Our series of great rides on land and water is at an end. For eight
days we have been inhaling the crisp, buoyant, ozone-laden atmosphere,
viewing the majestic scenery, watching the sturdy, strong-faced men
and women, the rosy, yellow-haired children; and now it is over. H and
I agree that in our lives we will never again experience a more
delightful outing--our sure-enough honeymoon.
This morning we left the Hotel Haukelid with only sixty kilometers for
the day, and most of it down hill; since noon yesterday we have been
coming down. Just a little snow was now to be seen far away upon
distant summits, while forests of birches, interspersed with aspens,
covered the nearer slopes. Our road led us along the borders of
several exquisite lakes, the little Voxli Vand and then the greater
Grungadals Vand, about a mile wide and ten or twelve miles long;
frowning precipices and cloud-wrapped heights encircled us on every
hand, their rocks now largely greened over with mosses, and
birches--only a few firs--growing wherever trees might thrust their
roots. Then we drove through a narrow clove, along a frothing torrent,
and came to another _vand_ equally shut in, but not so long nor so
wide,--a greener, warmer valley, Boertedals Vand in the Boerte Dal.
Here we dined at Hotel Boerte, rested till 3 P. M., and then got away
for one of the finest thirty kilometers of the trip. If we only had
had Ole Mon to drive us, how perfect would have been the day! I
imagined we had already come down enough to be at the bottom, but we
were yet to descend a mighty canyon with the road blasted out of the
precipice's side, and walled in with rock posts and iron defenders,
much like the Laera Dal, while far beneath us wound a silver thread,
the almost imperceptible roar of whose waters floated up a tremulous
murmur. We came down at a rattling trot, every moment unfolding new
vistas of vale and precipice and mountain. After two hours of this
fearful, yet joyous, coasting we crossed a wide-spanning iron bridge
and swept out into the charming vale of Dalen, at the head of the
Bandaks Vand, where now we are. The mountains are here clothed in
heavy forests of birch and much deciduous timber, only a little of the
fir; I can scarcely realize that yesterday we were up amongst the
mosses, the lichens and the snows. As we descended we kept taking off
our wraps; our rugs were folded up; H took off her golf cape, then her
jacket; she wanted to ride with bared head, so soft and warm had grown
the air.
[Illustration: A NORSE CABIN.]
[Illustration: OUR HOSTESSES, HAUKELI SAETER.]
KRISTIANIA, NORWAY, _September 10, 1902_.
Yesterday, we left Dalen at the head of navigation on the Bandaks
Vand, boarded a taut little steamboat about 150 feet long, built for
deep water, and traveled sixty-five kilometers through a succession of
_vands_ and _fjords_--the Telemarken Fjords--canals and locks--twenty
locks in all--to Skien (called "Sheen"), where we took the railway for
Kristiania, arriving at midnight.
The lakes were long, narrow and mostly shut in by heavily-timbered
mountains, which as always, lifted up to enormous heights, green vales
and valleys opening in between, where were picturesque hamlets and
neat, thrifty-looking farmsteads.
Nothing here impresses me more than the great patience and tireless
energy of the "Norsks," as they call themselves. The magnificent
roads, superior to those of England, equal, almost equal to those of
France; the canals, blasted for miles through solid granite; the
railways, which are as good as our own; the little boats so perfectly
appointed. The Norwegians impress you as being born seamen; they know
how to build and how to sail a boat, and you feel it.
Standing upon the forward deck, watching the changing panorama of
vale and lake and mountain, I became so absorbed in the enchanting
pictures that it was some moments before I noticed a slit-eyed,
high-cheek-boned, black-straight-haired, short, pudgy youth or
man--hard to tell which--a sure-enough Lap if ever there was one, who
was making vain efforts to hold conversation with me. He spoke slowly
and with some hesitation in perfect Cockney English. I at once gave
him my ear, and asked him where he had learned to speak so well. "Hi
ave been a cook in Lonnon," he said. "Hi ave been hassistant cook in a
Hinglish otel, you know. Hi am just now leaving the otel at Dalen,
where Hi ave been hassistant cook this summer, you know." Whereupon he
told me of his experiences in London. How he landed there from a
Norwegian ship, friendless and unknown, and made his way by his
aptitude in wiping dishes! And some day he "oped" to go to "Hamerica"
and there own a kitchen all for himself. "Ow strange it must be for an
Hamerican to see real mountains," he exclaimed, and I discovered that
the only America he knew about was the prairie land of the flat west.
Upon my asking whether he was not a Laplander, he resented the
suggestion with great vehemence, declaring himself to be a Viking
pure, and he begged me to let him know if I should learn of any good
openings for dish-wipers in America, especially if it would lead to
the dignity of cook. His manner was frank and simple, wholly free from
self-consciousness, except as he took great pride in being able to
speak the English tongue. In Norway there are no classes and all men
stand equal before the law. It is as respectable there to work as it
is in America, and similarly men meet you as your natural equals.
