Norway

“ This was Nordland, one of the northerly provinces of Norway, beyond the Arctic Circle, under the glory of the midnight sun, where, however, a long and sunless winter fostered in the minds of the inhabitants a brooding melancholy which peopled mountain and sea, nature's every nook and cranny, with strange and awe-inspiring creatures. ”

“ It is not necessary to repeat, to mountaineers, that most Englishmen who have climbed in Norway return again and again, to a country which has still much of the romance of exploration, and, for them, the sympathetic interest of an historical connection with their racial consciousness. I myself like to believe that we, who take our pleasures on the mountains—and the more grisly these mountains are the better we like them!—have inherited the passion from our ‘Norsk ancestry,’ who, as we gather from an old Saga, indulged in the sport of cliff climbing nearly one thousand years ago. ”

“ In an age when strength, bravery, and an adventurous spirit made a nation eminent, Norway played a great rôle upon the arena of the world, founding and destroying kingdoms, mingling her vigorous blood with that of other nations, and infusing her love of liberty, restrained by law, into their souls. Since powder and modern strategy have subordinated heroism to discipline and numbers, Norway must resign herself to the fate which her numerical weakness imposes upon her. A people of scarcely two millions can cut no very great figure in the world, as it is now constituted. ”

“ One great charm of Norway, then, is its people; another, and perhaps more to be appreciated by some, is its scenery.
“Is it like Switzerland?” No; Norway is only like Norway. It is not so grand as regards the height of its mountains, yet its grandeur is far more solemn. It has a dozen fjords more startling than the Lake of Lucerne; in a day’s journey you will pass waterfalls and cascades which would make a fortune to “proprietors” in Switzerland, and are not so much as mentioned in the Norwegian guide-books. ”

“ This was the testimony to the charm of Norway which Queen Maud gave me, when I saw her in her little home near Christiania in the autumn of 1913. She spoke with enthusiasm of her adopted country, and I was not in the least surprised, for Norway is undoubtedly the happiest and most progressive country in Europe. Indeed, if anybody wants to know what life will be like in the good time that is coming, when Capitalism will be dead and Democracy triumphant on both sides of the Atlantic, let him go to Norway and study its institutions and the life of its people. ”

“ Leaving the Red Indian moon worshipper with his death rattle awhile and harking back to Europe, Norway stands out as the richest country in legendary lore, for old-time superstitions have lingered among the simple and credulous people, living pent up on the horrid crags, where torrents leap from cliff to valley. Their tales of goblins and spirits, tales of trolls, gnomes, and a legendary host of other uncanny creatures, point to the former nature [25] and ancestral worship of a people cut off from the advancing civilisation of their time. ”

“ For all the countries which I have traversed Nature appears not to have done so much to make them agreeable to man, as she has for Norway, and man so little to make his own soil suitable for himself as the Norwegian; nor have I, in either hemisphere, felt more truly spiritualized by the grandeur of the scenery, the honest frankness and simplicity of its people, as here. I have wandered over many parts of the earth; I have looked upon its lofty mountains shrouded in clouds, or capped with snow ”

“ Then when I awoke, throughout the night, scaring the timid spirit of sleep, a thousand dogs ashore howled and bayed the moon, as if all the ghosts of the million souls that had perished since the far times when Norway became the abode of men, had returned to earth, and were walking through the streets of Christiania. ”

“ The smooth and glassy surface of the tideless Fiord, hemmed in by lofty mountains, stands forth the grand characteristic of Norway. The weather-beaten rocks, rising abruptly from the water, have beauty and boldness on their broad, blank fronts; and how infinite is the loveliness of innumerable islands, clustered together, bearing vegetation of all hues and odours!
Whether it were in the air which I breathed, or whether it were caught from the solemn magnificence of the scenery, the same feeling of sublimity came over me as when I first saw the [Pg 205] land of Norway on my arrival from England ”

“ And this ocean would incessantly flow over Sweden, did not our Norway magnanimously defend it with its granite breast."
"Sweden defends itself, and needs no other help! Sweden is a fine country!"
"Not half as fine as Norway. Norway reaches heaven with its mountains; Norway comes nearest to the Creator."
"Norway may well be presumptuous, but God loves Sweden the best."
"Norway, say I!"
"Sweden, say I!"
"Norway! Norway for ever! We will see whose throw goes the highest, who wins for his country. Norway first and highest!" and with this, Harald threw a stone high into the air. ”

“ And this is Norway! I had always pictured Norway to myself as being all like Romsdal, wild and barren, with rocky peaks like the Romsdalhorn and the Trolltinder, and with raging cascades like the Sletta fos; but this is quite lovely, and so softly blue! I should like to build a house here and live in it, and I would called it Eva's Bower, and keep a whole flock of white doves; they would look so pretty flying in the blue air. ”

“ And men remembered the prophecy of the blind yeoman of Moster that in one voyage Norway should lose its four most noble things—the king, whose like had never been seen, the queen, best for sense and goodness that ever came into Norway, the greatest ship ever built in Norway, and the Irish dog, wiser and more clever than any other dog in the land. ”

“ Thus, after for five hundred and seventeen years standing empty, the throne of Norway was filled with a king of its own, and that old land, once more single and separate, swung back into the tide of the nations. ”

“ Lying at the northwest corner of the continent, far removed from the excitements and jealousies common to the nervous central countries, Norway has moved on in its even way, and cared little for the general current of these lands. But these Norwegians have not been asleep. Nor has there ever been a time when they have slept, from the hazardous day when their Vikings invaded Britain, and became forever a part of the bone and fiber of Scotland in eastern England, down to our century. All Norwegian history is a romance, whether in former or recent times. ”

