CHAPTER XXXVII.NORWAY.
UP in this part of the world you must be very careful to look out for yourself, in all matters that requirecertaintyas to times and ways of travel. It was hard to learn when a steamer would go north from Gottenburg, and all that we did learn from captains and porters and landlords proved to be erroneous. But at last it was settled that a boat would be along the next morning from Copenhagen, bound to Christiania, and if we were at the wharf atfourA.M.we could go! We were called at three, and it was just as light as noonday. The luggage was taken by hand-carts, and the travellers, a goodly company, trudged to the wharf, a sleepy, grumbling set of Americans, who were sore vexed at being waked so early; four families, who met at Gottenburg, and were now embarking on the German Ocean to visit Norway. We suffered on deck from the cold, and were obliged to seek shelter in the cabin, but every berth, settee, chair, and peg, were occupied, so great was the crowd of passengers on the Viking to-day. Breakfast was served early, beginning with Norwegian cheese, quite equal to basswood, followed by eggs,caviar, beefsteaks, salt fish, and other things, and by the time this was over, the day was fairly opened; one of the brightest and most beautiful, with its cool, bracing, stimulating air, that we had ever seen. The Skager-rack (we had been familiar with the Skager-rack and Cattegat in the geography from school-days) stretched away to the horizon, seemingly to our own loved land in the west.
At Freidericksvern we landed a large number of our passengers. This is a naval station, and the residence of officers with their families. The hills about the picturesque town are attractive to the mineralogist, and the “crystals of shining feldspar are seen at a distance.” I did not see them. Entering a bay, and keeping near to the rock-bound coast, we steamed up a river for several hours, touched at Moss, crossed over to Hosten, a great naval station, and found a host of people on the wharf, to wait the steamer’s arrival. Here the fiord, or bay, divides into two, one leading to Dremmen, and the other, which we pursue, toChristiania, the capital of Norway. The mountains on the left are bold; sometimes lofty perpendicular rocks rise from the water. The sight is striking, grand indeed. Night approaches, but not darkness. It is nine, ten, eleven o’clock, and still the daylight lingers. At midnight we arrived at our destined port. We have been steaming almost due north twenty hours. Our baggage must be searched, for Norway has its own customs, though under the same crown with Sweden. But the search was slight and soon over. Perhaps you will be as much surprised to hear as I was to see that the city of Christiania is so much like other cities; if I had awoke out of sleep and found myself in it, I would not have supposed myself in the northernmost kingdom of Europe, and on the confines of the frozen zone. It has indeed a frigid look, a barrenness of ornament, a precise, severe, and perfectly plain style of building, if that may be called a style which is no style at all. But there is nothing about it to excite observation, except it be that it is more of a city, with greater attractions in objects of interest to visit, than one would look for in Norway.
The house at which I am stopping, Hotel du Nord, has rooms for two hundred guests; it is a hollow square, with a balcony on the four sides of the quadrangular court within, and each room on the balcony has a door openingupon it. On the piazza of the central building is a platform covered with awning, and surrounded with shrubs and flowers, with a fountain of water playing in the midst. I find in these hyperborean regions the people take pains to adorn their houses with plants and blooming flowers, to cheat themselves with the pleasing delusion that they are just as well off as those who dwell in more genial climes. This is true of the dwellers in the cities, and in the rural villages also, where I have noticed that windows are filled with plants exposed to the sun and the passer’s eye.
The stove in my room is of cast iron, and wood is the fuel. As it is now midsummer (July 6), we do not intend to use it, but it is a curiosity. It is four stories high, the lower one for the fuel, and the others are chambers to hold dishes for warming, and also to increase the surface for radiation of heat. We enjoy the sight of it, hoping that in the dreadful weather to come some of our successors may enjoy the heat thereof.
This morning we took our first breakfast in Norway, and, according to our usual custom of giving you a bill of fare in each country, to let you know how we live in strange lands, I will just mention that we had for our simple repast coffee, cold lobster, beefsteak, ham, tongue, corned beef, fried sole, boiled salmon, herring, with bread, butter, cheese, strawberries, and all other things needed to make out a meal.
