Frederick Metcalfe

Northwards—Social colts—The horse shepherd—The tired traveller’s sweet restorer, tea—Troll-work—Snow Macadam—Otter hunting in Norway—Normaends Laagen—A vision of reindeer—The fisherman’s hut—My lodging is on the cold ground—Making a night of it—National songs—Shaking down—A slight touch of nightmare.

Leaving the angry Quenna, we struck northward up a gradual ascent of rock, polished apparently by former rains, its surface fissured at intervals by deep cracks, and dabbed with patches of yellow moss, dwarf birch, and glaucous willow, but, for the most part, fortunately affording capital walking ground. A covey of grey ptarmigan, a snipe or two, and some golden plover, rose before us; but I felt so weak and ill that I had not the heart to load my fowling-piece, which the little horse bore, along with my other effects, attached to the straddle.

As we journey along, a distant neigh (in Thelemarken speech “neija,” in Norwegian, “vrinske,”) reaches my ear, and I descry three colts bounding down the rocks to us. On joining our party, seemingly tired of the loneliness of the mountain, and delighted at the idea of a new equine companion, they dance round our little nag in most frolicksome mood. In spite of all we can do to prevent them, they stick to us, now in front, now alongside, now at our rear. At this moment a man’s voice is heard, and a wild figure in frieze jacket, of the true Thelemarken cut, knee-breeches, and bare calves, rushes up breathless. “Well, Ambrose,” said my guide, “I thought they were yours, but they would follow us. We couldn’t stop them.” Indeed, Ambrose found the task equally difficult. He had never taken lessons from Mr. Rarey. It was only by seizing the ringleader by his forelock, and hanging heavily with the other arm on his neck, he managed to turn him from the error of his way, which would most likely have only terminated with our day’s journey’s end.

“And who is Ambrose?” inquired I. “Where is his StÖl? I see no symptoms of one.”

“StÖl! bless you, langt ifra (far from it). He is a flytte-maend. He comes up on the mountain with a lot of horses and NÖd (ScoticÈ nowt, horned cattle), for about six weeks in the summer. He has a bag of meal, and he lives upon that and the milk of one milking cow, which he has with him. At night, he sleeps under a rock or stone, flitting about from place to place, wherever he can find grass for the cattle. He receives a small sum a head for his trouble, when he has taken them back safe and sound.”

Hard life of it, thought I. Bad food and worse lodging; not to mention that the beasts of prey occasionally diminish the number of his charge, and with it the amount of his earnings.

After toiling along for twenty English miles of treeless wilderness, skirting several lakes, floundering through many bogs, and sitting on the horse as he forded one or two rivers, we reached a knoll, which the guide called Grodhalse. It was a curious spot: itself green and smiling with grassy herbage; behind it, higher up the slope, patches of unmelted snow; while at our feet ran a rill of snow-water.

“We must qvile (i.e., while = rest) here a bit,” said Ole. “There is no other grass to be found for many miles.”

“Well, then, light a fire in a moment,” said I, a cold shudder running through me the very moment I stood still, and I at once enveloped myself in my pea-coat, buttoning the collar over my ears. “Fill that kettle with water, and have it boiling as soon as ever you can. Here are some matches.” The green prickly juniper scrub, which he forthwith dragged up by the roots, soon blazed up with the proverbially transient crackling of fire among the thorns; and the little copper kettle which I had prudently caused to be brought soon succeeded in first simmering and then boiling. Dickens’s kettle on the hob never uttered such delightful music.

If I had been philosophically inclined, and had possessed a thermometer, which I did not, I might have availed myself of the opportunity of ascertaining the exact height we had reached, by seeing at what number of degrees the fluid boiled. But what was much more to the purpose, I had some tea at hand, and two quarts of the hot infusion, with a thimblefull of brandy, were soon under my belt. Never did opium, or bang, or haschish-eater experience such a sweet feeling stealing over the sense. Talk of a giant refreshed with wine: give me tea when I am knocked up. The chemistry-of-common-life people will talk to you about TheÏne and its nutritious qualities, but until that moment I did not know what tea would do for you. My eyes, which just before were half blind, saw again. My blood, which seemed to be curdled into thick, heavy lumps, in my veins, was liquified afresh. That of St. Januarius never underwent such a quick metamorphosis. Mr. Waterton will excuse the allusion.

