THE PEOPLE
OF
JUVIK
BY
OLAV DUUN
_A SAGA OF MODERN NORWAY_
TRANSLATED FROM THE NORWEGIAN
BY ARTHUR G. CHATER
_TO BE COMPLETED IN SIX VOLUMES_
I.
THE TROUGH OF THE WAVE
_The remaining volumes are in active preparation
and will be published at regular intervals_
NEW YORK · Alfred · A · Knopf · LONDON
COPYRIGHT 1930 BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.
_ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE THIS BOOK
OR PARTS THEREOF IN ANY FORM_
_Originally published as
JUVIKINGAR
Copyright 1927 by Olaf Norli
Oslo_
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
_TRANSLATOR’S NOTE_
The scene of all Olav Duun’s stories is the district of Namdal, to the
north of Trondhjem, where the author was born in 1876. And the central
place in his production is held by this saga of THE PEOPLE OF JUVIK, in
six volumes, of which the present is the first.
In order to place these Juvikings in their proper perspective, it must
be remembered that there is no trace of a feudal system in Norway, no
aristocracy or landed gentry, and that it is only recently that the
country has become to some extent industrialized; the “old families”
are the _odelsbönder_, peasant freeholders whose land has descended
from father to son, in many cases for centuries. These families are the
bearers of tradition, they constitute the real Norway. Below them are
the smallholders, who pay them rent for their crofts, furnish the hired
labour, and are objects of charity in hard times.
Though each volume of THE PEOPLE OF JUVIK is a complete story in
itself, the whole series may be likened to one of the old Icelandic
family histories, such as the Sturlunga Saga and many others. Duun has
here traced the fortunes of the Juvik race through four generations,
from the beginning of the nineteenth century (in THE TROUGH OF THE
WAVE we hear faint echoes of the Napoleonic wars) down to our own day,
with the introduction of modern industry (fostered by the Great War)
and its attendant labour troubles. In old Per Anders the last of the
old-timers disappears, and with his sons the family lies for a time in
the trough of the wave. It mounts to the crest again with Anders in the
second volume, and in the third we have the story of his children. The
fourth, fifth, and sixth all deal with one generation, in the person
of Odin, an irregular offshoot of the Juvikings, in whom some of their
best characteristics finally bear fruit. All through we are made aware
of the changing influences of the times, the slow death of old customs
and superstitions, and the persistent pride of race. The clan feeling,
ironically enough, is strongest in the weak and well-meaning Per, the
first of the family to leave the old home.
This is not the place to discuss the linguistic conflict which has
agitated Norway for the last two generations, but it may be explained
that Duun does not write in the _riksmaal_, the ordinary Norwegian
language as used by Ibsen, Hamsun, Undset, and all those authors
whose names are familiar abroad--the language sometimes known as
Dano-Norwegian, though it is becoming less like Danish every day--but
prefers the _landsmaal_, or popular language, which is a synthesis
of Norwegian country dialects, directly descended from Old Norse
and as free as may be from foreign influence. This is a language in
its shirt-sleeves, in Duun’s case strongly coloured by the local
dialect, and the tales he has to tell gain an added atmosphere from
the rustic and imaginative speech he uses. His narrative style closely
resembles that of the sagas: plain matter-of-fact, lighted up by
flashes of fancy. Perhaps the only “modern” note is to be found in
the vivid glimpses he gives us of weather and natural surroundings:
highly original they strike us, with the peasant’s unsophisticated
personification of the elements, of earth, sky, and sea, mountain,
forest, and brook. The racy intimacy of his dialect, full of hints and
half-obscured allusions, is naturally the despair of the translator who
has to make it intelligible to a foreign and heterogeneous public.
Some readers may be glad of a few hints on the pronunciation of
Norwegian names. _J_ is sounded as _y_ (“Yoo-veek”); _skj_ (and _sk_
before _i_) as _sh_; _kj_ has a soft sound, something like English
_ch_, but not so explosive; _aa_ is the English _oa_ in “boat,” “oar”;
Norwegian _y_ is like French _u_ or German _ü_; the other vowels have
their usual Continental values (as in German); and final _e_ is never
mute.
