Driving through the woods on the shores of the lake, after a good deal of up and down hill, I at length arrived at the ferry, twenty miles from Gulsvig, where the Krorenfjord contracts into a river. Green, the station for the night, affords excellent accommodation; so much so, that the notorious Danish Count (See Oxonian in Norway), so addicted to bear-hunting, has been up as far as here on purpose to taste the port-wine. By-the-bye, I encountered a Norsk proverb to-day, which if it were not ancient, would almost seem to have been made for the Count: “Han har skut BjÖrn,” literally, “he has shot a bear,” is said of a man who is drunk. People in that state not only see double, but shoot with the longbow.

Gunild Green was the perfection of a landlady, putting meat and good bread before the wayfarer, and beer of the best. Her blue jacket, with its odd gussets behind, and broad edging of red and yellow braid, did not, it is true, reach nearly down to the place where a woman’s waist ought to be. But that was no matter, for the skirt made up for the omission by advancing to the jacket. Her Quaker-like, quiet face was framed in a neat cap, and the forehead bound in with a silk kerchief. All about the house betokened considerable wealth.

But notwithstanding that these people are of the Upper Ten Thousand of Norway, I hear that the old superstitious customs still obtain at the gaard. A cross in chalk, or an axe or a toll-knife is placed over every cattle-shed at Yule. The old lady gave no reason further than it was skik (custom). A cake with a cross of juniper berries made on the top of it is baked at Christmas against Candlemas-day (Kyndel-misse). In other parts of Norway a small cake is baked for each person, and not eaten till twenty days after. Again, the sledges are never allowed at Christmas to lie flat on the ground, but are reared up against the wall. If anybody goes thrice round the house, then looks in at a window through a black kerchief and sees anyone at the board without a head, that person will die before next Yule.

The day after Yule the men go out with the cow-house ordure very early, before light. They never, if they can help it, bring in water for the copper on Yule, but get a supply into the house the day before. On Christmas Eve every person of condition has a mess of rice-porridge, and the servants in better class houses come into the room and receive a glass of something comfortable. The cattle are not overlooked on this great Christian festival. “Come, Dokkero,” says the milkmaid, just like some girl in Theocritus, to her cow, “you shall have some good food to-day.”

Finding that I can go some five miles by water, I select that method of conveyance. Indeed, I should prefer this species of locomotion for the rest of the journey, for I find, on examination, that in consequence of the jolting motion of the country carts, my effects are pounded up as if they had been brayed in a mortar. One or two silk kerchiefs have turned into tatters, and the sand of the cartridges has oozed out and become mixed up with the contents of the broken Macassar oil bottle, which I had destined for my elf-locks on again reaching civilization. The boat was long and narrow, and easily rowed, but the stalwart rower was hardly a match in speed for some little black and white ducks to which we gave chase. At last we got among them. Down they dived, and, as they reappeared, off went my gun; but in consequence of the crankness of the boat, it was impossible to take aim quick enough, and, after a few unavailing shots, I gave up the game, fairly beaten. My fishing tackle likewise did no execution among the trout, which now begin to get smaller. The boatman mentioned two other kinds of fish to be found here, “scad” and “jup.”

In fact we are now getting out of the wild sporting of the upper valleys, although six rifles suspended in the passage of the next station-house, Vassenrud, betokened the existence of large fowl, and probably beasts of prey, in the forests around. Countless logs float down this river, and I see here a list of the different brands used by the Drammen merchants to distinguish the several owners.

As the horse I was to have lived across the Sound, I had ample time to look about me, and observe the peculiarities of the establishment. The best room floor was painted in figures, around it were ranged a score of high-backed, old-fashioned leather chairs, stamped with a pattern. I wish the author of the Sketch-book could have seen them; he would have made them all tell a history at once. Leaving this room, I followed my nose, and entered the door facing. A very fat man, with a heavy, sleepy eye, quite a tun of a fellow, a red skull-cap striped with black on his head, sat in his shirt sleeves eating a leg of veal, which was flanked by some nice-looking bread and a bottle of brandy. It was only nine, A.M., but the opportunity was not to be lost, so I fell to also. Beside me, on a shelf, was a tankard of massive silver, weighing one hundred and twenty lod = about sixty-five ounces English. Pretty well to do, thought I, these peaceful descendants of the Vikings.

