From Stalheim to Eida--The Waterfall of Skjerve Fos--The Mighty
Hardanger Fjord.
ODDA, NORWAY, _September 5, 1902_.
We left Stalheim by _Skyd_ (carriage), at nine o'clock. The drive was
up a desolate valley, through a scattering woodland of small firs and
birches, close by the side of a foaming creek, the Naerodals Elv,
hundreds of becks and brooklets bounding down the mountain sides to
right and left.
After an hour's climb, we reached a flattened summit where lay a
little lake, the Opheims Vand, two or three miles long and wide,
encircled with snow-fields. Here and there we passed a scattered
farmstead--_gaard_--for every bit of land yielding any grass is here
in the possession of an immemorial owner. The _vand_ is a famed trout
pool, and as we wound along its shores we passed any number of men and
boys trying their luck. It was raining steadily, a cold fine downpour,
and all the male population seemed to have taken to the rod.
At the lake's far end we passed a small hotel, built in Norse style
with carved and ornamented gables and painted a light green. Here in
the season the English come to fish.
[Illustration: THE NAERO DAL.]
Leaving the _vand_, we began a long descent, and for twelve miles
rolled down at a spanking pace, the brook by our side steadily growing
until it at last became a huge and violent torrent, a furious river,
the Tvinde Elv. In the fourteen miles we had descended--coasted--two
thousand five hundred (2,500) feet, and now were come to the little
town of Voss or Vossvangen, which lies on the banks of the Vangs Vand,
a body of blue water five or six miles long and two miles wide,
surrounded by one of the most fertile, well-cultivated valleys of
Norway.
Vossvangen is a town of importance, and is the terminus of the railway
with which the Norwegian government is connecting Bergen and
Kristiania. The easiest parts of this national railway, those between
Bergen and Vossvangen, and between Kristiania and Roikenvik--over
which we came--are already constructed and running trains, but it is
estimated that it will be twenty years before the connecting link is
finally completed, for it is almost a continuous tunnel--a magnificent
piece of railroad-making when it is done.
Vossvangen is also the birthplace of one of Minnesota's most
illustrious sons, United States Senator Knute Nelson. It is upon these
mountains that he tended the goats and cows when a barefooted urchin,
and I do not doubt that he has surreptitiously pulled many a fine
trout and salmon out of the lovely lake. The people of Vossvangen
accept his honors as partly their own, and my Norwegian host gazed at
me most complacently when I told him that American Senators held in
their hands more power and were bigger men than any Swedish King.
Norwegians are justly proud of their eminent sons who, in the great
Republic over the sea, are so splendidly demonstrating the capability
of the Norse race.
We put up at a modern-looking inn, called Fleischer's Hotel, a
favorite rendezvous for the English, despite its German-sounding name.
Here we rested a couple of hours, and were given a well-served dinner
with tender mutton and baked potatoes, big and mealy, which we ate
with a little salt and abundance of delicious cream. Our hearts were
here stirred with sympathy for a most unhappy-looking American girl
who had evidently married a foreign husband. He was a surly,
ugly-mannered man, with low brows and tangled black hair. She, poor
thing, was the picture of despair, her fate being that all too common
one of the American woman who, foolishly dazzled with a titled lover,
too late finds him to be a titled brute.
We were to continue to Eida on the Hardanger Fjord, in the same
carriage in which we set out. The ponies were well rested, and we got
away a little after two o'clock. Ascending the well-tilled valley of
the Rundals Elv by easy grades over a fine hard road, we crossed a
marshy divide and then descended to the Hardanger Fjord. After passing
the divide and coming down a few miles, we suddenly found ourselves
on the rim of a vast amphitheatre into the center of which plunged a
mighty waterfall, the Skjervefos, much resembling that of the
Kaaterskill Falls, in the Catskill mountains of New York, only ten
times as big. A roaring river here jumps sheer a thousand feet, and
then again five hundred more. Yet we did not know of it until we were
right on to it and into it. The falls making two great leaps, the road
crosses the wild white waters between them on a wooden bridge. Over
this we drove through soaking clouds of spray.
[Illustration: GREETING OUR BOAT, AURLAND.]
When in London we had no thought of Norway. Not until we heard from
General and Mrs. C of the delights of this journey did we make up our
minds to take it. We were then in Copenhagen, and neither in that town
nor in Kristiania have we been able to get hold of an English-worded
guide book. We are trusting to our driver's knowledge, and to our own
eyes and wits. And so it is, that we came right upon one of the most
splendid waterfalls in all Norway, and never knew aught of it until
chasm and flood opened at our feet. Perhaps it is better so. We have
no expectations, our eyes are perpetually strained for the next turn
in the road, our ears are alert for the thundering of cascades, our
minds are open for astonishment and delight.
While it is a substantial modern bridge that now takes you safely over
the stream which spins and spumes between the upper and the nether
falls, yet our driver tells us, that in the ancient days when men and
beasts must ford or swim to get across, this was dreaded as a most
dangerous place. Few dared to ford,--most made a long detour. No
matter how quiet or how low the waters might appear, there were yet
dangers which men could not see, for water-demons hid in the black
eddies and skulked in the foam. They lurked in silence until the
traveler was midway the stream when they would boldly seize him by the
feet, and draw him down, and ride his body exultingly through the
plunging cataract below, nor did they fear also to drown what rescuer
might venture in to save his friend. When now the moon is low and the
night is still, may frequently be heard commingling with the leaping
waters' roar, 'tis said, the death wails of the lost souls of those
whom the demons thus have drowned and delivered for torment to the
cruel master-demon, Niki.
