Norwegians

“ We enter a new world when in picture-galleries we pass to the Norwegian from the Swedish section. From the great city we are transported to nature, solemn and solitary, into a land of silence, where a rude, sparse population, a race of fishermen, snatches a scanty sustenance from the sea. The Norwegians also contributed for a time to the international market in works of art. They sent mainly genre pictures telling of the manners and customs of their country, or landscapes depicting the phenomena of Northern scenery. ”

“ As individuals the Norwegians are recognized among the leaders in literature, art, and science, and equal to any as pioneers in the development of the rich frontiers. As citizens they are enthusiastically welcomed everywhere. Climatic conditions and habits of life have given them the sturdiness of physique and vigor of mind which make them fearless and undaunted in the face of great undertakings and critical situations. They have become habituated to overcoming all obstacles in their way, and they naturally concentrate their energies for the achievement of their desired ends. ”

“ 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 ”

“ THEIR MANNERS AND CUSTOMS Because of its geographic isolation, the Scandinavian peninsula is the home of the purest Teutonic ethnic stock. The Norwegians, Icelanders, Swedes, and Danes are racially closely related, and they belong to the same branch of the Aryan family as the Germans, Flemish, English, and Anglo-Americans. Physically, these people are powerfully built and tall, of the pure Scandinavian type, with fair hair and blue eyes, and their healthy, intelligent look strikes the traveler. ”

“ Greenland is in a peculiar manner associated with Norway and with the Norwegians. Our forefathers were the first Europeans who found their way to its shores. In their open vessels the old Vikings made their daring voyages, through tempests and drift-ice, to this distant land of snows, settled there throughout several centuries, and added it to the domain of the Norwegian crown. ”

“ Before we proceed to the Norwegians’ great contributions to the exploration of the northern regions, we shall attempt to collect and survey what is known, and what may possibly be concluded, about the most northern people of Europe, the Finns, and the earliest settlement of Scandinavia. ”

“ The literary Norwegian is Danish rather than Swedish. Meanwhile, the old language, the mother-tongue, is the common property of all, and so is the old literature with its Edda and Sagas; though ... the Norwegians are the chief heroes of it. The language in which it is embodied is preserved with but little alteration in Iceland; so that it may fairly be called Icelandic, though the Norwegians denominate it Old Norse. ... See NORMANS—NORTHMEN. A. D. 960-1100. The histories of the three countries are alike in their general character though different in detail. ”

“ Norwegians have a deep respect for the English gentleman who fishes their salmon rivers, and when he has arrived at the same place many years in succession he is most heartily welcomed by natives of both sexes, who while he remains will devote themselves to his interests, in their own way—which has to be understood, no doubt, but which is on the whole of a character that makes the respect mutual. After five days' travel by land, sea, and fiord, the Norwegian hotel seems a veritable home, and you are quite ready to be predisposed in favour of bed and board. ”

“ Our fellow-passengers, after leaving Carlsoe, where the young Englishmen stopped to hunt, were almost exclusively Norwegian, and this gave us further opportunities of becoming acquainted with some peculiarities of the national character. Intelligent Norwegians, especially those who have travelled, are exceedingly courteous, gentlemanly, and agreeable persons. The three officers on board were men of unusual intelligence and refinement, and we considered ourselves fortunate in having their company during the entire voyage. ”

“ They became the leaders in all directions, not only in war and politics, but also in art and literature. A general spirit of migration had taken possession of the inhabitants of the North. While the Danes especially directed their expeditions to England and France, where they at once founded cities and kingdoms, the Norwegians went chiefly to Ireland, Scotland, and to the islands north of Great Britain. But the country, which above all attracted them, when they abandoned Norway to found new homes, was Iceland. ”

“ Norway is emphatically the land of honest people, and the traveller soon falls into the habit of neither locking up his belongings nor his room,215 and the Norwegians trust strangers to an equal extent. ”

“ But in this wild romantic country, with its sparse population, rugged mountains, and gloomy fiords, very ordinary matters become invested with a character of awe and mystery quite foreign to the atmosphere of our own matter-of-fact world; and many of the Norwegians are as prone to superstition as the poor little Lapp pagans who dwell among them. ”

“ No, popular sentiment in Great Britain is on the side of Norway.’
‘Nevertheless, sire, if thoughtful Englishmen could be made to realise that, for the sake of pique—for a mere whim—the Norwegians were about to place the keys of the Atlantic in the hands of Britain’s most formidable foe, they might make their influence felt.’
‘Do what you think best, M. V——,’ the King said wearily. ‘I am getting an old man, and I wish for peace.’
I have ventured to take his Majesty at his word. ”

“ But as these serpents and interlacings very much agree with ornaments on different antiquities of the heathen times found in Scandinavia, and, as the language of the runic stones is pure Scandinavian, there is every reason to conclude that the splendid specimens on Man were carved by Norwegians, who, though they imitated the monuments in vogue in Scotland, frequently allowed their own characteristically fantastic ideas to display themselves in peculiar devices. ”

“ In addition to the physical characteristics held in common by these Scandinavian peoples, the Norwegians are to be specially noted for their long narrow heads, particularly is this so among the people in the interior of the country. ”

“ The Norwegians, perhaps with the laudable desire to lighten the burdens of a married man, and induce him to travel with his family, charge on their steamers but a fare and a half for a man and his wife, and for each member of the family a reduction ranging from twenty-five to fifty per cent. ”

“ One large room is completely full of Norwegian silver relics—tankards, belts of a past age, carvings, paintings, engravings, photographs of Norwegian scenery, maps, books, and all sorts of articles, illustrative of the manners, and customs of the Norwegians, of ancient and modern time. ”