In reply to my query whether there were any old memorials about, the obese Boniface moved his lack-lustre eye slowly, and shook his head. Old memorials, forsooth! were not the newly-killed calf and its appetizing adjuncts subjects much more worthy of attention? Presently, however, after an interval of seemingly profound thought, he observed that there was something like a coffin or two in the forest a mile off.

“Had they been opened?”

“No. People thought it unlucky to touch them. They were near his hÛsman’s, and the hÛsman would show me them if I mentioned his name.”

At the hÛsman’s I found nobody but his wife, who was ignorant on the subject. So, after a fatiguing search, I returned without having accomplished my purpose, and the horse having arrived, I had to start. The fat man was now recumbent on the bed within, looking uncommonly like a barrel of beer. All Norwegians take a siesta at noon. The charge made for my sumptuous repast was twelve skillings = five-pence English. As we roll along gaily through the sombre pine-forests, the odour of which the Norwegians, I think wrongly, compare to that of a “dead house” (Liighus). I fall, as a matter of course, into conversation with Knut, my schuss.

“Had he ever seen these trolls which people talked of so much higher up the valley.”

“No; I never saw one; but I’ve heard one.”

“Indeed, where?”

“When I was hewing wood in the forest.”

“What did he say?”

“He only said ‘Knut’ three times.”

“And did you speak?”

“No—that would have been unlucky. They are not such bad people, folks say, if you only become well acquainted with them.”

In the forest we passed some splendid trees near Snarum. “Valuable timber about here,” I observed.

“Yes, very. It’s not long ago that some sold for a hundred dollars apiece (twenty pound sterling); they were seventy feet long, and more than four in diameter. Vassenrud (the fat station-master, no wonder, with all this property, he is fat) has a deal of forest. He sold some lately. He got sixteen thousand dollars for giving leave to fell the timber on a square mile (seven English), none to be cut smaller than nine inches in diameter, eighteen feet from the ground. These trees just here belong to a stingy old fellow, who lives down there by the side of the river, Ole Ulen. A man came from the By (town) to see them, and make a purchase.

“‘I have come to look at the trees,’ said he.

“‘Oh, yes,’ said Ole Ulen; ‘we’ll go and see them.’

“Arrived in the forest, the stranger measured the big trees with his eye, and thought they would suit exactly.

“‘Fine trees, aren’t they?’ said Ole Ulen, adjusting his spectacles, and almost breaking his neck to look up at the trees. ‘So tall and so thick,’ he continued, like a miser gloating over his treasure.

“‘Not bad,’ replied the proposing buyer, in a careless tone, chuckling inwardly at the thought of the bargain he was going to drive with the plainly-dressed, simple-looking old bonder, but careful not to betray his admiration of the magnificent timber, for fear of sending up the prices.

“‘No, not so bad,’ said Ole Ulen, as they walked homeward.

“‘Well, what’s to be the price?’ asked the merchant, while they were drinking a glass of brandy.

“‘Price!’ replied the other; ‘I’m not going to sell them—never thought of it. You asked to look at them, and so you have, and welcome, and well worth seeing they are.’

“‘Well, no doubt,’ said Knut; ‘he might do what he liked with his own trees. Sell them or not, as he thought proper.’

“‘But he’s so fond of his money, he won’t help his own kith and kin. There was his son-in-law, over the river, had just completed a purchase, and went to him to borrow three hundred dollars.

“‘Very sorry,’ was his reply, ‘but he had got no cash in the house.’

“The young man went and got accommodated at another farm, and then returned to Ule’s.

“‘Well, how have you fared?’