There is none of that offensive subserviency which so jars upon one
in most of the monarchy and aristocracy bestridden lands.
The volume of water which flows from these lakes and through these
deep canals is immense and we have sometimes swept along the narrower
channels at really an exciting pace. We had just passed through the
beautiful Flaa Vand and descended the deep full-flowing river, the
Eids Elv, with its many locks, to the greater Nordsjoe Vand, when we
drew up beside a little pier. There were many people upon it.
Evidently, there was here gathered an unusual crowd, and down the
hillside leading toward us came yet others. The whole community had
turned out. Two tall, rosy-cheeked, blue-eyed, fair-haired young men
were the center of the throng; about them the others pressed. They
were neatly dressed, fine-looking fellows, and the men and women were
kissing them good-bye. They were going to America, perhaps never to
return. The mother, a gentle-faced, white-haired old lady, wept on the
necks of each of them, and the white-haired father kissed them upon
either cheek, and then everybody rushed in to shake their hands. They
were going to America where so many of Norway's most ambitious and
able sons had gone before. The whole countryside would watch their
career and wait for news of their success! Two iron-bound chests were
dragged on to the boat. The young men stepped alertly aboard, their
faces flushed with the excitement of the farewells and the
anticipations of the land across the sea. As I watched them and their
family and friends waving their adieus I could not but ponder upon
this instinct of the old-world races, my own among the rest, to go out
and seize life's prizes even across the widest waters. The
leave-taking I was now beholding must be not unlike that of the men
and women who in the days of Pilgrim and Puritan and Cavalier left
little England to found a community where freedom and opportunity are
still the loadstones which attract the energy and youth of all the
world.
[Illustration: HAUKELI SAETER.]
[Illustration: A GOAT HERD'S SAETER, HAUKELI FJELD.]
In traveling through Norway, I have been greatly surprised to see so
many newly-built farmhouses, barns and farm buildings, new fences and
modern gates. Everywhere the old and tumbled-down is being replaced by
the substantial and modern. I have seen nothing like this anywhere in
Europe; nowhere so general a replacing of the old with the new. Many
of the new farmhouses are not merely substantial, but are
architecturally attractive. There must be abundant money coming from
somewhere to pay the cost of this universal rebuilding. I have asked
about it more than once and every time I receive the same reply. "The
sons have gone to America, they are in Chicago, in Minnesota, in
Dakota. They have grown rich. They are sending back the money. They
want the old places made as trim and spick as though they were in
America." "Put everything in good repair," they say, "never mind the
cost." And then, every few years they return with the American
grandchildren to see the beloved old folks. More and more of these
American-Norwegians are coming every year to holiday in the
fatherland. Many now regularly sojourn throughout the summer. A few, a
very few, remain to end their days on the loved home-soil.
I also learn that it is to supply the demand of this increasing travel
from America to Norway that the Scandinavian-American line have
recently put on the large ocean steamers now sailing direct from New
York to Kristiansand, with accommodations equal to anything which has
hitherto entered the ports of Germany and England and France.
The other day at Loeken, we were waited on at table by a fine-looking
young woman who spoke perfect United States. She had an air about her
of comfortable independence. The house, the farm buildings, everything
about the place was new and neat. While we were talking with her, she
told us that she had a brother and an uncle in the far west, one at
Spokane, who was rich. She was living with him when word came that the
old father had passed away. She was needed at home to care for the
mother and the younger children, so she returned; and the brother sent
back the money to have the old place put in perfect repair.
This intimate connection between our thriving west and Norwegian home
life, largely explains, I think, that independent American spirit
which now so prominently marks Norway, and the growth and assertion of
which is driving her by natural momentum away from the hectoring ties
of franchise-constricted, aristocratic Sweden, pushing her toward
her inevitable destiny--to become a Republic.
[Illustration: DRYING OUT THE OATS.]
[Illustration: TENDING THE HERDS.]
The immigration from Norway to the United States has taken from her
nearly one-half the population, a much larger percentage than has yet
come forth from Sweden. Although even there, so great is now the
exodus, that the Swedish Ministry is alarmed; there is also uneasiness
in Norway. Recently, laws have been enacted prohibiting the steamship
agents from spreading among the people the glowing accounts of
America, by means of which so many steerage tickets are sold, but all
the same, the propaganda is persistently carried on. At Skogstad, the
other day, I fell in with an alert-looking, quiet-mannered man, who,
after he learned I was an American, confided to me that he himself was
from Minnesota. He had been born in Norway, but went to America when a
boy. He was now back in Norway representing large farming interests in
the Northwest, and his business was to recruit farm hands for the
western wheat fields. He said he had penetrated during the past three
years into every nook and cranny of Norway, everywhere finding out
what vigorous and sturdy young men would like to go to America, and
then arranging with them to pay their passage, and supply sufficient
funds to enable them to pass the immigration inspectors, and providing
also their railroad transportation to the west. "They are a splendid
and hard working lot of men," he said. "We want all of them we can
get. And most of them do well when they reach America; many of them
become rich men." He was traveling in the disguise of an itinerant
doctor selling herbs and roots.
