberries, whortleberries, marsh whortleberries,
bearberries, dewberries, cranberries, and others. The children of the
country parts all over Norway spend much of their time in feasting
on these little fruits, and during the summer and autumn months their
hands and faces are generally well stained with the dark juice.
Upwards, beyond these pleasant pastures, when you have left behind
the last sæter-shanty and the last thicket of birches, you reach a
world where, except for the scattered Tourist Club huts and their
summer caretakers, you cannot count on coming across either dwelling
or human being.
Wandering far afield, you may meet a couple of Lapps with their herd
of reindeer, and down by one of the tarns you may chance on a rough
stone shelter, inhabited for the time being by two Norwegian fishermen,
whose nets are laid in the mountain lake.
All over this lofty wilderness the snow lies deep for several months
of the year, but as soon as it begins to thaw it disappears rapidly,
when, as in Switzerland, Nature's garden immediately blossoms forth
in all its glory. It must be confessed, however, that the carpet of
Alpine flowers on the Norwegian high-fjelds cannot compare with that of
Switzerland. On the great mountain plateau of Norway everything gives
way to the lichen-like reindeer moss, and the flowers are merely in
patches, or growing in masses only in those swampy parts where the
moss does not thrive.
The fjelds furnish a recreation-ground for the Norwegian
townsman. There he can lead the life that he loves best, and one week
of the wilds will set him up for the remainder of the year. Even though
he cares nothing for shooting or fishing, the sense of freedom as he
does his daily tramp delights his soul. And his wife or his sister as
often as not will accompany him, for the Norwegian ladies are brave
walkers, and know how to rough it.
But the majority of Norsemen are good sportsmen and good fishermen,
and in most seasons there are plenty of fjeld-ryper to be shot and good
hauls of trout to be made in the mountain lakes and connecting streams.
But what is the country like up here on the very summit of
everything? It is called a plateau; but that does not mean that it
is absolutely level, for, as a matter of fact, there is no part of
it level enough to be made into a football ground. It is all up and
down, and every here and there are low hills, with occasionally great
prominent, rounded mountain-tops, rising to a height of 500 or 600
feet above the plateau. Then there are chains of lakes, often several
miles in length, acres of swampy ground in every direction, shallow
ravines filled with a jumble of rocks and boulders, and constant sand
mounds, partly overgrown with grass and dwarf juniper. And up here
are the snowfields, about which we shall have more to say presently.
It is all weird and wild and wonderful, and if there be no wind the
silence is intense, and only broken by the bark of an Arctic fox from
some rocky hillside or by the plaintive call of a golden plover.
Why, it may be asked, should anyone wish to go to such a desolate
place? Only to shoot or to fish, to gather in a store of the purest
air in the world, or perhaps to enjoy a period of calm and quiet
solitude--world-forgetting, by the world forgot.