or fish during all these past months, but I have seen a good many of
them, and I have been much interested in reading the accounts of those
who are initiated. One sportsman has amused himself and others by making
a collection of the names by which different groups of animals are
designated in the sporting world. He does not confine himself to Norway,
but goes far afield and finds no less than thirty-one different names,
all meaning “group.” Besides the common and well-known designations,
he speaks of a “nide” of pheasants, a “wisp” of snipe, a “muster” of
peacocks, a “siege” of herons, a “cast” of hawks, a “pride” of lions, a
“sleuth” of bears, and several others equally fantastic and unfamiliar.
The most peculiarly national animal in Norway, whether he is designated
collectively as a “pride” or a “muster” or a “siege” or otherwise, is
the lemming. The lemming is a fierce little brute, about the size of a
rat, but when brought to bay he is a most dangerous enemy. Ordinarily
he is a rather harmless, useless beast, but once in awhile he becomes a
national scourge. Such occasions are called “Lemming Years.” For some
unaccountable reason swarms of lemmings are born, and they come sweeping
over Norway in great waves. For days a ceaseless army of them marches
seaward, and nothing can stop them. They eat all that lies in their
path, and leave a track of devastation behind them like a plundering
army of soldiers. They look neither right nor left, but travel straight
on until they reach the open sea. They plunge down the mountain sides
into the fjords, blindly and madly, and are soon drowned. It would be
well for Norway if they all reached the sea, but alas, thousands fall
by the wayside. Wells are choked up with their bodies, and the water is
poisoned, so that “lemming fever” is the inevitable sequel to a lemming
raid. I believe there has not been a big raid since 1902, but every
summer the farmers expect them again and are filled with dread.
Returning to Domaas, we jog along in our carriole down to Otta in the
Gudbrandsdal. Between Domaas and Otta, at a place called Kringen, the
road “runs like a narrow ribbon between the steep cliff on the one side
and the foaming river on the other.” Here, in 1612, six hundred Scottish
mercenaries, hired by Gustavus Adolphus, landed at what is now Næs and
prepared to walk to Sweden by way of the Romsdal and Gudbrandsdal
valleys. At Kringen the Norwegians collected big boulders at the top
of the cliff. A peasant girl named Pillar Guri stood on the opposite
side and blew a horn to let her compatriots know just when the Scottish
soldiers were passing below. At the signal the fatal shower descended,
and it is said that not one of the six hundred escaped. Truly “into the
valley of death rode the six hundred.” A monument has been placed on the
spot to commemorate the event.
Now, Judicia, will you be an obliging chessman? If so, take two jumps
backward and one to the right and land at Loen on the Nordfjord. There
is an excursion from here to Lake Loen which offers something unique to
the weariest and most blasé globe-trotter. Lake Loen is buried in the
midst of the wildest, glacier-surmounted hills, and it almost seems an
intrusion for prying eyes to visit it, yet it must submit not only to
this indignity but to the positive disgrace of having a little steamer,
by name the _Lodölen_, chug through its quiet waters. In some places
great, jagged masses of glacial ice actually overhang the lake, hundreds
of feet in air, and at times fragments break off and plunge down into the
water.
Our little steamer _Lodölen_ is rather a curiosity, for its engine was
taken from the wreck of a former ship. Some years ago the _Lodölen’s_
predecessor was quietly making its way along the eastern end of the lake
when without warning a whole mountain, or at least a large part of a
mountain, tumbled bodily into the lake. A tidal wave was created which
caught the steamer and carried it far up the mountain side. To-day, from
the deck of the _Lodölen_, we can see the wreck of the old ship whose
engine is propelling the new. Perhaps the guardians of the lake rebelled
at the indignity of having a steamer invade its quietness, and took this
means of showing their displeasure; but persistent humanity seems to be
unwilling to be thwarted. Perhaps some day the _Lodölen_ will meet with a
similar fate and another steamer take its place.
