Through Scandinavia to Moscow Part 6

One incident has occurred today, which I presume I may take as a high compliment to my native tongue. One of two young Frenchmen, whose carriage has traveled near our own, while walking ahead of his vehicle, found the ponies disposed to walk him down. Twice this happened. Then he waxed wroth. He suspected the tow-headed Norse driver of not being really asleep, but of trying to even up the ancient national grudge against his own dear France. He flew into a Gallic pa.s.sion. He stopped short. He halted the team. He awoke the driver. He shouted in broken English, "You drive me down! You drive me down! You vone scoundrel! I say vone d.a.m.n to you, I say vone d.a.m.n, I say vone d.a.m.n!"--shaking his fist in the astonished face of the sleepy-head. After that the Norseman kept awake and the French gentleman walked safely in the middle of the road. He evidently felt that to swear in French would be quite lost upon the son of the Vikings. English alone would do the job.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ESPELANDS FOS.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: COMMINGLING LOTE FOS AND SKARS FOS.]

We climbed for many miles a deep glen called the Seljestad Juvet; and dined long past the hour of noon at a wayside inn, the Seljestad Hotel. The hotel was kept by women. "Our men," they said, "are gathering hay at the _Saeter_ (mountain farm) far up on the mountain highlands. They are gone for a month, and will not return until the crop is all got in." We paid our modest reckoning to a delicate, fair-haired, blue-eyed little woman, with quiet, graceful manners, well bred and courteous in bearing. She is the bookkeeper and business manager of the inn, "so long as the summer season lasts," she said.

And then she sails to England in one of her father's s.h.i.+ps, and there becomes a governess in an English family until another summer holiday shall come around. She had never been to America. "Some day,"

her skipper sire had "promised to take her to New York," when they would "run over for a day" to Minneapolis to see an aunt and cousins who were prospering, as do all Norwegians in America's opportunity-affording air. And "Americans, she always liked to meet,"

she said, "for unlike the English, they met you so frankly and did not condescend." She showed H all through the neat and tidy kitchen, while a big black nanny goat stood in the doorway and watched them both.

All the afternoon we kept on climbing by the winding roadway, pa.s.sing a black-watered, snow-fed tarn, the Gors Vand, and over the Gorssvingane pa.s.s above the snow line, where snow-fields stretched below us, around us, above us. From the summit of 3,392 feet above Odda and the sea, we had a superb view of all the vast Folgefond ice-field behind us, and before us two others, the Breifond and the Haukeli Fjeld, as vast, while 2,000 feet right down beneath us lay a deep blue lake, the Roldals Vand.

The road now wound ten kilometers (six and one-third miles) down into the deep valley by many successive loops, twelve of them, one-half a mile to the loop--a feat of fine engineering, for this is a military road. We came down on a full trot all the way, even as Ole Mon came down the Laera Dal, until we reined in at a picturesque inn at the vale of Horre, overlooking the valley of Roldal and its _vand_. Now we are in a cozy hostelry, the Hotel Breifond, with a room looking out over the exquisite deep-blue lake, encompa.s.sed by green mountains and snow-covered summits.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GORS VAND.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: GLACIER OF BUARBRAE.]

Our hotel is kept by two sweet-faced elderly women, serene and rosy-cheeked, dressed in black with immaculate white caps; one is the widow of a daring seaman who years ago went down with his s.h.i.+p in a winter gale. He was the captain and would not leave his post, though many of the crew deserted and were saved. The other is her spinster sister, whose betrothed lover likewise was lost at sea. In the summer time they here harbor many anglers, who come to fish the waters of the Roldals Vand and adjacent streams, which like most Norwegian lakes and rivers are rented out by the local provincial or district governments.

The visitors who come here are chiefly English, the ladies tell us, and great is their distress and often violent their objurgation at the absence of any darkness when they may sleep. They cannot adjust themselves to the nightless days. They are inexpressibly shocked when they find themselves playing a game of golf or tennis at midnight, or forgetful of the flight of time in the excitement of a salmon chase, pausing to eat a midday snack at 2 A. M.

Our beds are the softest we have yet slept in, for both mattress and coverlet are of eider down. The two ladies have been delighted to talk with H in the native tongue, and have told her of their nephews and cousins who are getting rich owning fine wheat farms in the Red River of the North. "Come back to us in June," they say. "Our wild flowers are then in bloom, and the hungry trout and salmon will then rise to any fly!" And H and I resolve that in June we surely will return.

I saw one or two small pale b.u.t.terflies to-day, and one gray moth at the snow edge, where we crossed the divide; the only ones I yet have seen. The birds, in this northland, of course, are all new to me; the crows are gray, with black wings, heads and tails; a magpie with white shoulders and white on head, and long, blue-black tail, is very tame; while a bird I take to be a jay is numerous, with black body, white shoulders and wing tips, and tail feathers edged with white. I have seen some gray swallows which are now gathering in flocks preparatory to going south, and several sparrows much like our field sparrows; and sandpipers and upland plover, very small. The gray crows have a coa.r.s.e croak like a raven, "Krakers" they are called. In England we saw and heard our only lark the day we drove from Ventnor to Cowes, on the Isle of Wight, but I heard no other song birds in England, only once, near Oxford, when I caught a note like our song sparrow's, while crows and rooks swarmed everywhere from Southampton to Inverness. In Denmark there are many storks, and I there saw the nest of one, a gigantic ma.s.s of sticks and mud, built on the ridge of a barn, but I noticed few other birds, except the gulls and terns along the sea. At Vang, the other day, I saw, as I wrote you, the ptarmigan, and the capercailzie stuffed and mounted by a Norwegian living there; they are found on the mountains thereabouts; and a pa.s.senger, day before yesterday, on the Sogne-fjord-boat, had in his hand half a dozen ptarmigan, with their plumage already turning toward the winter's white.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE DESCENDING ROAD TO HORRE.]

XII.

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 pa.s.s 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 alt.i.tude, pa.s.sing under one snow ma.s.s by a tunnel, where H took a snap-shot of me standing in the snow, and reached the maximum alt.i.tude of 3,500 feet.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A MILE STONE.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 gra.s.ses, mosses and lichens grew amid the ma.s.ses 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 b.u.t.terfly. The primordial adamant rock presented as sharp and unworn edges to the blows of the icy torrents as when G.o.d 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 a.s.serted 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 superst.i.tion 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 la.s.s. 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 furnis.h.i.+ngs 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 pa.s.sed 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 gra.s.s 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 b.u.t.t 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 pa.s.ses and tourist travel will cease till another year.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 pa.s.sed 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 const.i.tute 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 cl.u.s.tered 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.

XIII.

Descending from the Fjelde--The Telemarken Fjords--The Arctic Twilight.

DALEN, _September 8, 1902, 7 P. M._

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 st.u.r.dy, 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.