FOOTNOTES

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 freecountry 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.

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. InSætersdal 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-seatedstolkjaerre, 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 TheSunbeamgreatly 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 mountainchalet 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 Nærödalin the Sogne district. Here the farmhouses are surrounded by earthworks to protect them from the blasts of air caused by avalanches descendingon 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 ofnatural 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 atrolddisguised 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.”

However, there is a story connected with the Rjukan Falls, a little farther on, which is perhaps a trifle less mythical. A maiden named Mary had a lover named Eystein. On the face of the precipice over which the Rjukan plunges was a narrow path called Mari-sti, or “Mary’s Path.” Along this path Mary went to warn her lover of danger, for enemies were plotting against his life. He fled for safety, but returned aftermany years along the selfsame path to claim his bride. In his haste he ran, and slipped and plunged down into the foaming abyss of the Rjukan. The story runs that “for many years after this a pale form, in whose eyes a quiet madness spoke, wandered daily on the Mari-sti and seemed to talk with someone in the abyss below. Thus she went, until a merciful voice summoned her to joy and rest in the arms of her beloved.”

The Rjukan Falls are still wonderful to behold, and formerly vied with Skjeggedalsfos for the honor of being the finest waterfall in Norway, but electric plants and other industrial developments have robbed it of any claim to true greatness, and the Mari-sti has become a busy thoroughfare. Along the way between Notodden and the Rjukan we meet many peasants in the ancient Telemark costume, white stockings, green vests, and silver buttons being predominant features. At Hitterdal, a village not far from Notodden, there is an oldstave-kirke, or stock church, dating from the thirteenth century. There are very few of these ancient churches now left in Norway, as fire has destroyed most of them. In the last century and a half at least forty Norwegian churches have been struck by lightning and destroyed, and of course lightning is only one method out of many of setting fire to a church.

The finest example of a medievalstave-kirkeis at Borgund in the Valdres district. It is built of logs of timber and the roof is arranged in several tiers like a pagoda. The walls are shingled with pieces of wood cut into the shape of the scales of a fish, and the many pinnaclesand gables are surmounted by the most curious wooden gargoyle dragons, pointing their tongues skyward.

Returning to Ulefos we are within a few miles of Skien. Skien is in itself a dull, brick and stone town, devoted largely to the wood-pulp industry, but its honor of being the birthplace of Norway’s greatest literary genius is enough distinction for one town.

Here Henrik Ibsen was born on March 20, 1828. This great genius, the first to raise Norwegian literature to a standard as high as anything in all Europe, was strangely slow in discovering his talent. For seven dreary years, “which set their mark upon his spirit,” he was apprenticed to an apothecary in Grimstad. One of his companions says of him during this period that he “walked about Grimstad like a mystery sealed with seven seals.” He lived for awhile a most precarious, hand-to-mouth existence as a Christiania journalist. Then he became stage poet at the Bergen theater and studied the drama at Copenhagen and at Dresden. He wrote some poems, which began to earn for him a wide reputation. But soon his Bergen theater failed; he applied for a poet’s pension at Christiania and was refused, though one was at the same time granted to Björnson. Sick and discouraged and fighting against poverty, and above all burning with bitterest rage, he went to Berlin and Trieste and then to Rome.

In this tempestuous mood he wrote at Rome a poem calledBrandin which he let himself go and poured out his bitterness against his native land. Brand was aNorwegian priest who tried to live like Christ and “was snubbed and hounded by his latitudinarian companions.” It was a magnificent poem, and verily Norway must have trembled at its ferocity, for in Brand’s “latitudinarian companions” the poet had typified the current religious and moral sentiment of his native land.

Soon he wrote the dramatic satirePeer Gynt, in which the hero typified Ibsen’s conception of Norwegian egotism, vacillation, and luke-warmness. He commenced this splendid work in all the fiery anger with which he had writtenBrand, but in spite of himself he soon forgot his anger and developed the great piece of literature which critics say is as fine as anything produced in the nineteenth century.

Four years later he did receive a poet’s pension, for his country could not longer ignore his genius.