In this translation the terminations of some place-names have been
anglicized; e.g., _-ness_ for _-nes_, _-voe_ for _-vaag_ (_voe_ is the
Shetland form of the Norse word, which means a bay or creek, often a
minor inlet of the main fiord). It is true that one is led into some
slight inconsistencies by this method, but perhaps these may be excused
on the plea of convenience.
CONTENTS
I IN OLD DAYS 3
II LUCY LONG NIGHT 13
III THE YULE GOAT BLEATS 52
IV THE SMOKE BEATS BACK 79
V THE JUVIK GIANT STIRS 103
VI THE FARM CASTS ITS SKIN 136
VII “BUT DELIVER US FROM EVIL!” 168
VIII THE TROUGH OF THE WAVE 215
THE PEOPLE OF JUVIK
I
_THE TROUGH OF THE WAVE_
CHAPTER I
IN OLD DAYS
The first Juviking they can tell us about came from the south, from
Sparbu or Stod or wherever it was. His name was Per.
He had been married, it was said, and had had house and land, and he
brought his mother with him. What had driven him out the Lord only
knew. He leased a croft under Liness.
One day the Liness man came and claimed more work of him than he
was bound to do by agreement. Per just looked at him. Come he did
not. That evening his old mother hobbled up to the farm, wanted to
see the mistress herself. “Do ye know what they be saying among the
neighbours?” she asked. “They say my rascal’s to wed your darling--God
forgive me, they do say so.” At Liness they had but one daughter. Next
day the Liness man came and gave them notice; he let them have the
rough of his tongue. Per went back with him, and when they came to the
birch copse just below the farm, he set upon his landlord, knelt on him
and went over him so that you’d have pitied the man. Liness took it
and said nothing, he was big enough for that; he dragged himself home
with blood in his tracks. They used to repeat a saying of Per’s from
that time. “I took and set about him a wee bit; I hadn’t a heart for
aught else.” Liness sent his wife down with a message that he could
have Mærit, seeing how things were. Per said no, thanks, not for him.
Mærit herself was down, and came back crying; but Per pitched his traps
into the boat and rowed off. He was no dirty cottar body, he’d let them
know that!
He settled down in Juvik. There had been a croft there from old time,
and this he bought for his own of the Ommundstrand man and paid for it
in labour. The way of it was that he put up a new house for the man,
felled and drew the timber one winter and built it up the next. Folk
said to one another in the countryside that they had never seen a man
work before. New houses sprang up at Juvik too, and the land came into
better shape, as though of itself.
Juvik lies right out on the fiord, but it lies snugly, looking east and
sheltered from sea and storms. Nobody had noticed till now that it lay
there, much less that it lay like that.
One fine day Mærit came there with her boy, and she stayed. “You’d
better bide here now,” he is said to have told her; “you can take
mother’s place, she dropped off last year.” Nobody had heard of
that--when was she carried?[1]--“Carried? No, she’s lying down the
hill yonder. Better ground to lie in you won’t find.”--They never got
married, but he and Mærit lived long and well and had many children.
Nobody interfered with them, and they never worried about anybody
either.
[1] “Carried”--to the churchyard.
The eldest son took the farm, but not much else is known about him.
They stayed at home, all the boys, and cleared Juvik from the hills
right down to the sea.
One of the next Juvikings was called Anders. They were called Per and
Anders turn and turn about. This one was nicknamed Bear Anders. The
bear was making trouble out east, on Mo Fell. Anders came over there
with his ax, they tell you, and went into the forest. It was black dark
autumn weather, and he lay down all by himself beside the bait--it was
a crofter woman’s only cow, the bear had killed it in the bog. Two
nights he lay there waiting. The third day he came back with the bear’s
skin over his shoulder, and after that they called him Bear Anders.
