A Drive Along the Baegna Elv--the Aurdals Vand and Many More to
Skogstad.
SKOGSTAD, NORWAY, _September 2, 1902_.
Here we are eighty-four kilometers (sixty-one miles) from Frydenlund,
where we spent last night. All day we have sat in an easy carriage,
inhaled the glorious buoyant air, and driven over a superb macadamized
road. We have skirted the shores of five lakes or _vands_--called
_fjords_,--amidst towering snow-marked mountains, passing beneath
cliffs rising sheer above us for thousands of feet, the highway
sometimes a mere gallery cut into the solid rock, and we are now
wondering how we were ever such simple things as to waste our time in
tame England, or even linger among what now seem so commonplace,
Scottish _lochs_ and _tarns_. We have traversed the shores of the
Aurdal, the Stranda, the Granheim, the Slidre and the Vangsmjoesen
Fjords, each and all pools of the foaming river Baegna; and have
looked across their limpid waters, their clustered islets, their
shimmering surfaces reflecting field and forest and _fjeld_, and even
portraying as in a mirror the snow-fields of mountain heights so far
distant as to be indistinguishable to the naked eye, distant yet two
full days' journey to the west. We have been continually excited
and astonished as each succeeding vista of vale and lake and mountain
has burst upon us.
[Illustration: THE DISTANT SNOWS.]
As we advanced further and further along the wide white military road,
the valley of the Baegna Elv grew narrower and deeper, and the
contrasts of verdant meadow and dark mountain increased in sharpness.
The lower slopes are as green and well watered as those of
Switzerland, and are dotted with farmsteads where the thrifty Norse
farmer dwells upon his own land, independent, self-respecting,
recognizing no lord but God--for the title of the "Swedish King"
weighs but little here. Everywhere have I remarked a trim neatness,
exceeding, if it were possible, even that of Holland. Upon the meadows
were cattle, mostly red. The fields were ripe with rye and oats and
barley where men and women were garnering the crops. The lands were
cleared far up the mountain sides to where the forests of dark green
fir stretched further up, until beyond the timber-line bare black rock
masses played hide and seek among the clouds.
Back and beyond this splendid panorama of vale and lake and
cloud-wrapped summit, far beyond it, binding the horizon on the west,
there grew upon our vision all the afternoon enormous heights of stern
and austere mountains, lifting themselves into the very zenith, their
slopes gleaming with white bands of snow, their topmost clefts nursing
glittering icepacks and glaciers. Ole Mon has constantly pointed
toward them saying "Yotunheim!" "Yotunheim!" and we have known them to
be the gigantic ice-bound highlands of the celebrated Jotunheim Alps,
the loftiest snow mountains of Norway.
We left the inn at Frydenlund after a breakfast of brook trout, fried
to a turn, and all we could eat of them, delicious milk like that from
our blue grass counties of Greenbrier and Monroe, in West Virginia,
and coffee made as only an Americanized Norwegian may know how.
Along the way we have met children evidently going to and returning
from their schools, and it has been charming to see how the little
boys pull off their caps, and the little girls drop down in a
courtesy. The little caps always come off the yellow heads with
sweeping bow, and the duck of the little girls is always accompanied
by a smile of greeting. I regret that in America we have lost these
pretty customs which were once taught as good manners by our
forebears.
We have passed this morning a frowning stone jail, the prison of this
province, and Ole Mon tells us that it is quite empty and has had no
tenant for some two years; surely, convincing testimony of the innate
honesty of these sturdy folk.
We have also to-day met many young men, tall and stalwart, clad in the
dark blue uniform of the Norwegian National Guard. This is the season
when the annual drills are going on, just at the end of the
harvest time. Norway, like the rest of Europe, has adopted universal
military training for her men. They are taught the art of war and how
to shoot. It is calculated that in eight or ten years more every
Norwegian of voting age will have had the necessary military training
and will have become a part of the effective national defense. "We
will never have trouble with Sweden," they say, "the Swedes and
ourselves only show our teeth." "It is Russia, hungry Russia, that we
fear. We will learn to march and shoot and dig entrenchments so that
we may defend ourselves against the aggression of the Slav. Upon the
sea, we are the masters. We learn in your navy how to handle modern
warships and shoot the giant guns. Upon these mountains, we hope, ere
another decade has elapsed, also to be safe against the encroachment
of that 'Great White peril.'"
[Illustration: THE BAEGNA ELV.]
[Illustration: A HERD OF COWS, FOSHEIM.]
[Illustration: THE GRANHEIMS VAND.]