“‘All right; I got the loan. They were the more willing to lend, for they had some notes of old date, which are to be called in by the bank at Trondjem, before the month’s out, and it will save them the trouble and expense of sending them up there.’

“‘Ay, so,’ replied Ule, meditatively. ‘What is the date of the notes that are to be called in? Perhaps I may have some.’ And going to an old cupboard, he produced from a coffee-pot seven hundred dollars.”

We now get into an enclosed and more cultivated country, and see symptoms of civilization as we approached Vikersund, in the shape of a drunken man or two staggering homewards; and, at the merchant’s, where I stop to make some small purchase, there is a crowd of peasants clustering round the counter, or sitting in corners, imbibing corn brantviin.

At Vikersund the road forks. That to the left leads to Christiania, by the shores of the beautiful Tyri Fjord and the pass of Krog-Kleven; the other crossing the wide sound, the only vent of the Tyri, Hols, and Rand fjords, by a very long bridge, goes to Drammen and Kongsberg.

In the stream lie thousands of logs that have been cut down in the mountains and along the feeders of this glorious waterway, to the very foot of the Fillefjeld. Some of them have, perhaps, left their native grove two or three years ago, and would never have got here were it not for certain persons jogging their memories and goading them into unwilling activity. One of the most characteristic features of a Norwegian valley are gangs of burly broad-chested men, armed with huge poles, the ends of which are shod with a hook and spike. Directly there are symptoms of the water rising after rain, these fellows appear suddenly, and are seen pushing the stranded timbers from the shore, dashing through the water in their great jack-boots, to islands or shoals, for the like purpose, or boating across the river to set afloat some straggling laggard; and, forthwith, all these, like so many great cadises, just disengaged from their anchor, and soon to take wing, go swarming down the stream. The boat, by-the-bye, used by these Norsk equivalents to the Far West lumber-men, is never destined to return to its mountain home, but will be sold below for what it will fetch.

In Norway scenes are constantly meeting the traveller’s eye, whether it be such as that just described, or the rude log-huts, or the countless tree stumps, the work of the axe, or the unthinned density of forests which are not near any watercourse, which forcibly bring to one’s mind Oliphant’s description of Minnesota and the Far West. But there is this trifling difference, that whereas there you may as likely as not be bulleted, or your weasand slit by a bowie-knife, you are safer in this country than in any land in Europe.

As it was my purpose to visit a clergyman in the neighbourhood, I left the main route, and took a short cut, by which I saved six miles in distance, though not in time. For the short way was a pleasant alternation of ledges of rock and mudpits. Fortunately I was provided with an air-cushion to sit upon, or the jolting must have proved fatal, at all events to my teeth. If there is no dentist here—such a thing I never heard of in Norway—there ought to be.

After four or five miles up and down, we descended in good earnest through a straggling grove of pines, their dark foliage now rendered darker by the fast approaching night. To our left I could see something white, and heard fierce roarings. The broad expanse of water at Vikersund had narrowed into a mere fissure, only a few yards across, with splintered walls of overhanging rock. What! that small-throated boa-constrictor going to swallow up such a monstrous lump of water at a mouthful? Choked it will be, and no mistake. See, what a chattering, and frothing, and smoking! That lot of trees, too, they must stick in his gizzard; half-a-dozen have lodged there already, firm and immovable, as if riveted by the strongest bolts. A few steps more, and behold! the strife has ceased; the logs, together with the boiling soapsuds, have shot through the tunnel or funnel, and lie heaving and panting on the waters of another river of no little breadth and volume, which, swiftly gliding through the forest, cuts in here, and joins the narrow outlet of the great Drammen river at right angles.

After their prodigious tussle, it must be quite a relief to those much battered logs to rock in the comparatively tranquil lap of the Hallingdal river; for it is my old friend of Hemse-Fjeld reminiscence—who kept now rollicking and roaring like a schoolboy, now floating lightly and whispering softly, like a miss in her teens, as we journeyed along together—that here clubs its fortunes with the lusty progeny of the Fillefjeld.