The knoll was at a very high level; the snow behind us, and the icy runnel issuing from its bowels at our feet, gave a keenness to the air, but the tea[8] put me in a genial perspiration, the pea-coat aiding and abetting by keeping in the caloric. And when the little horse, refreshed by his nibble, was caught and reloaded, I loaded my fowling-piece, and felt quite strong enough to carry it. Before long we were among some grey ptarmigan, and I brought one or two down.[9]

“Curious spot, this,” said I, to the guide, as we came to an amphitheatrical ridge of abraded rock, on the very edge of which rested huge blocks[10] of stone, some pivoted on their smallest face. The cause of the phenomenon was evident. The glacier power, which formerly moved these stones onward, day by day, had been arrested—opera imperfecta manebant—and so the blocks came to a stand still where they now are. “They must have been placed there by the Trolls,” I observed, giving a peep at Ole’s countenance. “Kanskee” (perhaps), was his slow and thoughtful reply.

“You ought to see this in winter time,” he continued. “No stones to be seen then—no impediments. We go straight ahead. I travelled last winter, on snow-shoes, sixty miles in the day.”

Winter is, emphatically, the time for locomotion here; the crooked ways are made straight, and the mountains smooth.

“What’s that?” said I, pointing to a snail, browsing on the irregularly round leaf of a species of dwarf sorrel, which grows high on the mountains. A “sneel,” said he. “Snecke” is the modern Norwegian appellation.

Ole is a bit of a sportsman, and has committed havoc among the reindeer. Last winter he killed a couple of otters, and got two dollars and a half for their skins.

“And where did you find the otters?” inquired I, curious to know whether these animals imitate the seal and walrus, and make breathing holes in the solid ice. “Oh, they keep in the foss-pools of the rivers, which are the only places not frozen over. Now and then they cut across the land from one pool to another. I followed them on snow-shoes, and killed them with a stave. A man paa ski (on snow-shoes) can overtake an otter.”

“It is strange,” he went on, “we have seen no ‘reen.’ I never came over these mountains without seeing them.”

But in fact the day had now become overcast, and, fearful of a relapse, I had abstained from stopping to examine the surrounding objects more narrowly. We had now arrived on the left of a lake, about fourteen miles long, the name of which is Normaends Laagen. Between us and the lake intervened a stony plain, grassed over at intervals, perhaps half a mile in breadth; while close to our left, some little still valleys ran up towards the higher plateau.

“There they are,” exclaimed Ole, pointing to ten reindeer, feeding about two hundred yards off, between us and the lake. The discovery was mutual and simultaneous; for, with an oblique squint at us, their white scuts flew up, and they trotted leisurely to the southward.

“Shall I put a bullet into the gun?” asked I.

“No use whatever,” said Ole. “They’ll be miles off in a few minutes.”

And, sure enough, I could see them clearing the ground at a lazy canter, and presently disappear behind some rising ground.

Our lodging for the night was to be at a place called Bessebue. This was a stone hut erected by some fishermen, who repair hither in the autumn with a horse or two and some barrels of salt, and catch the trout which abound in the lake. At that period, the fish approach the shore from out of the deeps to spawn, and are taken in a garn, i.e., standing net of very fine thread. At other times the hut is uninhabited. But to my guide’s surprise we find that there are occupants. These are two brothers from Urland, on the Sogne Fjord, about sixty miles from this. They are fine young fellows, named Nicholas and Andreas Flom, who have come up here with 110 head of cattle to feed on the shores of the lake. None but a Norwegian farmer would think of making such an excursion as this. In September they will drive them direct across the mountains to Kongsberg for sale. A drove of this sort, I find, is called drift,[11] and the drovers driftefolk.

With much good nature these young fellows offered to share with us all the accommodation that Bessebue afforded. “But,” said they, “we have already got three travellers arrived, who are going to stop the night.”

