SKETCHES FROM THE BERGENSTIFT.

Our return from the Voring-Foss to the hamlet of Saebo was accomplished without accident or particular incident.  As we were crossing the Eyfjordsvand, the stillness of the savage glen, yet more profound in the dusk of evening, was broken by the sudden thunder of a slide in some valley to the eastward.  Peder stopped in the midst of “Frie dig ved lifvet” and listened.  “Ho!” said he, “the spring is the time when the rocks come down, but that sounds like a big fellow, too.”  Peder was not so lively on the way back, not because he was fatigued, for in showing us how they danced on the fjeld, he flung himself into the air in a marvellous manner, and turned over twice before coming down, but partly because he had broken our bottle of milk, and partly because there was something on his mind.  I waited patiently, knowing that it would come out at last, as indeed it did.  “You see,” said he, hesitatingly, “some travellers give a drink-money to the guide.  It isn’t an obligation, you know; but then some give it.  Now, if you should choose to give me anything, don’t pay it to the landlord for me, because then I won’t get it.  You are not bound to do so you know but some travellers do it, and I don’t know but you might also.  Now, if you should, give it directly to me, and then I will have it.”  When we reached Vik, we called Peder aside and gave him three marks.  “Oh, you must pay your bill to the landlord,” said he.  “But that is your drink-money,” I explained.  “That?” he exclaimed; “it is not possible! Frie dig ved lifvet,” &c., and so he sang, cut a pigeon-wing or two, and proceeded to knot and double knot the money in a corner of his pocket-handkerchief.

“Come and take a swim!” said Peder, reappearing.  “I can swim ever since I fell into the water.  I tumbled off the pier, you must know, and down I went.  Everything became black before my eyes; and I thought to myself, ‘Peder, this is the end of you.’  But I kicked and splashed nevertheless, until my eyes opened again, wide enough to see where a rope was.  Well, after I found I could fall into the water without drowning, I was not afraid to swim.”  In fact, Peder now swam very well, and floundered about with great satisfaction in the ice cold water.  A single plunge was all I could endure.  After supper the landlady came in to talk to me about America.  She had a son in California, and a daughter in Wisconsin, and showed me their daguerreotypes and some bits of gold with great pride.  She was a stout, kindly, motherly body, and paid especial attention to our wants on finding where we came from.  Indeed we were treated in the most friendly manner by these good people, and had no reason to complain of our reckoning on leaving.  This experience confirms me in the belief that honesty and simplicity may still be characteristics of the Norwegians in the more remote parts of the country.

We bade a cordial farewell to Vik next morning, and set off on our return, in splendid sunshine.  Peder was in the boat, rejoiced to be with us again; and we had no sooner gotten under way, than he began singing, “Frie dig ved lifvet.”  It was an intensely hot day, and the shores of Ulvik were perfectly dazzling.  The turf had a silken gloss; the trees stood darkly and richly green, and the water was purest sapphire.  “It is a beautiful bay, is it not?” said the farmer who furnished us with horses, after we had left the boat and were slowly climbing the fjeld.  I thought I had never seen a finer; but when heaven and earth are in entire harmony, when form, colour and atmosphere accord like some rich swell of music, whatever one sees is perfect.  Hence I shall not say how beautiful the bay of Ulvik was to me, since under other aspects the description would not be true.

The farmer’s little daughter, however, who came along to take back one of the horses, would have been a pleasant apparition at any time and in any season.  She wore her Sunday dress, consisting of a scarlet boddice over a white chemise, green petticoat, and white apron, while her shining flaxen hair was plaited into one long braid with narrow strips of crimson and yellow cloth and then twisted like a garland around her head.  She was not more than twelve or thirteen years old, but tall, straight as a young pine, and beautifully formed, with the promise of early maidenhood in the gentle swell of her bosom.  Her complexion was lovely ­pink, brightened with sunburnt gold, ­and her eyes like the blossoms of the forget-me-not, in hue.  In watching her firm yet graceful tread, as she easily kept pace with the horse, I could not realise that in a few more years she would probably be no more graceful and beautiful than the women at work in the fields ­coarse, clumsy shapes, with frowzy hair, leathery faces, and enormous hanging breasts.

In the Bergenstift, however, one sometimes sees a pretty face; and the natural grace of the form is not always lost.  About Vossevangen, for instance, the farmers’ daughters are often quite handsome; but beauty, either male or female, is in Norway the rarest apparition.  The grown-up women, especially after marriage, are in general remarkably plain.  Except among some of the native tribes of Africa, I have nowhere seen such overgrown, loose, pendant breasts as among them.  This is not the case in Sweden, where, if there are few beauties, there are at least a great many passable faces.  There are marked differences in the blood of the two nations; and the greater variety of feature and complexion in Norway seems to indicate a less complete fusion of the original stocks.