The city has about fifty thousand people in it, and makes progress very slowly. It has a palace, which I positively did not visit, having made a resolution not to be tempted to go through any more, and a museum, which greatly entertained me for an hour or two.
In these Scandinavian countries (meaning Sweden, Norway, and Denmark), they are very curious to discover and to preserve all remnants of the heathen worship of Odin which once prevailed, and this museum has some veryprecious relics of that dead past. A massive gold collar, and various ornaments, which were found buried in the earth, are very naturally referred to the days of idolatry, when they adorned a statue of Odin. And I am more and more convinced that to this day there is a lurking reverence among the ignorant peasantry for the deity of those old-time heroes, whom their fathers worshipped. So prone is human nature to superstition, and so hard is it to blot out of the popular mind and heart those ideas which, even in remote generations, got firm hold.
Another very remarkable memorial of past times and customs treasured in the museum is the girdle and the knives which the gentlemen of Norway used in the good old days, now lost, when theypitched intoone another in duels. First, each one of the combatants took a butcher-knife (we call them bowie-knives now), and plunged it as deep as he could into a block of wood. The blade, so much as was not in the wood, was then wound round tight with strips of leather, and the knives were cautiously drawn out, and each man took his own. It therefore had now a longer or shorter point, according to the strength he had to plunge it into the wood. Their girdles were then fastened together, so that they could not get away from one another. Now they went at it hip and thigh, cut and slash, till one or both were killed. If modern duellists were put to such tests of strength and courage, there would be few challenges.
Much more pleasant to look upon, and a memento of a very curious and perhaps a pleasing custom, which, however, is not of the by-gone times, but still common in Scandinavia, at least in the Bergen district, is the crown and girdle and frontlet worn by the bride on the wedding day. But all brides are not allowed to wear such ornaments as these: only brides who have been good girls all the time before. If they have been naughty, they must be marriedwithout these distinctions, and we may well believe that they are therefore very highly esteemed among young women in the north country. It seems to intimate, also, that it is not altogether a rare thing for a bride to be deprived of the privilege of being thus distinguished, for it is hardly possible that such a state of society can exist anywhere as to have an advertisement made at a wedding that a bride is no better than she should be. But the manners and customs of the world are very queer to the notions of those whose manners and customs are very different, and in no part of domestic life are these habits so monstrously diverse as in the matter of wedding ceremonies.
While wandering through the museum I found that the collection of heathen relics was comparatively small. They are often found by the peasants in their tillage of the land, but they keep them secret and sacred, attaching peculiar value to them as charms and medicines, averting evil and healing diseases. So powerful still is this hereditary heathenism in the vulgar mind.
The university is beautifully situated, and handsomely appointed for the instruction of about a thousand students, that great number flocking here to enjoy the lectures of its distinguished professors. But Norway has done very little for science or literature, though such names as Holberg and Wessel are well known abroad. The men of learning in Norway generally publish their writings in the German language, to find readers. Norway would furnish a limited field. Education is general, and it is rare to find a person who cannot read and write. Nearly every town has its newspaper, and at the capital there are reviews and magazines which evince learning and ability.
In the afternoon we set off to go by rail and boat a hundred miles into the interior, to spend the sabbath among the natives in the heart of the country. Going north fromChristiania we found the scenery tame, but cheerful, as we passed among well-tilled farms, through small villages, with low but comfortable houses, and in each village a neat church, which told us, as we rode by, of two good things, first, that the people were Christians, and, secondly, that they were not split up into sects. Long may it be before a little village in Norway, with five hundred inhabitants, shall require five places of worship! Now and then in the open country a white mansion gave evidence of wealth and taste. A stream of water and frequent ponds, with saw-mills, rafts of logs and piles of lumber, showed the staple of this region; and we saw forests of fir, pine, spruce, and birch, the hardy natives of the North. Occasionally we caught fine views of distant hills, with long intervals of field and forest and villages.