We stopped for our first pony-feed at Fagernaes, where a road turns
off to Lake Bygdin and its _Elv_, where the English go to fish; halted
a half hour at Fosheim, where is a fine hotel, and then, passing the
ancient stone church of Vestre Slidre, drove on to Loeken, where a
reindeer-steak-and-salmon-trout-dinner awaited us. The inn, situated
on a rocky point overlooking the picturesque Slidre Vand, was
quakerly-clean, as all of these places are. The neatly dressed young
woman who waited on us had lived two years in Dakota, and in Spokane,
and spoke perfect United States. She had an uncle and a brother still
there, and hoped to go back herself when the old folks had passed
away. At Oeilo, fifteen kilometers further on, we also drew rein--each
time we stop the ponies have the nosebags of oat meal--and then we
paused again at Grindaheim at the Vang Hotel, close to the shores of
the Vangsmjoesen Vand. Here the mistress of the inn had lived in
Minnesota, and talked with us like one of our own countrywomen. She
had come home on a little visit, she said. A stalwart Norseman had
lost his heart and won her hand, and saved-up dollars--but yet her
spirit longed for free America. Her boys would go there as soon as
they were big enough to hustle for themselves.
In the dining room of the comfortable house was gathered a collection
of stuffed and mounted birds of the surrounding countryside. There
were several ptarmigan and one fine capercailzie, the cousin to the
black cock, and the biggest thing of the pheasant-kind that flies in
Northern Europe.
Our Minnesotan hostess pressed us to stay and tarry a few
days, setting before us a big pitcher of milk and little
caraway-seed-flavored tea cakes, all for the price of _Te Oere_, two
and a half cents. We would like to have lingered here, for the house
is nestled in one of the wildest and loveliest of dales. To the north,
a mile across the vand, tower the black precipitous heights of the
giant Skodshorn (5,310 feet) upon whose cloud-capped peaks, Ole Mon
tells us, the ghosts of the ancient Scalds and Vikings meet in
berserker combat with Thor and Odin, and whence, sometimes, when
the air is still and there are no storms about, the clangs and clashes
of their battle conflicts resound with thunder roars, waking the
echoes in all the valleys round. Then the black mountain sides breathe
forth gigantic jets of steamlike cloud, while it is at such times also
that the _Trolls_ and Gnomes creep forth from the shadows of the rocks
to do honor to the warring giants. When questioned closely, he
admitted he had never witnessed one of these combats, but declared
that when a boy he had heard the roar on the summit of the mountain
and had seen the white clouds shoot up, which is always the sign of
victory for the gods. Our hostess also asserted that she had once
heard the mountain roar, but admitted she had not seen the shooting
clouds. Some scientists try to explain the mountain's action according
to natural laws, but so great is my faith in Ole Mon that I dare not
dispute his word. Back of the little inn also rise the lofty masses of
the Grinde Fjeld (5,620 feet) upon whose moorland summits it is, the
capercailzie fly and the herds of reindeer range, whence came the
juicy steaks we ate to-day at Loeken and have had to-night for supper.
[Illustration: A HAMLET BENEATH THE FJELD.]
All along the Baegna valley, including the fertile basins wherein
nestle the many _vands_ or lesser _fjords_, there were men and women
in the fields mowing the short grass and ripening grain. But neither
the grasses, nor the rye and oats and barley had reached maturity. Nor
do they ever fully ripen in these cold latitudes. They must be cut
green, and then the feeble sunshine must be made the most of. Long
ricks, made of sticks and saplings, or poles barred with cross-pieces
set on at intervals are built extending through the fields, and on
these the grass and grain are carefully spread out, hung on a handful
at a time, so that each blade and straw may catch the sun, and dry
out, a tedious, laborious work on which the women were more generally
employed. The men bring up back-loads newly cut by scythe and sickle,
and throw them down before the women, who then carefully hang each
handful on the ricks. What must a Norwegian feel, trained to such
painstaking toil as this, when he at first sets foot upon the
boundless wheat lands of Minnesota and the prairie West. No wonder he
returns to his native homestead only to make a hasty visit, never to
remain. In Switzerland, I also saw the grass cut when scarcely half
ripe and but a few inches high, when it is stored in handy little log
cribs where in the course of time it slowly dries out, but here every
blade must be hung up in the sun and air if it shall turn to hay. When
the hay and grain is fully dried, it is taken down and done up into
loosely bound sheaves, or carried in bulk to the large, roomy barns.
The grain is generally thrashed out with flails, I am told, although a
few American machines are now being introduced.
The wire fence is not yet come into Norway, although timber is remote
and costly, and the people are hard put to it for fencing material. I
noticed that they generally depend upon slim poles and small
saplings loosely strung together, for English hedges cannot be grown
in these chilly northlands.
[Illustration: RICKING THE RYE.]
[Illustration: THE AUTHOR BY THE SLIDRE VAND.]
And now we are at Skogstad, above the Vangsmjoesen Vand and lesser
Strande Vand, with two or more _vands_ to see to-morrow before we
cross the height of land and come down to Laerdalsoeren, on the Sogne
Fjord which holds the waters of the sea, sixty-five miles further on.
The _vands_ to-day have been like giant steps, each emptying into the
one below by the roaring river, mounting up, each smaller than the one
below and more pent in by towering mountain masses.
H is now tucked in between mattress and coverlet of eider down--we are
beyond the latitude of blankets--in a narrow bed, and I am about to
get into another on the other side of the room, on which I now sit
writing to you by the light of a sperm candle, while the murmur of a
thousand cascades tinkles in my ears.