Crossing the mountain this side of Boerte, where the road wound up
through the fir forest to avoid an immense cliff which jutted into the
lake, I stopped and dug up a little seedling fir, surely a real Norway
spruce. I took it up with care and have now brought it to Kristiania
and to-day am sending it to America by mail wrapped in damp mosses,
and trust that it will reach Kanawha with life enough to live and
thrive in its West Virginia home. Along the roadside, not far from
where I found the seedling, were lying a fine pair of _skjis_, just as
the wearer laid them aside, only to be worn when winter shall return.
The Norwegian does not need to lock his door!
Upon the mossy, marshy, moorland summits and divides which we have
traversed, I have noticed widespread beds of peat. In some places
these are extensively worked, large areas being uncovered and the
squares of peat piled up to dry. The existence of this fuel has proved
a godsend to Norway, for the forests are often distant and year by
year the woodlands diminish. Although there are some inferior coal
beds in southern Sweden, there are none in Norway, and for fuel her
peat beds and her forests are her sole domestic supply. And yet,
despite this lack of fuel, it seems to me that Norway is dowered with
enormous stores of power. She possesses water power without stint.
King Winter surely cannot freeze up all the streams. Will not the
day yet come when the harnessed water powers of Norway may run the
turbines which will supply the world?
[Illustration: DALEN ON THE BANDAKS VAND.]
It is yet early September; the belated summer of this far northern
land, to our strange eyes, is just begun. The meadows are green; the
fields of grain are scarcely yellowed; in the markets of Kristiania we
see daily exposed for sale fresh-ripened strawberries; in our
Virginian latitude it would be the season of the month of May. Yet we
see big stacks of firewood piled near each farmhouse door; we see the
cabin newly banked with earth against the frost; at blacksmith's shop
we see men hammering on well-used sled; alongside the road, awaiting
the winter's need, lies an upturned snowplow newly ironed; everywhere
men are making ready for the cold. In a fortnight the highway across
the Haukeli Fjeld will be blocked with new-fallen snow. In a month the
jingling bells of sleighs and sledges will sound along the now verdant
valley of the Baegna Elv.
A year ago, when traveling in Mexico, in southern Michoacan, the
tropical precipitancy of the night was sure to take me unawares. I was
never quite prepared for the sharp transition from day to night. The
hot red sun rested a moment above the towering Cordillera, then it
dipped behind, and the cold white stars instantly shone forth. Here in
Norway my senses are equally surprised. It is already September and
yet "early candle light," means near ten o'clock. The day dies slowly.
The contours of vale and mountain almost imperceptibly fade upon the
eye. A violet blueness softens form and hue. Little by little the
violet changes into gray, and then the grayness pervades the air as
though the shadow of some phantom raven's wing overspread the world.
At nine o'clock, at half past nine, at ten o'clock, the goats and
cattle are awake--we have made long day-drives by reason of the limits
to our time--I wonder if they ever sleep. The sparrows and gray-coated
crows fly soberly across our way; a magpie softly flutters to the
road. I hear no bird-songs, only faint twitters, no chirping crickets,
no piping frogs and newts, none of the evening sounds of my Virginian
countryside. A hush creeps over _dal_ and _fjeld_ and _fjord_, even as
do the mysterious violet and gray shadows. We ourselves are drowsed. I
do not speak to H nor she to me. To the ponies Ole Mon has ceased to
talk. The world is stilled. We draw long breaths, inhale the delicious
air, lean back against the cushions of our seat, and daydream amidst
this hush of man and thing. The old Norse driver of the Roldal
cautions H to watch. "This is the hour," he says, "when the elves and
pixies stir abroad. Count the fifth meadow from where you stand and
there they are always sure to be." Thus have we driven through the
twilight, the mysterious, lingering twilight of this far and almost
Arctic North.
This is the last letter you will receive from Norway and I am sure
that you will agree with me, after reading what I have sent you,
that nowhere in all the world may one have a more delightful outing.
[Illustration: NORSE WOMEN RAKING HAY.]
As to expenses, I figure it up that the total cost for both of us is a
little less than five dollars per day, which includes our carriage,
our driver, our eating, our sleeping and the liberal fees which, like
good Americans, we have everywhere bestowed. Here in Norway the _oere_
(two and one-half cents) is as big as the quarter, and the _kroner_
(twenty-seven cents) as big as the dollar.
How long the _oere_ will loom so large I dare not say, for the
American invasion is begun, and I fear the _kroner_ will soon be no
bigger than the dime.