AtEidsvoldwe came to LakeMjosen. You can’t pronounce the name of the lake? Well, you must do as well as you can. The lake is a beautiful expanse of water sixty miles long, four or five wide, full of salmon and trout, and navigated by steamers, on one of which we are speedily embarked. The company is a curious mixture. Three or four American families, some English, many natives, and all social and friendly, for they are beyond the restraints of society, and are willing to give and take, as people should be, but are not, all the world over. We do not know how many kind-hearted neighbors we have in travel or at home until we break our respective shells and speak out.
The English commercial traveller is everywhere, and, of course, was on this boat. He is altogether ahead of the smartest, cutest, and most inquisitive Yankee. He will ask more questions and tell you more of his business than our communicative countrymen are disposed to mention. One of them was near me this afternoon; he was on his annual excursion among the inland towns of Norway, to get orders for his employer’s house (iron goods was the line of trade)in England. When he began his travels, a few years ago, he was the only agent from the city where the business was located; now, he said, there are twelve houses in the same trade, each one of which has its “commercial traveller” persecuting the natives of Norway into buying their goods. They must learn the language, of course, and then go from village to village all the summer, driving their business with energy, followed by other travellers of other houses, in other lines of traffic. So the shops of England are open at the door of every trader in the most obscure parts of this secluded country. So the iron and cotton and woollen goods of Sheffield and Birmingham and Manchester are forced out of the little island of their production into all the earth. I presume we do our share of the same kind of pushing; but John Bull is the master of the business.
On this boat were files of newspapers and a neat library of well selected books in Norse, and German, and in English, for the use of passengers. The large number of volumes in our own tongue showed that they made special circulations on having English-speaking travellers. Indeed, in the summer season Norway is taken possession of by the English. All the streams are bought or hired by sportsmen in England, who come annually, and thus secure the exclusive right to catch the fish in them. Many who are not aware of this “pre-emption” come to Norway, and are disappointed of their sport.
Close by the hotel stands an ancient church, well preserved, and very interesting. The pastor resides five miles away; but he arrived at the hotel before service, for the good people of the inn were his parishioners, and they make him welcome every Sunday morning for a little refreshment after his ride and before his labors begin. He was a very fat man, with a face that did not bespeak the scholar and divine any more than did the faces of my lamented friends Bethune and Krebs, both eloquent and learned, but notspirituelin theirphysique. He spoke neither English nor French, and our conversation was, therefore, only of the most general character, patched out of German and Latin.
At eleven o’clock we went over to the church. It is built of logs, in the form of a cross; the logs fitted nicely together, and boarded rudely on the outside. No plaster or paint was on the inside. Pine-tree branches, with projecting sticks, were convenient hat stands. In front of the pulpit the altar was railed off, and over the railing was the national coat of arms. Over the altar were little images, a crucifix, Virgin Mary, and such signs of lingering superstition as the Lutheran Church in these countries still retains.
The women sat on one side of the middle aisle, the men on the other. The men were fine looking, generally of good height and stalwart. The women were not good looking. They wore no peculiar costume. Many had bonnets on. Some had only a handkerchief on their heads, of white, yellow, red, or spotted, as the taste of each suggested. Some elderly ladies wore white lace or muslin caps, extending in front, and some had a black silk cap on the back of their heads. The men wore plain, black clothes, coarse, but clean and decent.
They were devout in appearance and very attentive. The preacher was earnest, and in his manner patriarchal, pastoral, affectionate. He had no Bible, and no notes before him, but discoursed with great fluency and fervor.
After sermon the Lord’s Supper was celebrated. The whole congregation communed. The house was packed full of people, and it appeared to me that every individual came forward to partake. They went up in successive groups, knelt, and the pastor placed his hand on the head of each one and pronounced words of absolution. When this was done the assistant came out and put a white gown on the pastor, over the black with a white ruff, in which he had preached. The assistant said a prayer while the pastorwas kneeling, and then intoned a service, in which there were no responses, except from the organ. Each communicant received, while kneeling, both bread and wine from the hands of the pastor.