The Sognefjord south of the Nordfjord is not only the deepest, but also
the largest. For a hundred and thirty miles it stretches its branches
into the heart of Norway. Indeed, it is shaped like a tree, the trunk
being the main fjord. The great boughs which come out from this mighty
trunk twist and taper into the most delicate twigs, and here and there
diminutive _dals_ and hamlets present the appearance of leaves and buds,
if you will permit your fancy to roam so far. Many authors are tempted
into the most fanciful descriptions of Sogne’s grandeur. If you could see
the dramatic audacity of nature here I am sure you would forgive even the
extravagant imagination of the following description, which I quote from
O. F. W.:
“Ever since the dawn of time these mighty graystone giants of the
Sognefjord have sat there gloomy and stanch. Age has set deep marks on
them. Their visages are now furrowed and weather-beaten, and their crowns
snowy white. But their sight is still keen. When the storms of winter
come sweeping in with the wild sagas of the sea, there is a blaze under
those shaggy brows. They roar with hoarse voice across to one another
when the rains of spring set in. In the dark autumn nights they shake
their mighty limbs with such a crash and roar that huge masses scour down
the slopes to the fjord, sweeping away all the human vermin that has
crawled up and fastened itself upon them. Only during the light, warm,
summer nights, when the wild breezes play about them and all the glories
of the earth are sprinkled over them, when islands and holms rise out of
the trembling sea and swim about like light, downy birds, when the birch
is decked in green and the bird cherry is blossoming, the seaweed purling
and the sea murmuring—then the deep wrinkles are smoothed out, then there
falls a gleam of youth over the austere faces.”
[Illustration: _Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y._
Fishermen Arranging their Nets at Balestrand on the Sognefjord.]
There you have the Sogne, the poet’s Sogne perhaps, but I think not too
fanciful, for the Sogne is the poet’s fjord above all others, and anyone
who has no poetry in him should not invade its precincts. At Balholm, on
this fjord, the German emperor is commemorating the famous Fridthjof with
a statue. Longfellow translated the Fridthjof saga, so Balholm is thus
connected with him too, and adds another point in favor of Sogne’s claim
to the name of the poet’s fjord.
Longfellow wrote several poems connected with the northland. The most
famous, as you know, and the one which connects Norway with America, is
_The Skeleton in Armor_. I have read it half a dozen times since I came
to Norway, and it has done more than anything else to make me feel and
see the spell of the old vikings.
This has been a long letter and I have not touched upon Hardanger or
Sætersdal or the North Cape, but those will keep for another letter, and
if you will transform yourself into a “castle,” or, better still, remain
a queen and move several squares due north, you will arrive at Marok
again, where the gleaming Geiranger is beginning to be ruffled by evening
breezes. I will write to you soon, probably from Sætersdal, where I know
I shall find seventeenth-century Norway in all its charm.
As ever yours,
AYLMER.
ELEVENTH LETTER
Aylmer visits the North Cape; Narvik to Hammerfest; the
oft-imagined midnight sun a realization; Vanniman and the sun
compass; Hardanger Fjord and region; the Norwegian Sunday;
a country wedding; the snow tunnel at Haukeli Sæter; the
precipice of Dalen; a natural boomerang; the “Norwegian Rhine”;
the romance of Helgenotra; a “stave-kirke”; Henrik Ibsen;
educational difficulties in Norway; itinerant schoolmasters;
the charm of Sætersdal; wherein lies the Spell of Norway?
BREDVIK, SÆTERSDAL, August 18.
MY DEAR JUDICIA,
Before I tell you about Sætersdal I must say something about the North
Cape and the midnight sun. Perhaps you wonder why I don’t save the famous
North Cape for a climax instead of taking you up there first and then way
back to the southernmost tip of Norway. My reason, which I hope later
to justify, is this. To me the spell of Norway lies most of all in its
_dals_ and in its _sæter_ regions, where the simplicity of the natives is
untarnished and where the country is naturally beautiful. The place where
this is true to the fullest extent is in the region whose appropriate
name, Sætersdal, combines the thought of rugged upland and smiling _dal_.
I do not mean to minimize the glories of the North Cape. They are
superb and almost too wonderful for us. They make us gasp for breath,
and perhaps we feel almost tired after surveying them. I have felt
“timorous” about approaching that subject at all, for many thousands of
people, among them some noted writers, have visited the spot and have
seen the midnight sun. Certainly ninety-nine per cent of them have tried
to describe it, and many have had their attempts published.
I will not take you step by step, or port by port, on the long journey
to Hammerfest, for I took you up as far as Narvik when I went there
last winter, and the continuation is much the same. We pass Tromsö,
the northernmost of Norway’s six bishoprics, and the town which long
enjoyed the distinction of having the northernmost church in the world.