We were rowed across the Graven Lake by an old farmer, who wore the costume of the last century, ­a red coat, a la Frederic the Great, long waistcoat, and white knee-breeches.  He demanded double the lawful fare, which, indeed, was shamefully small; and we paid him without demur.  At Vasenden we found our carrioles and harness in good condition, nothing having been abstracted except a ball of twine.  Horses were in waiting, apparently belonging to some well-to-do farmer; for the boys were well dressed, and took especial care of them.  We reached the merchant’s comfortable residence at Vossevangen before sunset, and made amends on his sumptuous fare for the privations of the past three days.

We now resumed the main road between Christiania and Bergen.  The same cloudless days continued to dawn upon us.  For one summer, Norway had changed climates with Spain.  Our oil-cloths were burnt up and cracked by the heat, our clothes covered with dust, and our faces became as brown as those of Bedouins.  For a week we had not a cloud in the sky; the superbly clear days belied the old saying of “weather-breeders.”

Our road, on leaving Vossevangen, led through pine-forests, following the course of a stream up a wild valley, enclosed by lofty mountains.  Some lovely cataracts fell from the steep on our left; but this is the land of cataracts and there is many a one, not even distinguished by a name, which would be renowned in Switzerland.  I asked my postillion the name of the stream beside us.  “Oh,” said he, “it has none; it is not big enough!” He wanted to take us all the way through to Gudvangen, twenty-eight miles, on our paying double fare, predicting that we would be obliged to wait three hours for fresh horses at each intermediate station.  He waited some time at Tvinde, the first station, in the hope that we would yield, but departed suddenly in a rage on seeing that the horses were already coming.  At this place, a stout young fellow, who had evidently been asleep, came out of the house and stood in the door staring at us with open mouth for a full hour.  The postmaster sat on the step and did likewise.  It was the height of harvest-time, and the weather favourable almost to a miracle; yet most of the harvesters lay upon their backs under the trees as we passed.  The women appeared to do most of the out-door, as well as the in-door work.  They are certainly far more industrious than the men, who, judging from what I saw of them, are downright indolent Evidences of slow, patient, plodding toil, one sees truly; but active industry, thrift, and honest ambition, nowhere.

The scenery increased in wildness and roughness as we proceeded.  The summit of Hvitnaset (White-nose) lifted its pinnacles of grey rock over the brow of the mountains on the north, and in front, pale, blue-grey peaks, 5000 feet high, appeared on either hand.  The next station was a village of huts on the side of a hill.  Everybody was in the fields except one woman, who remained to take charge of the station.  She was a stupid creature, but had a proper sense of her duty; for she started at full speed to order horses, and we afterwards found that she must have run full three English miles in the space of half an hour.  The emigration to America from this part of Bergenstift has been very great, and the people exhibited much curiosity to see and speak with us.

The scenery became at the same time more barren and more magnificent, as we approached the last station, Stalheim, which is a miserable little village at the head of the famous Naerodal.  Our farmer-postillion wished to take us on to Gudvangen with the same horses, urging the same reasons as the former one.  It would have been better if we had accepted his proposal; but our previous experience had made us mistrustful.  The man spoke truth, however; hour after hour passed away, and the horses came not.  A few miserable people collected about us, and begged money.  I sketched the oldest, ugliest and dirtiest of them, as a specimen, but regretted it afterwards, as his gratitude on receiving a trifle for sitting, obliged me to give him my hand.  Hereupon another old fellow, not quite so hideous, wanted to be taken also.  “Lars,” said a woman to the former, “are you not ashamed to have so ugly a face as yours go to America?” “Oh,” said he, “it does not look so ugly in the book.”  His delight on getting the money created some amusement.  “Indeed,” he protested, “I am poor, and want it; and you need not laugh.”

The last gush of sunset was brightening the tops of the savage fjeld when the horses arrived.  We had waited two hours and three quarters and I therefore wrote a complaint in the post-book in my best Norsk.  From the top of a hill beyond the village, we looked down into the Naerodal.  We stood on the brink of a tremendous wall about a thousand feet above the valley.  On one side, the stream we had been following fell in a single cascade 400 feet; on the other, a second stream, issuing from some unseen defile, flung its several ribbons of foam from nearly an equal height.  The valley, or rather gorge, disappeared in front between mountains of sheer rock, which rose to the height of 3000 feet.  The road ­a splendid specimen of engineering ­was doubled back and forth around the edge of a spur projecting from the wall on which we stood, and so descended to the bottom.  Once below, our carrioles rolled rapidly down the gorge, which was already dusky with twilight.  The stream, of the most exquisite translucent azure-green colour, rolled between us; and the mountain crests towered so far above, that our necks ached as we looked upwards.  I have seen but one valley which in depth and sublimity can equal the Naerodal ­the pass of the Taurus, in Asia Minor, leading from Cappadocia into Cilicia.  In many places the precipices were 2000 feet in perpendicular height; and the streams of the upper fjeld, falling from the summits, lost themselves in evanescent water-dust before they reached the bottom.  The bed of the valley was heaped with fragments of rock; which are loosed from above with every returning spring.