He had phenomenal success in many lines, but finally turned his attention to simple conversational drama. He is one of the most widely discussed dramatists of recent times. He fearlessly, almost morbidly, braved convention, and was venomously attacked as an immoral writer. Hjalmar Ekdal, the main character of one of his plays,The Wild Duck, has earned the name of being the most abominable villain in all the world’s drama. Certainly Ibsen revelled in the sins and faults of society, but only, as he himself says, as a diagnosist, and not, like Tolstoy, as a healer.

On his seventieth birthday the great dramatist was received with the highest marks of honor by the native land which he had so bitterly abused, and it must havebeen soothing to his fiery, cynical nature to thus come into his own during the last days of his life.

Henrik Ibsen, and all Norwegian literature in general, should be of especial interest to Americans, for it bears the same relation to Danish literature that our own bears to English. It is only within the last century that Norway has had any real, national literature. The great Holberg, who lived in the seventeenth century, was really a Norwegian, but he hardly thought of his own country as being a fitting home for literature, and he devoted his talents to Denmark, and is generally regarded as a Dane.

You will be ready now to make your way to Christiansand and then up this most peaceful ofdalsto Brevik. On the way you will see many country scenes, becoming more and more unconsciously primitive and rustic as you leave the outside world behind. You will see swarms of children along the way, or should I say “prides” or “nides” of them? At any rate, there is no race suicide in rural Norway. These children are now in the midst of their summer holidays, which for many of them last nine months in the year. Education is compulsory from the ages of seven to fourteen for every child in Norway, but many of the farms, particularly in the lonely Sætersdal, are so far apart that it would be impossible to maintain any regular public-school system. Accordingly itinerant schoolmasters must travel over the length and breadth of Norway, imparting instruction to every child within the specified ages, for at least twelve weeks in the year. Sometimes he mustdevote his twelve weeks to a single child or a single family, and in this case he becomes the farmer’s guest. Sometimes two or three neighboring farmers combine and appoint one house as the common schoolhouse and the home of the itinerant pedagog. The Norwegian school-teacher’s life is thus one of pleasurable variety. Very often the farmer’s grown-up daughter assists the teacher in his labors, and many a tender passage occurs between them while the children are studying and the fond, hoping mother peeks through the crack of the door.

As I have said before, Sætersdal is the most charmingly peaceful spot in all Norway. There is nothing strenuous about the scenery or the life. Both continue as they have continued for ages and as they will continue for ages to come, unless the ubiquitous railway finds its way here. The cares of life for these peasants are reduced to a minimum. No problems perplex them. Perhaps their simple minds are hardly capable of being perplexed, but they live a calm, God-fearing, happy life. While their fellow countrymen in the towns are wrestling year in and year out with problems, they scarcely know what the word means. Perhaps you think this is a deplorable mental stagnation, but you would not and could not think so if you saw the people. They are noble and generous and honest and good, and as long as they possess these qualities they certainly do not need problems. These fine Norwegian peasants have done as much as all the fjords and mountains and waterfalls and valleys to fill me with the charm of Norway.

I had intended to visit the “Sand Hills of Jutland” and to write to you about them, but after all they are just what Hans Christian Andersen called them, sand hills, and, charming as some parts of Jutland doubtless are, I fear it would be an anticlimax to the varied glories of Norway. Denmark would not have so much interest for a lover of Norway were it not for the historical associations inseparably linking the two countries together, so I base my strongest plea on the land of the fjord. You have been very obliging, Judicia, in performing these sudden chess-metamorphoses from your natural queenliness to knighthood and castlehood and bishophood (I have never reduced you to the rank of a pawn), as the nature of your imaginary move might demand. However, I will refrain from further compliments, lest you should think I am trying to bribe you.

Trusting that the charm of Norway will take possession of you as it has of me, I await your Judicia-l decision.

Yours hopefully,

Aylmer.

FOOTNOTES[1]Honorable W. W. Thomas:Sweden and the Swedes.[2]Emil Svensen:Sweden’s Place in History.[3]Quoted by Honorable W. W. Thomas inSweden and the Swedes.[4]Honorable W. W. Thomas:Sweden and the Swedes.[5]Ernest Young:Finland.

[1]Honorable W. W. Thomas:Sweden and the Swedes.

[2]Emil Svensen:Sweden’s Place in History.

[3]Quoted by Honorable W. W. Thomas inSweden and the Swedes.

[4]Honorable W. W. Thomas:Sweden and the Swedes.

[5]Ernest Young:Finland.

Back to Index Next