They wanted to know how it happened--for Anders was a quiet sort of a
man to talk to. “Well,” said Anders, and thought a bit; “he came, and
so I knocked him dead.” It was no child’s play lifting his bear-ax,
when he left it in the porch, going into church. Not that they were
great churchgoers, the Juvikings; there was a saying in the parish that
God’s word and Lapps’ _gann_[2] didn’t bite on them.
[2] _Gann_--sorcery.
The son of this Bear Anders was called Big Per. Of him the story goes
that one day when he was in the forest the Ommundstrand man went
through the ice on Finnstad water with his sledge. Per had a feeling
of it and ran down. He pulled out both man and horse. For that he got
his daughter and as much land and forest as he liked to ask for; and
the Juvikings were not shy of asking. They each had their own version
of the story, though; the Ommundstrand man told it this way: “That was
a bit of a pull, Per. Will you take my daughter, or will you not?” Per
laughed on hearing this: “Oh, no, I had to duck him and duck him again
before I got him soft enough for me.” For that matter, folk believed
what they chose to believe: that Per had driven horse and man through
the ice himself; if not he was no Juviking.--But be that as it may,
from that day the Juvikings were a different race. Such a wedding was
held that it was hard to find anyone who hadn’t been at it; for the
Ommundstrand folk were kin to all the best families on both sides of
the fiord; and there were new houses at Juvik, full of all sorts, and
there was a power of food and riches that made folk stare; its glories
were talked of far and wide.
And the Juvikings were talked of no matter where they went. They were
a big family, and giants too, most all of them. They clung together
like bramble-bushes. Stout fellows to look at, but, however it was,
they were very apt to stay unmarried, barring the eldest, and he liked
to look far afield before he made his choice. He generally took her by
force, in a high-handed way; there were many tales about that.
Greedy Per was one of the last of the old-time men. He sailed south,
right down to the Trondheim country, looking for a wife. She came of
big people, they said, and he would hardly have got her by fair means.
He was the only one of them who took much to the sea; he sailed up
and down the coast, trading and the like. He was not the eldest, that
was how it was. But then his brother died, and Per got the farm. Then
he turned out a miser and a grasper, a real Greedy Per; by and by he
became a rich man. It is told of him that he used to steal both nets
and herring in the fiord, he took everything that swam, they said; but
on land he was as honest as a man could be. When he was growing old
he went round the fiord from house to house and restored what he had
stolen. He could get no peace--in his boat-house, he said; and yours
shall be yours and not mine. They thought no less of him after that
day. For nobody believed he was afraid of the dark; it wasn’t in his
boat-house the trouble was. And stolen goods are heavy, when you have
to take them back. Of course there were ghosts at Juvik as in other
places, it wasn’t always comfortable to be in service there; but Per
and the other Juvikings never seemed to notice anything; they were cold
folks.
His son was called Anders. He was quieter in his ways than most of the
Juvik men. He was just as old when he took over, folk thought, as his
father when he gave up. But he was a shrewd and kindly man, and a great
one to work. He paced off the bounds between Ommundstrand and Juvik and
put up a boundary fence, marking off for himself the whole peninsula,
straight across and right down to the point, and settled a lot of
crofters on his land. He paid out his brothers with big money, and they
went to other parts.
Anders had but one son, and his name was Per Anders. This was the
gamest of them all and a wild fellow in his youth. It was he who defied
Lapp _gann_. There was a _gann_ Lapp going about the neighbourhood,
called Nils Gadabout. Folk were so scared of him, they gave him the
best they had. He looked in at Juvik one day, and there he got all
he asked for, and more too. As he was going he clasped his hands and
blessed man and beast, byre and barn, house and land. Per Anders
stood by with a grin on his face.--“Can you _gann?_” he said. The Lapp
tried to get out, but Per Anders stood in his way: “Can you _gann_, I
ask, you Lapp devil? You’re to answer when I speak to you. Heh?” His
mother begged and besought him to let the man alone, and the servants
stole away, pale and weak in the knees, for it took less than that to
make Nils Gadabout put a curse on you; more than one had found that
out.--“You’re a young man,” said the Lapp gently; “but remember, she’s
old, that has the power.”--“Now you’re to try your _gann_ on me, or you
won’t get off with a whole skin! Make my bones rot away till I drop!