Below the giant Skjervefos we rolled alongside its Elv until we came
out upon the margin of another exquisite tarn, the Gravens Vand,
where, just as along the Vangsmjoesen Vand, the roadway is, much of
it, hewn out in galleries at the base of overhanging cliffs. Nor is
there room for carriages to pass. There are turnouts, here and there,
and you pull a rope and ring a bell which warns ahead that you are
coming. In some places the roadway was shored up with timbers above
the profound black waters. We passed from the _vand_ through a rocky
glen down which the foaming waters hurried to the sea. We followed the
stream and suddenly came out into vast breadth and distance. We were
at Eida on an arm of the mighty Hardanger Fjord, the biggest earth
crack in Norway.
[Illustration: THE HARDANGER FJORD.]
A fresh, keen wind blew up from the ocean. A wooden pier jutted out
into the deep water, where, tied to it, were several fishing smacks. A
small, black-hulled steamer was there taking on freight, but it was
not our boat. The sky was overcast. The long twilight was coming to an
end. It would soon be dark. Across the _fjord_, giant black-faced
precipices lifted up into the clouds and snows. Down the _fjord_ misty
headlands loomed against the dusk. The black waters were foam capped.
There was a dull moan to the wind in the offing; it was a night for a
storm at sea. It now grew dark. A few fitful stars shone here and
there. The wind was rising. A bright light suddenly appeared toward
the west. Our boat had come round the headland, and was soon at the
pier. It was much like the little ship in which we sailed upon the
Sogne Fjord. These _fjords_ are alive with multitudes of just such
boats, deep-set, sturdy craft, built to brave all weathers and all
seas. Our course lay down the Graven Fjord, through the Uten Fjord,
and then up the long, narrow Soer Fjord--arms of the Hardanger--to the
hamlet of Odda, where we would again take a carriage and cross the
snow-fields of the giant Haukeli mountains of the Western Alps.
Watching the sullen waters, profound and mysterious, as they churned
into a white wake behind our little craft, I could scarcely credit it
that I was upon the Hardanger Fjord, the greatest and most intricate
of the sheltered harbors which for centuries have made the coasts of
Norway the fisherman's haven, the pirate's home. Upon these waters the
ancient Viking learned his amphibious trade. Hid in the coves which
nestle everywhere along the bases of the precipices the Viking mothers
hatched and reared their broods of sea-urchins, who romped with the
seals and chased the mermaids and frolicked with the storms. Where I
now sailed had met together again and again those fleets of war-boats,
the like of which we saw the other day in Kristiania, and which went
out to plunder and ravage hamlet and town and city along all the ocean
coasts, even passing through the Gates of Hercules, and visiting Latin
and Greek and African province with devastation and death.
"Sea-wolves," Tacitus called them, and such they were. Here gathered
the hardy war-men who went out and conquered Gaul, and founded Norse
rule in Normanwise where now is Normandy. Hence sailed forth the
warships which harried the British Isles, and left Norse speech strong
to this day on Scottish tongue and in Northumbrian mouth. Here, also,
fitted out the ships, some of the crews of which it may have been who
left their marks upon the New Jersey shores in Vineland, and who may
even have been the sires of that strange blue-eyed, light-haired,
unconquered race I saw two years ago in Yucatan, who have held the
Spaniards these four centuries in check. I gazed upon the black waters
of mighty Hardanger, and saw the fleets returning with their spoil,
and heard the shouts of vengeance wreaked and victory won, which have
so often echoed among these mountains. I was looking upon the
breeding, homing waters of the greatest sea-race the world has known,
and every lapping wavelet became instinct with the mystery of the
cruel, splendid past.
[Illustration: THE SOER FJORD, HARDANGER.]
The churning of the propeller blades now ceased. I felt a jarring of
the boat. We were come to Odda and the voyage's end.
It was ten o'clock when we made our port. A black night it had been,
pitch dark, with a fierce wind and ill-tempered sea. The profound
waters respond with sullen restlessness to the stress of outer
tempest. Only a Norseman born and bred to these tortuous channels
could have safely navigated them on such a night, and I noticed that
our engines did not once slacken speed throughout the voyage!
Upon arriving at our hotel we found we were expected. A comfortable
room was in readiness, and a carriage engaged for the following day
and early breakfast arranged. All this had been done through telephone
by our Tourists' Agency (the Bennetts) in Kristiania. And so have we
found it everywhere along our route. All Norway, every post office and
nearly every farm, and especially all hotels and inns, are connected
by a telephone system owned and run by the Government. Anybody in
Norway can call up and talk to anybody else. We have experienced the
full benefit of this efficiency.
Our entire trip has been arranged by telephone from Kristiania. We are
always expected. A delicious meal, ordered from Kristiania, is always
ready for us, and every landlord knows to the minute just when we will
arrive, for news of us has been 'phoned ahead from the last station we
have passed.
This hamlet of Odda is an important point. Here converge the two great
trade and tourist routes of Western Norway. The one, the Telemarken
route, crossing the Haukeli Fjeld of the Western Alps to Dalen, and
thence by the Telemarken lakes and locks to Skien, and by rail to
Kristiania; the other diverging at Horre, passing down the valley of
the Roldals Vand to Sand and thence to Staavanger by the sea, whence
ships cross to Hamburg and Bremen and the North Sea ports, and to Hull
and Harwich in Britain--favorite routes by which the Germans and
British enter Norway.