From my guide I learn that this land’s-end nook has been lately in a tremendous ferment, in consequence of the young Prince of Orange, who is making a tour in company with the Crown Prince of Norway, having visited the VÖring Foss. The Prince, whom report destines for England’s second Princess, appears to have been very plucky (meget flink) at the outset of the excursion, and outwalked all the rest of the party—at all events they suffered him to think so. Half way up, however, he was dead beat, and compelled to get on pony back.

At first the narrow valley is tolerably level, blocked up, however, with monstrous rocks and stones. Soon we arrive at a crazy bridge spanning the torrent. Striding on to this, Herjus turns round to see what I am doing. Finding me close behind, he goes on. The traveller in Norway must learn at a pinch

“Many people get frightened at this bridge,” says he, “and we are forced to lead them over.”

At this I was not surprised. Three fir trees, of immense length, thrown across the thundering waters from two projecting cliffs, and supported midway by a rock in the stream, formed the permanent way. This, I understood, was very rotten; there was no sort of hand-railing, and at every step we took the frail timbers swayed unpleasantly with our weight. Passing MÖbu, up to which salmon force their way, we recross the stream by a newly constructed, safe bridge, and leave it to thread its passage through cliffs, where no man can follow, to the foot of the mighty VÖring Foss.

We now begin to ascend a precipitous path right in front of us, which here and there assumes the shape of a regular staircase, by means of rough slabs of rock, placed one above another. If I had encountered a laden horse coming down the steps of the Monument, I should not have been more astonished than I was, on meeting upon this staircase a horse, loaded with two great pails. Close behind him was one Knut TveitÖ. Grasping tightly at the wooden crupper described in the last chapter (hale-stock = tail-stick), he acted as a powerful drag to break the animal’s descent. With reins hanging loosely on his extended neck, ears pricked up, and fore-foot put forward as a feeler into mid-air, the sagacious little beast, with nothing more than his own good sense to guide him, is groping his way down the loose and steep steps, now and then giving a sort of expostulatory grunt, as the great iron nails in his shoes slip along a rock, or he receives a jolt more shaking than ordinary.[14]

“Wilkommen fra StÖlen” (welcome from the chÂlet), was the expressive greeting of Herjus to the stranger, whose reply was, “Gesegned arbeid!” (blessed labour). My guide’s words first awoke me to the fact that this is the path by which Knut had to toil to the summer pasture of his flocks and herds.

Bidding farewell to Knut, who waited a few minutes while I made a rough sketch of himself and his horse, we went on climbing. Hitherto the height of the mountains around had served to keep out the sun’s rays; but now our altitude was such, that they no longer served as a parasol, and as we emerged from the shadow into the broiling glare, the labour became proportionately greater. But we soon reach the top of the ascent, and open upon a bleak moor, flagged at intervals with flattish stones.

To the north rose a roundish mountain, clad with snow. This is IÖkeln, 5700 feet high, called by the natives Yuklin. Between us and it, at the distance of about a mile across the moor, rose a thin, perpendicular spire of smoke, which might have been taken for the reek of a gipsy campfire.

“That’s VÖring,” said the guide, stuffing a quantity of blue and cloud berries into his mouth. “We shall have good weather; you should see VÖring when the weather is going to be bad—doesn’t he smoke then?”

I observed that all the people here talked thus of the Fall, assigning a sort of personality to the monster, as if it was something more than a mere body of water.

“And here we are at VÖring,” said the guide, after we had steeple-chased straight across the swamp to the shadowy spire. As he said this, he pointed down into an abyss, from which proceeded dull-sounding thunderings.

I found we were standing on the verge of a portentous crater, nine hundred feet deep, into which springs, at one desperate bound, the frantic water-spirit. The guide’s phlegmatic appearance at this moment was a striking contrast to the excitement of Paddy this summer, when he was showing me the organ-pipes of the Giant’s Causeway, sounding with the winds of the Atlantic.

“This, yer honner, is allowed by all thravellers to be the most wonderfullest scane in the whole world. There’s nothing to be found like it at all at all. Many professors have told me so.”

Straight opposite to us the cliff rose two or three hundred feet higher, and shot down another stream of no mean volume. But it was the contact of the VÖring with the black pit-bottom that I desired to see. This, however, is no easy matter. At length I fixed on what appeared to be the best spot, and requesting the man to gripe my hand tight, I craned over as far as I could, and got a view of the whole monster at once. Did not he writhe, and dart, and foam, and roar like some hideous projectile blazing across the dark sky at night. Such a sight I shall never behold again. It was truly terrific. It was well that the guide held me fast, for a strange feeling, such as Byron describes, as if of wishing to jump overboard, came over me in spite of myself.

But, after all, the VÖring Foss is a disappointment. You can’t see it properly. A capital defect. One adventurous Englishman, I understand, did manage by making a detour, to descend the cliff, and actually launched an India-rubber boat—what odd fellows Englishmen are—on the infernal surge below. A man who was with him told me he held the boat tight by a rope, while the Briton paddled over the pool. Arrived there, without looking at the stupendous column which rose from where he was to the clouds, or rather did vice versÁ, he pulled out of his pocket a small pot of white paint, and forthwith commenced painting his initials on the rock, to prove, as he said, that he had been there.