Now Bessebue, or Bessy’s bower, as I mentally nicknamed it, albeit there was not a ghost of a Bessy about the premises, though it might in an ordinary way lodge a couple of wayfarers did not seem to offer anything like ample room and verge enough for “the seven sleepers” who proposed lodging there that night. Its accommodation consisted of one room, built of dry stones, with a hole in one corner of the roof for a chimney, the floor being divided into two unequal parts by a ledge or slab of stone, which served for table, and chair, and shelf. The room might be seven or eight feet square, (not so big as the bed of Ware,) part of which, however, was taken up by certain butter and milk pails and horse furniture. So, how we were all to sleep I did not know. Nevertheless, the shivering demon was again clapperclawing me—“Poor Tom’s acold.”—The good effects of the tea had evaporated, and aches of all sorts throbbed within my frame. So I settled down passively on the stone ledge, and warmed my wet toes against the reeking, sputtering brands of juniper twig that blazed at intervals, and served to show, in the advancing night, the black, slimy, damp-looking sides of the hut. Above my head was the smoke hole; behind me, on the floor, were the skins which formed the drovers’ couch.

After swallowing a fresh jorum of tea, I sank into this, my pea-coat all around me, and my sou’-wester, with its flannel lining and ear-covers tied under my chin; the younger drover, with all the consideration of a tender nurse, tucking me in under the clothes. In spite of my superfluity of clothing, and the smoke with which the apartment was filled, I had great difficulty in getting warm. After eating their simple suppers by the light of the fire, a song was proposed, and one of the three strangers proceeded to sing, in a clear manly voice, the national song on Tordenskiold.[12]

The glow of the juniper wood, which had now burnt down into a heap of red embers, lit up the features, grave but cheery, of the singer and the hearers; and all sick as I was, I enjoyed the whole immensely, after a dreamy fashion, and longed for the brush of a Schalken to represent the strange scene. Here we were, on a wild, trackless, treeless, savage mountain, with creature comforts none, and yet these simple fellows, without any effort, were enjoying themselves a vast deal more than many with all the conventional appliances and means to secure mirth.

The song of “Gamle Norge,” the “Rule Britannia” of the North, of course succeeded. After this a song-book was produced from a crevice under the eaves, and, as the fire was nearly out, and no more fuel was inside the hut, a candle-end, which I had brought with me to grease my boots, being lit, enabled the minstrel to sing a ditty by inch of candle. It was one in honour of the Norsk kings, from Harald Haarfager[13] downwards, by Wergeland, said to be Norway’s best poet. This closed the entertainment.

“We must get to bed, I think, now,” said Nicholas; “it is waxing latish, and I must be up by dawn, after the kreÄturen (cattle). I say, holloa, you Englishman, Metcal; can you make room for me and Andreas?”

“You can try, but I really don’t see how it is to be managed, we are such big fellows; I’ll sit on the ledge, if you like.”

“Oh, no; you’re ill. It’ll be all right. If we can only just manage to fit in, it will be square strax (immediately). You won’t be too warm,” continued he, pulling a slate over the smoke-hole; “the night is very cold.”

So, in the brothers got, merely divesting themselves of their coats and waistcoats, while I had on all the coats in my wardrobe, like some harlequin in his first dÉbut at a country fair. At first, the squeeze was very like the operation one has so often witnessed in the old coaching days, of wedging any amount of passengers into a seat made to hold four—“Higgledy piggledy, here we lie.” Truly, necessity makes us acquainted with strange bedfellows. But by degrees we shook down. When a tea-cup is full to overflowing, there is room for the sugar. However, it was necessary, whenever one of us changed his position, for the others to do the same, like the poor niggers on board the slaver in the Middle passage. The coverlets were of the scantiest; but there did not seem to be any unfair attempt made to steal a skin from one’s neighbour when he had gone to sleep, as the Kansas men are said to be in the habit of doing when bivouacking out.

The others had, if possible, less elbow-room than we three. The two elder were allowed to take the middle places, while the younger ones were pressed against the damp, hard wall. The hut was soon quiet; outside it was frosty, with no wind, and the only noise within was the occasional snoring of one of the party, which was so sonorous, that it made me think of “the drone of a Lincolnshire bagpipe” (see Shakspeare)—though I can’t say I ever heard one. At last I fell off. How soundly I slept that night, with the exception of a slight touch of nightmare, in which, by an inverted order of things, I rode the mare instead of the mare riding me; scudding along at one time after the reindeer, over stock and stone with wonderful celerity; at another, dashing in snow-shoes after the otters, or whirling among the moors, in the midst of an odd set of elfin coursers and riders.