The service was very long, and it appeared longer to us who did not understand a word of the language used. But it was very affecting. There was so much earnestness and devotion in pastor and people; they approached with such evident solemnity and becoming fear, and yet with such strong desire, and the venerable pastor, like a father in the midst of his children, gave them the emblems of redeeming love with such gracious kindness of tone and manner that I was constrained to ask my companion what he thought of it, and he answered, “I should like to go and join them.” This would not have been proper, as we were strangers to all present, and it may be that it would have been inconsistent with their rules to receive us. But our hearts were with them, and we came away refreshed. We had been in communion with them, though they knew it not, and with our common Lord and Master, whose table in Norway is the same, and spread with the same simple but delicious fare in the north as in the south. And when we all come, as we shall come, from the east and the west, and sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of God, I hope to meet my Norway pastor and his people at the Supper of the Lamb.
It made very plain to me the essential oneness of the church on earth. What did they,—these simple-hearted Christians in the heart of Norway,—what did they but testify their faith in Him whose sacrifice is their salvation?
It was pleasant to observe that the village was throughout the sabbath as quiet and orderly as any place in our own or any land could be. The scenery around it is picturesque and beautiful. Sombre mountains, sweet valleys, romantic waterfalls, green hillsides, these are the naturalfeatures of this secluded region, where I came to get into the very heart of Norway, and spend a sabbath among the people.
Cheap as living is in Sweden it is cheaper in Norway. In Lillehammer,—this pleasant village at the head of Lake Mjosen, in the midst of beautiful scenery, where a fire is a luxury in midsummer, and the windows of the cottages blossom with flowers, and the streams laugh loudly as they tumbled along among the hills, where the linen on the beds and the table is as white as the snow of the long winters,—here in Lillehammer I spent one day and two nights, and my hotel bill for five meals, two sleeps, and three rides, was three dollars of our money. That is cheap enough, I am sure; for the eating and sleeping and riding were just as good as you would get at Niagara Falls, where the prices are so high that the Falls appear low in comparison.
Early in the morning we returned to the steamboat on the lake, to go back to Christiania. A young woman, a cripple, was brought in an arm-chair by two men, and tenderly placed on board. The care they seemed to take of her was touching, and her gentleness made me wish that I had the Norse language at command that I might learn something of life among the lowly and the suffering, in this part of the world.
AtEidsvoldwe touched, and saw the people launching aniron steamer, for lake navigation, of course, and it was new to me to see a vessel launchedsideways.
TRAVELLING IN CARIOLES IN NORWAY.
TRAVELLING IN CARIOLES IN NORWAY.
TRAVELLING IN CARIOLES IN NORWAY.
At Christiania a large party of Americans—and we were certainly in the midst of them—spent the afternoon in seeing the sights of the town, and riding about in thecariolesof the country. Acarioleis not a carry-all, for its capacity is to hold one, and no more. A boy may hang on behind to hold the little horse when you stop, but you ride alone and drive. Not much driving is required; you take your seat in this low, uncovered, rattling, comfortless concern,and away goes the rat of a horse, tearing along like mad; and as each person has to have a machine to himself, a dozen of them make a long string of vehicles, which, dashing over the stones, create a sensation. Young ladies from America are fond of this exciting exercise. It is almost equal to horseback riding. Some English ladies of title and wealth are making the tour of Norway this summer with no attendants, travelling only in the cariole. The government makes all needful provision for travellers that they may not be imposed upon by the post-keepers. Licensed houses are planted along the highways at intervals of about ten miles, where the keeper is obliged to keep a certain number of horses for hire, and if all are out, when a traveller comes he is required to get horses from his neighbors. You buy your cariole,—a cheap and miserable thing it is,—hire a bit of a horse, and are off. At the first post-house you leave your horse, take another, paying the legal price for its use, enter your name in a book with any complaint you may have to make of the treatment you have received, which the Government Inspector is to read when he comes in his regular tours. These post-houses could, at a pinch, give you something to eat and a place to sleep in; and a few days and nights of travel in Norway will make fare and quarters tolerable, at which you might have slightly elevated your nose in Paris or Broadway. I have been in several countries and have passed some years in travel, but never spent twenty-four hours in my life without food convenient for me, and a better place to sleep in than his who had not where to lay his head.
