Over the Lonely Haukeli Fjeld--Witches and Pixies, and Maidens Milking
Goats.
HOTEL HAUKELID, _September 17, 1902_.
This morning we left Hotel Breifond about eight o'clock and although
we started alone, three other carriages soon caught up with us, and we
set off together, ours being the first in the line. As it is the
etiquette of the drivers never to pass each other, we have kept this
order all the day. Next behind us was a Dane with his Norwegian wife,
from Bergen, to whom H talked in their own tongue. Next to them were
the two young Frenchmen with whom I have managed to converse, and
behind these rode a German and his _frau_, who were most icy until
they learned we were not English but Americans, whereupon they grew
friendly indeed. We have got well acquainted while walking together up
the long mountain slopes.
Yesterday we crossed the divide at a maximum elevation of 3,392 feet,
and were above the snow line; to-day we again traversed the
snow-fields at a yet higher altitude, passing under one snow mass by a
tunnel, where H took a snap-shot of me standing in the snow, and
reached the maximum altitude of 3,500 feet.
[Illustration: A MILE STONE.]
[Illustration: CATTLE ON THE HAUKELI FJELD.]
From the emerald valley of the Roldals Vand we crept up a long ascent
for twenty miles, and I walked the whole of it. We followed the
foaming Vasdals Elv to its source, until all trees were below us, and
only short grasses, mosses and lichens grew amid the masses of drear,
black rock, and wide fields and patches of snow. This was the most
desolate region I have ever yet beheld or set foot upon; no life of
any sort; "_aucuns animaux, aucuns oiseaux; seulement les roches, le
silence et le froid_," as one of the young Frenchmen exclaimed! There
was not even a gnat or a butterfly. The primordial adamant rock
presented as sharp and unworn edges to the blows of the icy torrents
as when God first made it. The sun was warm and all the streams brim
full, swollen from the melting snows. High on the height of land we
found two silent lakes, the Ulivaa Vand and the Staa Vand. No life
stirred about them, although our driver asserted they were "alive with
fish."
On these silent heights with their mosses and lichens, goats and
reindeer thrive, and the latter range throughout the year.
We dined near the summit at a neat log inn called Haukeli-Saeter upon
a soup, boiled salmon, reindeer steak and vegetables,--all good. Here
our Germans clamored for _sauerkraut_ and _bier_, and were much
perturbed at receiving instead schooners of sweet milk and
caraway-seeded tea-cakes. The inn is built in typical Norse style,
with sharp and elaborately carved gables, and is kept open chiefly for
the benefit of tourist travel.
Our driver is a quaint and lackadaisical old Norsk, who speaks a
drawling, ancient Roldal _patois_. The first day we could not do much
with him, although H tried her best Danish. But to-day he is beginning
to thaw out and has at last become really garrulous. He is full of
peasant superstition and folk lore which he implicitly believes. These
Haukeli Fjelde will never be inhabited by man, he says, for they are
already the home of the giant and dangerous _Trolls_, mysterious and
mighty spirits who are inimical to man. They dwell on the barest and
bleakest and most desolate mountain tops, where they devour young kids
and reindeer fawns and, occasionally, even dare to kidnap a child, and
are always on the watch to steal a buxom lass. It is useless to chase
or follow them, they are never to be caught, and while they may show
themselves at times if they shall choose, yet they are invisible to
most human eyes. He has never seen a _Troll_, he says, but once he
knew an old man who had been scared by one which tried to catch him
when a boy.
There are also witches upon the Haukeli mountain tops, the old man
says. He is sure he has heard them hurtling through the air,
sometimes, when driving alone in the dusk of midsummer nights,
crossing the desolate heights of the Haukeli Fjeld. I asked him if
they still rode on broomsticks as they used to do in Germany, but he
declared that they were more bloodthirsty than that, for they always
carried ancient Viking broadswords, which they had picked up after
some of the big fights which take place before breakfast in Valhalla
every morning among the Vikings. Every summer some few witches are
sure to be seen or at any rate heard, by some lonely peasant caught by
fatigue on a twilight mountain top. There is one more beautiful than
all the rest, he says. He calls her "Hulda," and says she is a great
hand to seduce and beguile young men. She can fix herself up to appear
very beautiful, and to look upon her is to fall fast in love with her.