Of course, thriving little Hammerfest has now robbed it of that honor.
Hammerfest, I suppose, is more widely known, by name at least, than
almost any other village of its size in the world, with the possible
exceptions of Oberammergau and Stratford-on-Avon, which have earned their
distinction in quite different ways. Every schoolboy and schoolgirl
learns that Hammerfest is the most northerly town in the world. It has
only two thousand inhabitants, but with the inpouring waves of tourists
in the summer it becomes a most lively place. The whole town is pervaded
winter and summer with a nauseating smell of boiling cod-liver oil.
Doubtless the product is a fruitful source of income to the inhabitants,
but personally I should hardly care to live in the reeking smell of it
all my life.
[Illustration: _Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y._
Three Little Belles of the Arctic at Tromsö.]
On the Fulgnæs, a promontory a little to the north of the town,
there is the _Meridianstötten_, a column of granite with a bronze
globe surmounting it, marking the spot, as the Latin and Norwegian
inscriptions indicate, where the “geometers of three nations, by order of
King Oscar I and Czars Alexander I and Nicholas I,” completed in 1852 the
arduous task of measuring the degrees.
Our steamer, in going from Hammerfest to the North Cape, passes the
Hjelmöstoren cliff, the home of millions, perhaps of billions of
flapping, shrieking sea birds. Although the old birds and the wise ones
are never disturbed by the passing steamer, even when it fires off a gun,
the young fledgelings flap about in such clouds that they actually darken
the face of the sun.
Finally we reach the grand old North Cape on the island of Magerö. The
steamer drops anchor in Hornvik Bay, and we leave it and zigzag up the
newly built road to the famous cliff. Our good ship _Kong Harald_ looks
like a beetle floating on the water’s surface. The waves, which seemed
rather formidable to us from the little boat which took us ashore, have
now assumed the appearance of almost invisible ripples.
Come to the edge of the cliff with me, Judicia, and you will see a
sight which you will never forget. If your nerves are strong and your
conscience is clear, you may not tremble at the awfulness of the scene.
But unless you are dead to emotion, something must stir within you. Far
below and far beyond stretches the apparently limitless Arctic Sea—the
vast, fatal, compelling sea which brave men of many nations have died in
exploring. And there surely is the midnight sun. It must be that, for it
is just midnight, and that great red ball of fire hanging a little above
the horizon is very evidently not the moon. It is easy, isn’t it, to
speak of the midnight sun, and hard to realize it. That mysterious golden
globe bowling lazily along the northern horizon is in process of making
a million sunsets and a million sunrises in other parts of the world,
but here all is blended into one. Doctor John L. Stoddard, in a burst of
eloquence, has thus described the color scheme which nature here presents:
“Far to the north the sun lay in a bed of saffron light over the clear
horizon of the Arctic Ocean. A few bars of dazzling orange cloud floated
above, and still higher in the sky, where the saffron melted through
delicate rose color into blue, hung light wreaths of vapor touched with
pearly opaline flushes of pink and golden gray. The sea was a web of pale
slate color shot through and through with threads of orange and saffron,
from the dance of a myriad shifting and twinkling ripples. The air was
filled and permeated with a soft, mysterious glow, and even the very
azure of the southern sky seemed to shine through a net of golden gauze.
Midway … stood the midnight sun, shining on us with subdued fires and
with the gorgeous coloring of an hour for which we have no name, since it
is neither sunset, nor sunrise, but the blended loveliness of both.…”
Flowery as the language is, it is not one particle exaggerated.
Exaggeration would be impossible.
A less ambitious author frankly admits his inability to describe a
northern midsummer night. “The memory of one night in Norway,” he says,
“makes one feel how powerless language is to describe the splendor of
that … glory—glory of carmine and orange and indigo, which floods not
only the heavens, but the sea, and makes the waves beneath our keel a
‘flash of living fire.’”
A more scientific, if less poetic person, who visited the northland
was Vanniman, the American engineer, who was with Wellman when he made
his unsuccessful attempt to reach the North Pole by airship. Vanniman
perhaps neglected the beauties of nature for the more sordidly practical
occupation of inventing a sun compass. The principle of this instrument
is most interesting. Reasoning that at the precise moment of midnight the
sun is due north, he “constructed a clock the hour hand of which traveled
in the opposite direction to the sun, so that, on being pointed at the
midnight sun and set going, it continued to point due north.”