This reminds me of one of our countrymen who arrived in his carriage at dead of night at some Italian city of great interest. “Antonio, what is the name of this place?” On hearing it, he puts the name down in his pocket-book, and orders the horses, exclaiming—“Thank goodness; done another place.”

The next thing will be that we shall hear of some Beckford blasting the rock, and erecting a summer-house like that at the Falls of the Rhine, for the tourists to peep out of.

Fancy a Dutchman in such a place! The elation of the Prince of Orange, when he got to this spot, was such, that he and the botanist who accompanied him, are recorded to have drunk more wine than was good for them. “Pull off your hat, sir,” he hiccuped to the chief guide, in reverence, the reader will suppose, to the spirit of the spot. “Pull off your hat, I say; it is not every day that you guide a Prince to the VÖring!”

It was not till six o’clock that we were down at Garatun; so that the excursion is a good stiff day’s work. But to this sort of thing I had become accustomed, having walked on the two preceding days a distance of more than sixty English miles.

Crossing the gloomy little lake Eidsfjord, in a small boat rowed by my guide, and then over the little isthmus which separates it from the sea, I arrived at the “Merchant’s” at Vik. An English yacht, with Oxford men on board, lay at anchor close by. This I boarded forthwith, and was entertained by the hospitable owner with tea and news from England.

Magnus, the innkeeper, is evidently a man making haste to be rich. He has cows in plenty on the mountains; but he takes care to keep them there, and there is, consequently, not a vestige of cream or milk in his establishment, let alone meat, or anything but flad-brod and salted trout. He exultingly tells me that he was the guide-in-chief to the Dutch Prince, and what a lot of dollars he got for it. I don’t know whether these people belie his Royal Highness, but here is another anecdote at his expense.

“Magnus,” said the Prince, after paying him, “are you content? Have I paid as much as any Englishman ever did? For if any Englishman ever paid more, tell me, and I’ll not be beaten.”

As far as I could gather, Magnus, in reply, hummed and hawed in a somewhat dubious manner, and thus managed to extract a dollar or two more from his Highness.

Princes, by-the-bye, seem the order of the day. During the few hours I stopped here, a Prussian Prince and his suite, travelling incognito, also arrived, and passed on to the Waterfall.

The stream between this and the fresh-water lake above holds salmon and grilse, but there are no good pools.

On a lovely morning I took boat for Utne, further out in the Hardanger-Fjord. The English yacht had left some hours before, but was lying becalmed, the white sail hanging against the mast, under some tall cliffs flanking the entrance to the small Ulvik-Fjord. One or two stray clouds, moving lazily overhead, throw a dark shadow on the mountains, which are bathed in warm sunshine. Among the dark-green foliage and grey rocks which skirt the rocky sides of the Fjord for miles in front of us, may at times be descried a bright yellow patch, denoting a few square yards of ripening corn, which some peasant has contrived to conjure out of the wilderness. Near the little patch may be descried a speck betokening the cabin of the said Selkirk.

As you approach nearer, you descry, concealed in a little nook cut out by nature in the solid rock, the skiff in which the lonely wight escapes at times from his isolation. In fact, he ekes out his subsistence by catching herring or mackerel, or any of the numerous finny tribes which frequent these fjords; in some measure making up to the settlers the barrenness of the soil. Presently I hear a distant sound in the tree-tops. Look! the clouds, hitherto so lazy, are on the move; the placid water, which reflected the yacht and its sails so distinctly just now, becomes ruffled and darkens; and anon a strong wind springs forth from its craggy hiding-place. See! it has already reached the craft, and she is dancing out into the offing, lying down to the water in a manner that shows she will soon lessen her eight miles distance from us, and beat out to sea with very little difficulty. As for poor luckless me, the boatmen had, of course, forgotten to take a sail; so that the wind, which is partly contrary, and soon gets up a good deal of sea, greatly retards our progress.

At length we arrive at Utne, a charming spot lying at the north-western entrance to the SÖr-Fjord. What excellent quarters I found here. The mistress, the wife of the merchant, a most tidy-looking lady, wearing the odd-looking cap of the country, crimped and starched with great care, bustled about to make me comfortable. Wine and beer, pancakes and cherries, fresh lamb and whiting—O noctes coenÆque Deum!—such were the delicacies that fell to my share, and which were, of course, all the more appreciated by me after a fortnight’s semi-starvation among the mountains, crowned by the stingy fare of the dollar-loving Magnus.[15]

I think I have not mentioned that in Thelemarken and the Hardanger district one meets with quite a different class of Christian names from elsewhere in Norway, where the common-place Danish names, often taken from Scripture, are usual. Ole, it is true, being the name of the great national saint, is rife all over, especially in Hallingdal; so much so that if you meet with three men from that district, you are sure, they say, to find one of the three rejoicing in that appellation. The female part of the family here rejoice in the names of Torbior, Guro, and Ingiliv.