Then she taps a rock with a long staff she carries and lo! it opens
and there within are splendid chambers, a fairy palace, with all the
allurements of golden furnishings and sumptuous hangings and a table
groaning under the weight of delicious things to eat. If, dazzled by
this glimpse of paradise, the youth once enters and is taken in her
arms and kissed by her, then it is all up with him. He never escapes,
but after she has toyed with him to her heart's content in idle
dalliance, and grown tired of him, then are his blackened bones cast
forth upon some barren mountain top, perhaps to be found long years
afterward by wandering goatherd or venturesome hunter. Between these
_Trolls_ and the witches, H has acquired a most wholesome fear of the
Haukeli Fjeld, and she vows she would never drive over it alone.
[Illustration: THE DESOLATE HAUKELI FJELD.]
Also, the old man has at first hinted at and then confided to us that
the _Trolls_ and witches are not indeed the so serious menace they
might seem, for they are really afraid of man and keep generally well
out of his way; but that the real vexation of life comes from the
little pixies and sprites, who love to live handily about your house,
and who are always making trouble, either out of a spirit of pure
mischief, or else by reason of jealousy or pique. They are "very
touchy," he says, and you never know when or how you may offend them.
But if you do, then woe betide you. They will steal the feed out of
your horse's trough, or from his very nosebag right before your eyes,
and so deft are they at their tricks that you can never catch them.
You only discover that your horse gets thinner and thinner until he
finally dies, while if they shall be pleased with what you have done
or said you will find the horses always sleek and fat and able to do
two days' work in one. I asked him how he stood in with the pixies
just now, for I thought his team looked rather poor, but he said that
was by reason of the hard summer's work, the pixies having done him no
ill for several years. They also delight to milk the goats and cows
upon the sly, he said, and will steal the cheese set out to dry, and
often play such havoc with household supplies as to drive the peasants
to despair. For this reason it is, that many good farmers set out
little bowls of milk and bits of cheese in some silent meadow or
mountain dell, where the pixies may eat quite undisturbed.
As if to emphasize the old man's words, we just then passed the hut of
a woman goatherd almost upon the summit of the vast lonely Haukeli
Fjeld and there, set upon a little shelf, high up near the moss-grown
roof, were a small milk-bowl and a bit of brown cheese, an offering to
the elves and pixies of that place.
The information I here give you may be wrong in minor detail, for we
could not always perfectly interpret the quaint and ancient dialect in
which the facts were told, but H says she could make out the most of
what the old man said; for after all Danish and Norse speech are very
nearly the same.
We were now well over the height of land and were coasting down toward
prospective supper. The barren waste of black and gray rocks, across
which we had traveled, began to give place to greener slopes; the
mosses had returned; the grass was peeping up again. Swinging around a
well-graded curve, we dropped into a little valley. The evening sun
was behind us, the slanting rays tipped peak and snowy crest with
reddish gold, but the vale below was wrapped in soft shadow. On the
left, stood a moss-roofed cabin, near where ran the road; on the
right, across a boisterous brook, we saw a group of Norse maidens,
clad in blue-and-red peasant costume, surrounded by a herd of goats.
The goats were apparently in great excitement. Each young woman was
following a goat and that particular goat walked with demure and
expectant gait. One old gray goat moved with particularly stately
step, while the lady by his side held in her hand a small wooden
bucket. I presumed that, of course, she proposed to give that goat his
evening meal. Imagine my astonishment when, before the goat really was
aware, she collared it, swung her leg over it and holding it fast
between her thighs, facing its rear, began energetically milking, not
it, or him, but her! The goat had disappeared, only a tail and a head
discovered themselves beyond the lady's skirts, and the evening
shadows gathered about that maid and goat,--that goat held tight as
though in iron vise. The day was too nearly done for my kodak to
avail, so I have tried to sketch the episode, and so also has one of
our French companions--and I send you the pictures. If the old poet
had only seen the tableau of goat and maid he never could have written
the following lines which long ago my memory clipped from the Yale
_News_:
"The milkmaid pensively milked the goat,
When, sighing, she paused to mutter,
I wish you brute, you'd turn to milk,
And the animal turned to butt her!"