I would feel more reluctant to tear myself and you from the glories of
the North Cape were it not that quieter, gentler glories await us farther
south. In the deep blue Hardanger Fjord and its surroundings we find
all nature gentler and milder, even in its grandeur, than the nature of
the far north or even of the rugged Sogne. The Hardanger district is
fir-clothed and alder and birch-clothed as well, and presents a softer
loveliness than the knotted, “brawny” aspect of other fjords. I’ll
venture to say that the word Hardanger suggests to you, Judicia, only a
species of embroidery, but if you had only seen the district it would
suggest warmth of forest-clothed _dal_, majesty of lofty waterfall,
and depth of cool fjord. Hardanger is famous, even in Norway, for its
waterfalls. It outdoes the Romsdal. The Skjeggedalsfos is quite the
finest in all Europe, and would not blush if placed beside Niagara, while
several other _foses_ in the Hardanger district are nearly as fine.
Sometimes the Hardanger’s gentle smile has savored of the nature of a
mask, for in one of its _foses_ it has kept a lurking danger. Far inland
through the Eidfjord and the Simodal there is on a high plateau a glacier
named the Rembesdal. From this a stream trickles into a mountain lake,
then to plunge over a cliff into the Simodal. In former years, whenever
the snow melted suddenly on the Rembesdal Glacier, the water thus formed
would collect in a rocky upland valley choked off by the glacier itself
from every exit. The water would gradually collect here until it was a
small lake in itself, and still the glacier barred its way to freedom.
Finally the strain would become too great, the barrier would give away,
and the irresistible mass of ice, pushed on by the lake which it had
formed, would plunge madly down into the lower lake, then over the cliff,
and down into the peaceful, unsuspecting Simodal, where it would drown
and destroy all that lay in its path. Finally human skill came to the aid
of nature, and Norwegian engineers built under the glacier an iron tunnel
through which the waters of the upper, artificial lake may drain down
into the lower, natural lake.
[Illustration: _Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y._
The Hardanger Glacier and Rembesdal Lake.]
To me the most interesting thing about the Hardanger district is its
people. On Sundays they appear in all their finery, and the women make
a gorgeous showing. They wear long skirts of dark blue, trimmed with
black velvet and silver braid; white chemisettes with full sleeves, over
which shines a gorgeous red bodice, with the most varied assortment of
ornaments, some of them made of brass, and saucer-shaped. A belt adorned
with huge metal buttons adds considerably to their festive appearance.
The headdress is most elaborate, and it must require great skill to
arrange it well. It is of snow-white linen stretched on a wire frame
in something the shape of a half moon, and plaited very precisely and
carefully. Judicia, I am not an authority on women’s clothing, and I
feel utterly at a loss to attempt to describe these Hardanger women as
they appear. Please lend your most charitable imagination to my meager
description.
Sunday is rather a gala day in Norway, after church is over. The people
as a rule are sincerely religious, but Sabbath observance such as was
known in Puritan America or England is unheard of. King Haakon VII, who
is himself an Evangelical Lutheran, reports with pride that when he
traveled through the country districts of his kingdom he found a Bible
in every peasant’s cottage. He adds that he considers this one of the
hopeful features of his nation. Ninety-seven and six tenths per cent of
the people are Lutherans, and they will no doubt cling to that form of
the Protestant faith for centuries to come.
This gala Sunday is invariably discussed and commented upon by all
writers about Norway. One or two authors frankly delight in it, rejoicing
that in this free country no such thing is known “as that sour,
narrow Sabbatarianism which we find in England.” Another author, while
finding good qualities in it, guardedly believes that perhaps on the
whole it does not make for the advancement of religion. Still others
mourn it as a sure sign of national decay. These latter are perhaps too
pessimistic, for, however you may regard the day, there is certainly no
more devotedly, healthfully religious people in the world than those
in the country districts of Norway. I am afraid that this cannot be
said so strongly of the cities. Certainly the gala Sunday has made vast
inroads into Christiania church congregations. Many who are of mediocre
tendencies, religiously speaking, go up to Holmenkollen early of a Sunday
morning, coast all the forenoon (perhaps intending to drop in for a
half-hour’s service in the Holmenkollen chapel), and spend afternoon and
evening in great hilarity. The chapel service seems rather a farce, as
very few of the sport-seekers really avail themselves of the opportunity
of attending. So you can see that some of the Christiania pastors have
good cause to mourn their national hilarious Sunday.