Take the hair off my head, as you did to the Björland wife--will you
obey me! Come here with your _gann_-bag!” and Per Anders snatched the
sack from the Lapp and emptied it. They turned away, every one of them;
cold shivers ran down their backs. The father, Anders, stood looking
on calmly and absently as usual, as if it didn’t concern him. Then Per
Anders took the Lapp and his bag and carried them outside, shook him
as you would shake out a coat. But he took all his food away west to
the crofts, for there was always somebody that went hungry.--Then the
Lapp fellow got up on a big rock and let loose curses and evil upon
Per Anders till the air was blue all round him. It was enough to make
your hair stand on end: Per Anders’s legs were to shrivel up, the
flesh would rot from his bones, his cattle would drop before they were
properly born--in thirteen days his farm would be burnt down--a-i,
a-i, a-i, oh! Per Anders clapped himself on the backside and went off.
The crofter wives were glad to get the food, and Per Anders lived as
before. _Gann_ didn’t bite on him.
Per Anders was to be found wherever there was dancing, in the parish
and far outside it, and then he made it lively. There was always such
fun where he went, though he might be among strangers; he was so full
of notions. But they had to mind themselves: he was pretty ready with
his fists too.
His wife he brought from a long way inland. He took a fancy to a girl
at the fair, and next day he went to her home and told them he wanted
her. Her father banged the table when he heard it, for he was one of
the biggest farmers in those parts. “It shan’t be!” he said. “Ah, but
I wanted her so badly,” said Per Anders.--“You? You lousy clod-hopper
from the sea-shore! Do you think you’ll feed my daughter on sour
herrings?”--“I wanted her so badly. And now tell me one thing: will
you have money or a thrashing?” Per Anders clapped his pocket-book on
the table so that they all gave a jump--there was a pan of milk on the
table and the milk spurted up to the ceiling. Nobody in that house
had banged on the table like that before, nor with such a pocket-book
either.--“So you’d better come, Ane,” he said, and she put her clothes
straight and came. But still the Juviking wasn’t satisfied. “Tell me,”
he said; “do you let your daughter go from home like a beggar?” No,
that wasn’t the idea either; the man had thought it over and led out
two fine cows, produced silver and other heirlooms. “Ay, ay,” said Per
Anders, “and now you can take and lead your cows in again, and put
up your trash, I have more than enough at home. And now you take a
Christian farewell of your daughter, for, by my soul, you’ll have to
take care I don’t make a cripple of you!” That is how it went, they
say. And he didn’t leave the place that day, nor the next either;
there was such a fuss made over that son-in-law that it was a sight
to see. The man was never tired of talking of it as long as he lived:
“No, that Per Anders, the one who’s married to our Ane, he has money,
he has.--No, that table there, it’s never been the same since; he
gave it a bang of his fist, the one that’s married Ane, and that was
enough.--Farm?” he would say; “oh no, this farm’s nothing to Juvik,
where our Ane’s married.”
Per Anders settled down after these doings. He put up new houses at
Juvik--nobody had ever seen the like: a dwelling-house in two storeys,
with a kitchen and other newfangled notions, a stable apart, and a byre
apart. They said Ane tried to get him to pull down the old house while
he was about it, but there he said stop. “If we had a fire some day,
we’d be glad of it,” he said.--After that he stuck to his land, cleared
the last bit of it, and drained every spot that was soft. He took up
the farm in his hands and finished it.
“They won’t do so badly, those that come after me,” he said. Though he
was not much given to talking. He had three sons, Anders and Jens and
Per; and three daughters, Ane and Aasel and Beret. Anders died young.