We have driven some eighty kilometers to-day and have been in the
fresh mountain air, open air, for eleven hours. H is growing plump,
and her cheeks have caught the Norse red. The keen air makes our blood
tingle in spite of the cold, for it is cold. On these summits ice
forms the moment the sun is hid. We are in full winter clothing, and
wrap our heavy sea rugs about us as we sit in the carriage. In a
fortnight the snows will cover the passes and tourist travel will
cease till another year.
[Illustration: NORSE MAIDEN MILKING GOAT.]
During the last two days we have frequently met men bearing on their
backs and dragging on sledges piles of birch branches, the twig ends
with the leaves yet on, and we have noticed here and there, entire
birch-growing hillsides where the saplings had all been trimmed, the
tender twigs sheared off and frequently the lopped-off branches
stacked up in bundles stuck in a handy tree-crotch. This is the winter
fodder for the goats, and the birch twig is as important for them as
is the hay for the cattle. Just as in Switzerland, large flocks of
goats are pastured throughout the summer upon the higher mountain
slopes and ridges, and much cheese is manufactured from their milk. Of
sheep we have seen few, although I understand a good many are raised
for the local demand for wool. Like Scotland, Norway is hereabouts too
cold and harsh for sheep to do their best.
Nor have we noticed many fowls, turkeys or geese or ducks about the
farmsteads,--only a few chickens here and there. This also is too cold
a climate, with too rigorous and lengthy winters for poultry to be
profitable. Nor have we had chicken set before us but the once when we
supped with the inquisitive dame of Tonsaasen. Trout and reindeer
steak as well as eggs we have often had, and once roast ptarmigan.
Neither in Britain, nor in France, nor in Germany have I ever seen a
wooden house; all buildings there are of stone or brick; but here the
buildings throughout the countryside are all of wood; hewn logs most
frequently, not uncommonly of sawed lumber, these latter quite often
painted white and red, reminding one of tidy New England. The roofs
are steep to shed the snows or, otherwise, quite flat and covered with
a layer of birch bark and then tight-growing sods and mosses, which
covering the snow may melt upon but through which it will never soak.
To-day being Sunday, we have met many churchgoers upon the road, and
have passed two churches where the Lutheran service was being held.
During our drive we have constantly noted the number of these Lutheran
churches, as well as the snug-built, substantial schoolhouses. Piety
and intelligence deeply mark the lives of these Norse people. Just as
in Denmark, so here also is the Lutheran church recognized and
supported by the state, and its pastors constitute a formidable and
influential body, guiding the thought of the Norwegian people.
Apparently the schools here are as universal and as well attended as
our own. Every Norwegian child, who is of school age, is compelled by
law to go to school. Nowhere outside of my own country have I seen so
many schoolhouses dotting the countryside. In England there are no
common schools and no schoolhouses. In France the schoolhouses are
hidden among the buildings of the clustered villages. In Switzerland,
perhaps, the schoolhouse is as much in evidence as here, but in
neither Germany nor Holland, although their universities lead the
world, is there revealed the teaching of the common people as is done
by the many schoolhouses of this northern land.
Now we are housed in a commodious and quite modern inn, and have had a
delicious trout supper, all our four carriage-loads of travelers
sitting at one long table, where H and I have been the stars--for we
only and alone can talk equally to the Dane and his Norwegian wife, to
the young Frenchmen, and to the German pair; while through us only can
they exchange ideas, for we alone can talk to each in his own native
tongue. "Ah! these Americans!" "You talk all the languages!" "How wide
you see!" "While we, we do not see beyond the boundaries of France."
"We speak too seldom a foreign tongue." "You are bigger-minded than
are we!" So exclaimed one of our French friends.