It was quite dark before we reached Gudvangen, thoroughly tired and as hungry as wolves.  My postillion, on hearing me complain, pulled a piece of dry mutton out of his pocket and gave it to me.  He was very anxious to learn whether brandy and tobacco were as dear in America as in Norway; if so, he did not wish to emigrate.  A stout girl had charge of Braisted’s horse; the female postillions always fell to his lot.  She complained of hard work and poor pay, and would emigrate if she had the money.  At Gudvangen we had a boat journey of thirty-five miles before us, and therefore engaged two boats with eight oarsmen for the morrow.  The people tried hard to make us take more, but we had more than the number actually required by law, and, as it turned out, quite as many as were necessary.  Travellers generally supply themselves with brandy for the use of their boatmen, from an idea that they will be stubborn and dilatory without it.  We did so in no single instance; yet our men were always steady and cheerful.

We shipped our carrioles and sent them off in the larger boat, delaying our own departure until we had fortified ourselves with a good breakfast, and laid in some hard bread and pork omelette, for the day.  The Gudvangen Fjord, down which we now glided over the glassy water, is a narrow mountain avenue of glorious scenery.  The unseen plateaus of the Blaa and Graa Fjelds, on either hand, spilled their streams over precipices from 1000 to 2000 feet in height, above whose cornices shot the pointed summits of bare grey rock, wreathed in shifting clouds, 4000 feet above the sea.  Pine-trees feathered the less abrupt steeps, with patches of dazzling turf here and there; and wherever a gentler slope could be found in the coves, stood cottages surrounded by potato-fields and ripe barley stacked on poles.  Not a breath of air rippled the dark water, which was a perfect mirror to the mountains and the strip of sky between them, while broad sheets of morning sunshine, streaming down the breaks in the line of precipices, interrupted with patches of fiery colour the deep, rich, transparent gloom of the shadows.  It was an enchanted voyage until we reached the mouth of the Aurlands Fjord, divided from that of Gudvangen by a single rocky buttress 1000 feet high.  Beyond this point the watery channel is much broader, and the shores diminish in grandeur as they approach the Sogne Fjord, of which this is but a lateral branch.

I was a little disappointed in the scenery of Sogne Fjord, The mountains which enclose it are masses of sterile rock, neither lofty nor bold enough in their forms to make impression, after the unrivalled scenery through which we had passed.  The point of Vangnaes, a short distance to the westward, is the “Framnaes” of Frithiof’s Saga, and I therefore looked towards it with some interest, for the sake of that hero and his northern lily, Ingeborg.  There are many bauta-stones still standing on the shore, but one who is familiar with Tegner’s poem must not expect to find his descriptions verified, either in scenery or tradition.  On turning eastward, around the point of Fronningen, we were surprised by the sudden appearance of two handsome houses, with orchards and gardens, on the sunny side of the bank.  The vegetation, protected in some degree from the sea-winds, was wonderfully rich and luxuriant.  There were now occasional pine-woods on the southern shore, but the general aspect of this fjord is bleak and desolate.  In the heat and breathless silence of noonday, the water was like solid crystal.  A faint line, as if drawn with a pencil along the bases of the opposite mountains, divided them from the equally perfect and palpable mountains inverted below them.  In the shadows near us, it was quite impossible to detect the boundary between the substance and its counterpart.  In the afternoon we passed the mouth of the northern arms of the fjord, which strike into the heart of the wildest and grandest region of Norway; the valley of Justedal, with its tremendous glaciers, the snowy teeth of the Hurunger, and the crowning peaks of the Skagtolstind.  Our course lay down the other arm, to Laerdalsoren, at the head of the fjord.  By five o’clock it came in sight, at the mouth of a valley opening through the barren flanks on the Fille Fjeld.  We landed, after a voyage of ten hours, and found welcome signs of civilisation in a neat but exorbitant inn.

Our boatmen, with the exception of stopping half an hour for breakfast, had pulled steadily the whole time.  We had no cause to be dissatisfied with them, while they were delighted with the moderate gratuity we gave them.  They were tough, well-made fellows, possessing a considerable amount of endurance, but less actual strength than one would suspect.  Braisted, who occasionally tried his hand at an oar, could pull them around with the greatest ease.  English travellers whom I have met inform me that in almost every trial they find themselves stronger than the Norwegians.  This is probably to be accounted for by their insufficient nourishment.  Sour milk and oaten bread never yet fed an athlete.  The proportions of their bodies would admit of fine muscular development; and if they cannot do what their Viking ancestors once did, it is because they no longer live upon the spoils of other lands, as they.