[Illustration: _Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y._
View from Hammerfest.]
But to return to Hardanger. At the occasional country weddings in
Hardanger the bride’s costume would bear comparison with the plumage
of the bird of paradise. It is only in the depths of the country that
you can now see a real Norwegian wedding, for Norway is becoming sadly
internationalized in this respect, and plain white for the bride and
funereal black for the groom are fast supplanting the old gay costumes.
In Sætersdal you may stand a better chance than in the Hardanger
district of seeing a good, old-fashioned country wedding.
A tough, spudding little pony draws a two-seated _stolkjaerre_, on which
is seated the bride in all her finery, and adorned for the occasion in a
magnificent crown of brass. Beside her sits the groom, and on the step of
the carriage the master of ceremonies, the ancient fiddler. He must be
ancient, white-haired, toothless, and a bit doddering, or it is hardly a
genuine wedding. All along the bridal procession this doddering fiddler
plies his bow at a tremendous rate, and if you are some distance away
it really sounds very well. All Norway has for ages been devoted to the
violin. It seems to me that half the people in Norway must either play it
or play at it; it is the national instrument.
You will not find the full charm of seventeenth-century Norway until
you get up here in the Sætersdal. It is an interesting trip, too, from
Odda on the Hardanger Fjord overland by the Telemarken route to Skien,
the birthplace of the famous Henrik Ibsen, and from there down to
Christiansand, and up here through the Sætersdal to Bredvik. Not far from
Odda we pass a hotel in the Seljestad glen where, as a certain guide
book proudly points out, Mr. Gladstone, Lady Brassey, and the rest of
the party of The _Sunbeam_ greatly enjoyed the view in 1885. Certainly
Mr. Gladstone and Lady Brassey and the others were justified in their
admiration, for there is no more beautiful spot in all the Hardanger
district. At the top of the pass there is a mountain chalet called
Haukeli Sæter, and here the snow falls in such immense quantities that
even in summer the road passes through a tunnel dug through a snow drift.
Farther on, near Dalen, there is a precipice nine hundred feet high
called the Ravnegjuv, under which a wild, mad river tears along. Whether
this river is responsible I cannot say, but there is here a strong draft,
blowing upward and back over the precipice. Throw over paper or leaves,
or something equally light, and it will come sailing back to you like a
boomerang. It is also stoutly claimed that the breeze is strong enough to
blow back a hat, but I never heard of anyone who wanted to risk it. It
would be an interesting experiment, and even if it failed the hat might
not be a total loss; probably it would fall into the torrent below and go
whirling down toward the Skager-Rack. The hatless experimenter could then
hurry down to the mouth of the stream by carriage and train and there
lie in wait for his wandering hat. This draft over the Ravnegjuv sinks
into insignificance compared with the draft which swirls against certain
parts of the Nærö _dal_ in the Sogne district. Here the farmhouses are
surrounded by earthworks to protect them from the blasts of air caused by
avalanches descending _on the other side of the valley_.
Farther down the Telemark route from Ulefos there is a fine excursion
up the Saur River and the Nordsjö to Notodden and the Rjukan Falls.
This Saur River is erroneously called the “Norwegian Rhine.” The Rhine
should be called the “Swiss-German-Dutch Saur,” for I maintain that
Norway is the fatherland of natural scenery, and the mere fact that the
Rhine is situated within easy access of all Europe does not justify the
implication that it is the last word in river scenery and that the Saur
is rather a poor, second-rate, Norwegian imitation of it.
Opposite Notodden there is a romantic mountain called Helgenotra,
from an old heroine named Helga Tveiten. As she was walking over this
mountain, she met a _trold_ disguised as a handsome cavalier. She allowed
herself to be beguiled by him, and together they strolled into a cave,
which immediately closed behind them, leaving the girl entombed in the
mountain. However, the ringing of church bells broke the spell; she was
released from her prison, and had nearly reached home when the bell rope
broke. The spell came back in full force, and she was dragged by magic
back to her mountain tomb, where she is to this day buried.
I may say, as the comforting guide book says of Bishop Pontoppidan’s
monstrous sea serpent with a back “an English mile and a half in
circumference,” that “there seems to be no doubt that the whole thing is
purely an illusion.”