So we set off from the tavern in the capital of Norway, in a dozen carioles, rushing amain down the rough streets and out into the country toOscar Hall, and marvelled exceedingly at the taste and beauty of its decorations within and without: nature adorned by art, in lovely grounds about the house, and the views of the Fiord, the mountains and plains.
The castle ofAgershauscommands magnificent views, and keeps in its strongholds the regalia of Norway and the records of its romantic history. Old guns, relics of an effete system of warfare, bear on their faces rude pictures in brass of barbarians in war. The old castle is a prison now. And if you suppose that it takes an Englishman or even a United-Statesman to make a cute rogue, just read the story of the Robin Hood of Norway.
In the castle ofAgershaus, in Christiania, in a cage of thick iron bars, is immured for life, Hoyland, the Robin Hood of Norway. His robberies were always confined to the upper classes, while his kindness and liberality to those in his own rank of life rendered him exceedingly popular amongst them. His crimes never appear to have been accompanied with personal violence. He is a native of Christiansand, where he began his career. On being imprisoned for some petty theft, he broke into the inspector’s room, while he was at church, and stole his clothes; these Hoyland dressed himself in and quietly walked out of the town unobserved and unsuspected. He was subsequently repeatedly captured, and imprisoned in this castle, and often made his escape. On one occasion he was taken on board a vessel just leaving the Christiania Fiord for America. Previous to his escape, all descriptions of irons having been found useless, he was placed in solitary confinement in the strongest part of the basement of the citadel—his room was floored with very thick planks. Here he had been confined for several years, when one night the turnkey said to him, “Well, you are fixed at last, you will never get out of this, and you may as well promise us you will not attempt it.” To this he only replied, “It is your business to keep me here if you can, and mine to prevent your doing so if possible.” The following day, when his cell was opened, the prisoner was gone, apparently without leaving a trace of the manner in which he had effected his escape.After a repeated and careful search, on removing his bed, it was found that he had cut through the thick planks of the flooring. On removing the planks cut away (and which he had replaced on leaving the cell) it appeared he had sunk a shaft, and formed a gallery under the wall of his prison—this enabled him to gain the court-yard, from which he easily reached the ramparts unseen, dropped into the ditch and got off. No trace of him could be found. About twelve months afterwards, the National Bank was robbed of 60,000 dollars, chiefly paper money, and in the most mysterious manner, there being no trace of violence upon the locks of the iron chest in which the money had been left, or upon those of the doors of the bank. Some time afterwards a petty theft was committed by a man who was taken and soon recognized to be Hoyland. He then disclosed how he had effected his last escape, which had taken him three years of steady patient labor to accomplish; while others slept he was at work, and with a nail for his only tool. Having money concealed in the mountains he was sheltered in Christiania—disguised himself—made acquaintance with the porter of the bank—gradually, without his knowledge, took impressions of the various locks—made keys for them—and thus committed the robbery before mentioned. He is said to carve beautifully in wood and stone, but is no longer allowed the use of tools. His sole occupation is knitting stockings with wooden pins. Twice during the day, while the other prisoners are not at work, he is allowed to leave his cell for air and exercise, and he occasionally gets the amusement of a chat with the governor, by writing to him that he will disclose where the rest of the bank money is concealed which he did not get rid of while at liberty.
Then we rode on and took a look at the Asylum for the Deaf, and Dumb, and at the Home for the Aged, and at the Orphan Asylum, and at the Workhouse, and all these institutionshad the appearance of being the fruit of intelligent philanthropy and Christian charity.
Manufacturing villages were in the immediate vicinity of the city, with cotton and iron mills driven by water power, and every thing about them suggested thrift and comfort.
We rode out to the oldest church of the city, and found in the adjoining cemetery the grave ofBradshaw, whoseguideeverybody carries and nobody understands. I thought he was living and working in London, but it seems that several years ago he came up here, with one of his own guides, and found a grave.
Drawing of coat of arms
Palace of Frederiksberg