At the fork made by the two streams dwelt a ferryman, who speedily transferred my effects from the carriole to his frail boat. It required careful navigation to get over; as the surge of the Vikersund river—which, as the ferryman told me, albeit it had come through such an eye of a needle, was by far the bigger of the two—was of such momentum and so sudden in its dash that the crowding waters of the Halling were struck all of a heap by the concussion, and fairly turned round and fled. After recovering the first shock, however, it gradually established a nearer intimacy with the boisterous stranger, and they presently made a fresh start forward, and vaulted together over a rugged rapid below, which I could just see gleaming through the dusky shades of the evening, and the forest. The first struggles with the world of the new-married couple.

“We have only to get up the hill,” said the ferryman, shouldering my pack, as we safely reached the opposite shore, “and we shall be soon at the parson’s house.”

A warm welcome did I get from my friend the pastor. He recognised my voice directly, as he opened the door in the dark.

“Vilkommen, Vilkommen, Metcalfe! Hvor staae til? (welcome, Metcalfe! how are you?) Det fornoie mig meget, at de har ikke glemt os (I’m glad you’ve not forgotten us).”

And I was speedily in the StuË, shaking hands with the FruË (clergymen’s wives have by law this title; merchants’ wives are only madame). Her fair, good-humoured face fatter, and her figure rounder than when I saw her four years ago at the mountain parish in the west. Lisa, too, the hobbledehoy girl, all legs and arms, like a giblet pie, has now become quite a woman, and more retiring. The baby, Arilda, too, runs about bigger and bonnier, while Katinka, another and elder sister, whom I have never seen before, comes forward to greet her father’s friend. There are also some ladies from the “by” (town), with the latest news, foreign and domestic.

I spend a day or two with my kind and intelligent host and his family. Much of his income is derived from land, so that he farms on a large scale. The house is beautifully situate. Beneath us may be seen the river playing at hide and seek among umbrageous woods. On the hills opposite is the mother church of the district, with large farms clustering about it. The neighbourhood abounds in minerals. Not far off is a cobalt-work, now under the auspices of a Saxon company, and which is said to be productive. If the old derivation for cobold be from cobalt, because that particular sort of sprite’s favourite habitat is a mine of this description, I shall, no doubt, pick up a goblin story or two at the manse.

Katinka, the eldest girl, is very well read; better certainly than any I have met with in the country, for they are not a reading people. She sings a national song or two with much feeling, and explains to me the meaning of them, which, as they are written in old Norsk, would be otherwise difficult of comprehension.

“But how do you know the meaning of this outlandish lingo?—it’s not a bit like the written Norsk of the present time.”

“It was not for nothing,” replied she, “that I lived from a baby in the mountain parish where we first saw you. The inhabitants of those sequestered dales still use many of the old words and forms of speech.”

I was soon on my hobby—legends and superstitions.

“Have you any witches or spÆ-wives, as they are called in Scotland?” asked I.

“Signe-kierringe, you mean. Oh, yes. They are still to be found. My aunt there, when she was a girl, was measured by one.”

“How so?”

“They take a string, which they pretend has been prepared in some wonderful manner, and measure round the waist, and along the arms, and so on most accurately, and there is supposed to be some wonderful virtue in the operation. It is a sure recipe against all harm from the Nisser. But I have a book here, with a tale of one Mads, a warlock. He was cutting timber in the forest; it was about mid-day. He had just got the wedge into a fallen tree, when he saw his old woman come up with his dinner. It was romme-grÖd (a peculiar sort of porridge). She sat down, when he just spied a tail peeping out behind her, which she chanced to stick in the cleft that he had made in the tree. Mads bade her wait a bit, and he would sit down and eat directly. The cunning fellow meantime managed to get the wedge out. The crack closed, and the tail was fast. At the same time he uttered Jesus’ name. Up started the hag, and snapped off the end of her tail. What a scream she gave. On looking at the dinner, he found it was nothing but some cow-dung in a bark basket.”