“ Ever since the beginning of the nineteenth century the Norwegians have taken a real interest in their national antiquities, and these ancient craft have been treated with the care and reverence to which they have every right. ”

“ To the Norwegians he is a Norse hero of the greatest renown, who during his short reign of barely five years never ceased to force Christianity on the heathen population, and who, at the age of thirty-one, came to an untimely end. ”

“ As the Norwegian language and other Norwegian characteristics have given way to the Gaelic tongue, manners, and customs, in the former Norwegian districts on the north coast of Scotland, from Clyth Ness in Caithness to Dingwall on the Firth of Cromarty, we can scarcely be surprised that the north coast of Sutherland, whose rocks and heaths offered much fewer allurements to the Norwegians than the fertile valleys and plains of the east coast, and which were therefore far less colonized by them, should have preserved distinct traces of these foreign conquerors only in a few names of places. ”

“ Swedish is more like German and the pronunciation is not as difficult to learn as that [218] of Norwegian and Danish. In Norway, there are older dialects, differing from Danish, and there has lately been a great movement in favour of a more national language. Many Norwegians regard the official Danish-Norwegian as a reminder of old subjection to Denmark and not at all fitted for the new independent Norwegian kingdom. ”

“ Norwegians will face all sorts of weather, in order to be present at the högmässe of Sunday. Large sums of money—that is to say, large in comparison with the wealth of the parishes—are spent upon their churches, which are always in perfect repair, and always most carefully swept, and trimmed with rushes or green sprigs. A man would lose his character at once, and would be shunned by his acquaintance as a hopeless reprobate, if he neglected confirmation, or the Lord’s supper. ”

“ In the Varanger Fjord, we had pretty freely expressed our impressions of the desolate coast. Afterwards on returning past the grand cliff scenery of Nordkyn, we were admiring some bold formation of the rocks, when a Norwegian came up and said, in a tone of angry irony: "Ah, you find a little to admire at last, do you? You find some beauty in our country, after all?" So in regard to the government. The Norwegians may be justly proud of their constitution, which is as republican in its character as our own. ”

“ At present the language is passing through a stage of transition, almost bewildering to foreigners, who must be prepared, for some time to come, to meet in Norway with the most extreme diversity in the mode in which the language is spoken, and written, by the older and younger generations of cultivated Norwegians. ”

“ Even the shark has to give up his liver for oil, from which item alone the Norwegians get about half a million of dollars yearly. The herring, shining, silvery, slippery fellows that they are, are the aristocrats of the Norway waters ”

“ I looked about among these descendants of the Norwegians, but could not see any thing singular in their physiognomy; and but for the harsh accent of the preacher, I might almost have thought myself in the midst of a country congregation in the United States. They are mostly of a light complexion, with an appearance of health and strength, though of a sparer make than the people of the more southern British isles. After the service was over, we returned to our lodgings, by a way which led to the top of the hill, and made the circuit of the little town. ”

“ Upon these the ancestors of the present Norwegians encroached.
2. Sweden.—In Norway the Germanic population came in immediate contact with the Ugrian; in Sweden it was, to a great extent, preceded by one from Courland and Prussia—the Goths. Hence, the ethnological elements in Sweden are one degree more complex.
3. Denmark.—Denmark differs from both Norway and Sweden in respect to its primary population; inasmuch as it is bounded on the north by the sea, so that its relations to the Ugrian area of the aboriginal Scandinavia are those of an island. ”

“ Still, these pictures are only abstractions of what we think we have noticed most commonly in each type. When we compare the Norwegians among themselves, 32or the negroes among themselves, we find that each individual in each series has his peculiarities, which the others do not share. There are tall and short Norwegians ”

“ Its subsequent growth has kept it fairly homogeneous from a racial point of view, the State being almost wholly Nordic. Apart from the old native Americans the main elements have been British from Canada, Germans, and Scandinavians. The Norwegian immigration which began in the early '90's was particularly noteworthy. Norwegians now form about one-fourth of the total population of the State. An interesting small group is that of the Icelanders, representatives of one of the oldest, most highly cultured, and most stringently selected of all Nordic peoples. ”

“ The Norwegians, proud of their barren summits, inscribe upon their rix-dollars, “Spirit, loyalty, valour, and whatever is honourable, let the world learn among the rocks of Norway.” The Esquimaux are no less attached to their frigid zone, esteeming the luxuries of blubber-oil for food, and an ice cabin for a habitation, above all the refinements of other countries.—Fireside Education, by S. G. Goodrich.
If a man be gracious and civil to a stranger, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins them. ”

“ From earliest youth the Norwegians of both sexes are accustomed to go about the country in the long winter months on these strange contrivances, for without them it would be absolutely impossible to move off the roads. ”

“ The Norwegians appear to me a sensible, shrewd people, with little scientific knowledge, and still less taste for literature; but they are arriving at the epoch which precedes the introduction of the arts and sciences. ”

“ The Norwegians have given Englishmen the credit of being impatient travellers, and from their desire to pass over the greatest quantity of ground in the smallest quantity of time, they are said to use the whip more frequently than is necessary. ”

“ In a few decades Norwegians owned six times as much farming land in the States of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, and the Dakotas (four-fifths of the immigration being found in the States named) as did all the farmers in the "Old Country." No nationality has sent such a small percentage of its people into the cities—one in five of the whole, as compared with a half of the Germans, and a still higher percentage of the Irish and Italians, who seek an urban life. ”