“ But Norway surely can dispense with any crumbling works of man. Amidst the ruins of her everlasting mountains and stupendous fjords, grooved by the glaciers when the earth was young, all remnants of man's handiwork would seem like ant-hills made but an hour ago. ”

“ Rugged Norway freezes into the souls of her sons a sense of the preciousness of level, fertile land, and there are no great cities to infect the imagination of her country dwellers. What wonder, then, that in 1900 nearly four-fifths of our Norwegians were outside the cities, most of them sticking to the soil like limpets to a rock! ”

“ Norway is a strange country. There is a little king here and a little king there—hundreds of them scattered about. Now in Denmark there is but one great king over the whole land. And it is so in Sweden. Is no one brave enough to make all of Norway his own?"
She laughed a scornful laugh and walked away. The men stood with open mouths and stared after her. Could it be that she had sent that saucy message to King Harald? They looked at her foster-father. ”

“ What countries they were to visit they had hardly decided, but after a brief stay in England we find them again on a steamer bound for Norway.
IV.
Warm and gentle as it is, June often comes to the fjord-valleys of Norway with the voice and the strength of a giant. The glaciers totter and groan, as if in anger at their own weakness, and send huge avalanches of stones and ice down into the valleys. The rivers swell and rush with vociferous brawl out over the mountainsides, and a thousand tiny brooks join in the general clamor, and dance with noisy chatter over the moss-grown birch-roots. ”

“ This is the first time that Norway, as an integral kingdom, treats with a foreign power. The kings of Sweden and Denmark who claimed descent from Ragnar Lodbrok and through him from the gods, had never until now recognized the descendants of Harold the Fairhaired as rulers of a united realm and their own equals in dignity. Norway was to them merely a collection of small, scattered communities which, having once been united, made haste to fall to pieces again, and had at different times recognized the overlordship of the kings of Sweden and Denmark. ”

“ The elevations of Norway are intersected by deep, dark gorges and threatening chasms, roaring with impetuous torrents and grand water-falls, constantly presenting such scenes as would have inspired the pencil of Salvator Rosa. ”

“ But then Norway is an empty country. It is as large as England, and it has a population of three million. You will see no towns on the long fourteen-hour journey from Bergen to Christiania. Only here and there a collection of scattered hutments and the long stretches of the fjords. And it is remarkable that so small a nation should have made such a considerable contribution to the literature of Europe. A useless, hopeless task it must sometimes seem, we felt, to the young Norwegian. ”

“ The sunsets over the deep, calm fiords, the rise of the splendid [87] orb on the mountains, charmed his poetic and artistic soul with an indescribable emotion. We remained there more than a month, going through the picturesque region of the Scandinavian Alps. Now, Norway was the home of that child of the North who was to exert so strong an influence over his unawakened heart. ”

“ All over Norway as one passes through the valleys and the winding fjords picture after picture are witnessed in rich succession, each seeming more beautiful than the last; but now, as at a certain distance of time I endeavour to recall their individual charms, I think that these glorious evenings in Molde occupy the most pleasant place in the memory of one of Norway's ardent admirers. ”

“ To those who love to deduce the character of a population from the character of their race and surroundings the peasantry of Cumberland and Westmoreland form an attractive theme. Drawn in great part from the strong Scandinavian stock, they dwell in a land solemn and beautiful as Norway itself, but without Norway's rigour and penury, and with still lakes and happy rivers instead of Norway's inarming melancholy sea. ”

“ Writing from Norway in 1820, a visitor says—"There is no country which accords better with my taste than Norway, nor is there any cast of inhabitants or people that I have visited for whom I have more esteem. Here at least are the true haunts of simple natures, and it has been one of the pleasantest passages of my life to dwell among the mountains. The Norwegians are a virtuous race ”

“ Whoever has the time at his disposal, and the inclination to make a journey through Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, will return much benefited in health by the pure and invigorating sea and mountain air, with a rich store of unfading memory pictures of beautiful waterfalls, valleys with grand rock formations, winding fjords, stupendous glaciers, and a combination of ocean and mountain scenery such as is seen in no other land,—all illumined by days of unending light, and the midnight sunbeams of a sun which has no setting. ”

“ The conscience-stricken angels swept the floor of Heaven, and the little dust they found they gathered in their draperies and scattered over the Norwegian rocks. That is why, while Norway is rich in stones, she is poorly provided with soil. Even in many of the valleys the earth is plentifully bestrewn with big stones and boulders fallen from the mountains, and where there are small tracts without stones one frequently finds that the ground is so marshy as to be useless. ”

“ The Norwegian merchant marine, which is one of the largest in the world, carried the flag of Norway to the remotest ports; the lumber trade increased, and the wealth obtainable in manufactures and commerce stimulated the energy of Norse merchants, and quickened everywhere the pulses of life. ”

“ Mid-day came, and brought with it the sultriness and cheerful brightness of a Norwegian summer's day. Through the fir-trees I could see the waters of the Fiord sparkling, like liquid silver, in the glare of noon; and far away, the clouds, like pieces of white wool, resting half-way up the mountains. ”

“ But since this country, by its closeness of language as much as of position, includes Sweden and Norway, I will record their divisions and their climates also as I have those of Denmark. These territories, lying under the northern pole, and facing Bootes and the Great Bear, reach with their utmost outlying parts the latitude of the freezing zone; and beyond these the extraordinary sharpness of the cold suffers not human habitation. Of these two, Norway has been allotted by the choice of nature a forbidding rocky site. ”

“ It seems to be the universal verdict of all travellers in Norway, that its people are more delightful and truer hearted than in any other country in Europe; and many Englishmen, after their first summer in Norway, return home to a diligent study of Norwegian, and in successive summers revisit the country, to become more intimately acquainted with its people, who have so deeply impressed them by their straightforward, kindly nature. ”