“Have not the peasantry here,” I inquired, “some odd notions about the fairies stopping the wheel of the water-mill?”

“Oh, yes!” replied Miss Katinka. “September 1st is an important day for the millers. If it is dry on that day it will be dry, they say, for a long time. This is owing to the Quernknurre (mill sprite).

“There is a tale in AsbjÖrnsen of a miller near Sandok Foss, in Thelemarken (I visited this place afterwards), whose mill-wheel would not go, although there was plenty of water. He examined the machinery accurately, but could not discover what was amiss. At last he went to the small door that opened into the wheel-box. Opening it a very little he spied a most vicious-looking troll poking about inside. Closing the door with all speed, before the troll caught sight of him, he went to his hut and put on the fire a large pot full of tar. When it was boiling hot he went to the wheel door and opened it wide. The troll inside, who was busy scotching the wheel, faced round at him in a moment, and opened his mouth (or rather his head) wider than a warming pan, indeed so wide that his gape actually reached from the door sill to the top of the door. ‘Did you ever see such a gape as that in all your life?’ said he to the miller. Without a moment’s delay the miller poured the hot pitch right into the monster’s throat (which might be called pitching it into him), and answered the inquiry by asking another, ‘Did you ever get such a hot drink before?’ It would appear that the miller had effectually settled the creature, for he sunk down into the water with a fearful yell, and never was heard of more. From that day forward the miller throve, and much grist came to him, actually and figuratively.”

Miss Katinka was not a classical scholar, so I suppressed certain illustrations which rose to my tongue, as she told the story, such as “hians immane,” and the miller having used a most effectual digamma for stopping the hiatus; and I told her instead, that in the Scottish highlands there is a kindred being called Urisk, a hairy sprite, who sets mills at work in the night when there is nothing to grind, and that he was once sent howling away by a pan full of hot ashes thrown into his lap when asleep.

“I have read another curious story of a mill,” continued my fair informant.

“There was a peasant up in the west whose mill (quern) was burned down two Whitsuntides following. The third year, on Whitsun Eve, a travelling tailor was staying with him, making some new clothes for the next day. ‘I wonder whether my new mill will be burnt down to-night again?’ said the peasant. ‘Oh, I’ll keep watch,’ exclaimed the tailor; ‘no harm shall happen.’ True to his word, when night came on, the knight of the shears betook himself to the mill. The first thing he did was to draw a large circle with his chalk on the floor, and write ‘Our Father’ round it, and, that done, he was not afraid, no not even if the fiend himself were to make his appearance. At midnight the door was suddenly flung open, and a crowd of black cats came in. The tailor watched. Before long the new comers lit a fire in the chimney-corner, and got a pot upon it, which soon began to bubble and squeak, as if it was full of boiling pitch. Just then, one of the cats slily put its paw on the side of the pot, and tried to upset it. ‘Mind, nasty cat, you’ll burn yourself,’ said the tailor, inside his ring. ‘Mind, nasty cat, you’ll burn yourself, says the tailor to me,’ says the cat to the other cats. And then all the cats began dancing round the ring. While they were dancing, the same cat stole slily to the chimney-corner and was on the point of upsetting the pot, when the tailor exclaimed, ‘Mind, nasty cat, you’ll burn yourself.’ ‘Mind, nasty cat, you’ll burn yourself, says the tailor to me,’ says the cat to the other cats. And then the whiskered crew began to dance again round the tailor. Another attempt at arson was made with no better success. And all the cats danced round the tailor, quicker and quicker, their eyes glowing, till his head spun round again. But still he luckily kept his self-possession and his sense. At last the cat, which had tried to upset the pot, made a grab at him over the ring, but missed. The tailor was on the alert, and next time the cat’s paw came near he snipped it off short with his shears. What a spitting and miauling they did make, as they all fled out of the mill, leaving the tailor to sleep quietly in his ring for the rest of the night. In the morning he opened the mill door and went down to the peasant’s house. He and his wife were still in bed, for it was Whitsun morning, and they were having a good sleep of it. How glad the miller was to see the tailor. ‘Good morrow to you,’ he said, reaching out his hand, and giving the tailor a hearty greeting. ‘Good morrow, mother,’ said the tailor to the wife, offering her his hand. But she looked so strange and so pale, he could not make it out. At last she gave him her left hand, and kept the other under the sheepskin. Ay, ay, thought the tailor, I see how the ground lies.”