“I wish, Guro, you would teach me the names of the various articles of female attire you wear,” said I to the said damsel, a rosy-cheeked lass, her mouth and eyes, like most of the girls in the country, brimfull of good nature, though, perhaps, not smacking of much refinement. Her hair-tails were, as usual, braided with red tape: and, it being Sunday, these were bound round her head in the most approved modern French fashion.

“Oh! that is called Troie,” said she, as I pointed to a close-fitting jacket of blue cloth, which, the weather being chilly, she wore over all; and this is called Overliv—i.e., the vest of green fitting tight to her shape, with the waist in the right place.

What can so good a judge as Sir Bulwer Lytton, by-the-bye, be about when he talks somewhere of a “short waist not being unbecoming, as giving greater sweep to a majestic length of limb.”

“And this is the Bringe-klud” (the little bit of cloth placed across the middle of the bosom); “and this is called Stak,” continued she, with a whole giggle, and half a blush.

“And who was that reading aloud below this morning?”

“Oh, that was Torbior” (the mistress of the house).

“And what was she reading?”

“The Bible; she always does that every morning. We all assemble together in that room.”

Guro was fair; not so many of the inhabitants of the Hardanger district. The dark physiognomies and black eyes of some of the peasants contrast as forcibly with the blond aspect of the mass, as the Spanish faces in Galway do with the fair complexions of the generality of the daughters of Erin. One wonders how they got them. I never heard any satisfactory solution offered of the phenomenon.

Two Englishmen, who have also found their way hither, are gone to have a sight of the neighbouring Folge Fond. One of them is a Winchester lad, who has been working himself nearly blind and quite ill. His companion is of a literary turn, and indulges in fits of abstraction. Emerging from one of these, he asks me whether there is ever a full moon in Carnival-time at Rome. Eventually, I discover the reason of his query. He is writing a novel, and his “Pyramus and Thisbe” meet within the Colosseum walls, at that period of rejoicing, by moonlight. But more circumspect than Wilkie, who makes one of the figures in his Waterloo picture eating oysters in June, he is guarding against the possibility of an anachronism.

Among the luxuries of this most tidy establishment are some Christiania papers. The prominent news is the progress of the Crown Prince, who is travelling in these parts. He landed here, and sketched the magnificent mountains that form the portals of the enchanting SÖr (South) Fjord. At Ullenswang, on the west shore of that Fjord, he invited all the good ladies and gentlemen, from far and near, to a ball on board his yacht Vidar, dancing with the prettiest of them. What particularly pleases the natives is the Prince’s free and easy way of going on. He chews tobacco strenuously, and to one public functionary he offered a quid (skrue), with the observation, “Er de en saadaan karl (Is this in your line)?” At a station in Romsdal, where he slept, he was up long before the aides-de-camp. After smoking a cigar with the Lehnsman in the keen morning air, finding that his attendants were still asleep, he went to their apartment, and, like an Eton lad, pulled all the clothes from their beds.

The great advantage which will ensue from the personal acquaintance thus formed between the Prince and this sturdy section of his subjects, is thoroughly understood, and the Norskmen appreciate the good of it, after their own independent fashion. One or two speakers, however, have greeted him with rather inflated and fulsome speeches, going so far as to liken him to St. Olaf, of pious memory. The only resemblance appears to be, that he is the first royal personage, since the days of that monarch, who has visited these mountains.

Utne has some curious historical recollections. In a hillock near the house several klinkers, such as those used for fastening the planking of vessels, have been discovered. Here then is a confirmation of the accounts given by Snorr. The ship, which was the Viking’s most valuable possession, which had borne him to foreign lands, to booty and to fame, was, at his death, drawn upon land; his body was then placed in it, and both were consumed by fire. Earth was then heaped over the ashes, and the grave encircled by a ship-shaped enclosure of upright stones, a taller stone being placed in the centre to represent the mast.

Sometimes, too, the dying Sea King’s obsequies were celebrated in a fashion, around which the halo of romance has been thrown. “King Hake of Sweden cuts and slashes in battle as long as he can stand, then orders his war-ship, loaded with his dead men and their weapons, to be taken out to sea, the tiller shipped, and the sails spread; being left alone, he sets fire to some tar-wood, and lies down contented on the deck. The wind blew off the land, the ship flew, burning in clear flame, out between the islets and into the ocean, and there was the right end of King Hake.”[16]

Considering that this place is so near such an enormous tract of snow and ice as the Folgefond, it is rather astonishing to find that it will grow cherries, apples, and corn, better than most places around.

I make a point in all these spots of examining any printed notice that I may come across, as being likely to throw light on the country and its institutions. Here, for instance, is a Government ordinance of 1855, about the Fante-folk, otherwise Tatere, or gipsies. From this I learn that some fifteen hundred of these Bedouins are moving about the kingdom, with children, who, like themselves, have never had Christian baptism or Christian instruction. They are herewith invited to settle down, and the Government promises to afford them help for this purpose; otherwise they shall still be called “gipsies,” and persecuted in various ways.