“The miller-wife was one of the subterranean people, then,” I put in.

“No doubt of it,” said Miss Katinka.

“If the tailor had been an Englishman,” observed I, “we should have said that he ‘knew which way the cat jumped;’” and then I had to explain, and this elicited the remark, that the Norwegians are by no means deficient in proverbs.

“Have you a Norwegian equivalent to our commonest of English proverbs—‘to carry coals to Newcastle?’”

“Yes,” put in the worthy pastor, “but with a difference. We say, ‘to carry the bucket over the brook to fetch water.’”

“Well, we have another, not less common—‘to reckon upon your chickens before they are hatched.’”

“That’s our ‘you must not sell the skin till you’ve shot the bear.’ It’s just the same as yours, but with a local colouring.”

“All these proverbs, by the way, are not true,” continued I. “There is an English proverb that it requires nine tailors to make a man: as if a tailor was inferior to the rest of mankind in courage. That last story of Miss Katinka’s is a proof to the contrary. I remember being in Berlin, just after the revolution of 1848, and visiting the cemetery of those who had fallen. There was one monument to the memory of one Johann Schwarz, with an inscription to the effect that he fought like a hero, and received nine, or maybe nineteen wounds. Indeed, at the London police-offices, whenever a man is brought before his Worship for assault and battery of the worst description, or for drubbing the policemen within an inch of their lives, the odds are that it will be a tailor with a little body and a great soul.”

But my last observations were quite lost on my fair informant. For at this moment a letter was put into her hands, and she escaped from the room, her colour rising, and her thoughtful eye assuming a softer and more conscious expression.

“It’s Katinka’s weekly letter from her betrothed,” explained her father, when she had gone; “they always correspond once a week, and this is the day when the post arrives.”

As I was walking about the house, in company with my clerical friend, I had a fresh proof of the facilities afforded in this country to clever artisans to improve themselves. Thus, one Ole, who is driving the hay-cart up the steep inclined plane to the hay-loft, over the cow-house, has shown a strong turn for mechanics, and on the clergyman’s recommendation has obtained from the government three hundred dollars to defray the expense of a journey to England, that he may be further initiated and perfected in the mysteries of his trade. Another man about the farm, who has exhibited much natural talent as an engraver, is going to be sent to Christiania, to a craftsman in that line.

Among other things, I hear from my host of a regulation, in respect to ecclesiastical matters, which is well worth mentioning. In England, as we all know, no provision is made by the law for pensioning off a superannuated clergyman, or for the support of a clergyman’s widow; nay, the very sensible proposal to pension a bishop, the other day, was decried as simony. Not so in Norway. The widow of a beneficed clergyman here has a proportion of the income of the benefice (from twenty to sixty dollars) during her life. Besides this, there is attached to most parishes what is called an EnkesÆde (widow farm). Formerly she cultivated this herself; but, by a late regulation, these places have been sold, and she has the profits, which vary, in different cases, in amount.

Besides the beneficed clergy, there are in Norway another class of clergy called Residerende Capellan. He holds a chapel of ease in some large parish, with land and house attached, but is quite independent of the rector. His appointment, like that of the beneficed clergy generally, is vested in the king. On a vacancy, the applications are received by the government, and sent to the king, marked 1, 2, 3, in order of merit. He generally chooses the first, but not always. The number of these chaplains is small—not above ten in all Norway. In some respects, the Residerende Capellan has less work than the Sogne Prest, or rector. Thus the Fattig-wesen, or arrangement for the relief of the poor, is chiefly managed by the Sogne Prest.

The Personal Capellan corresponds to an English curate. Whenever a rector requires a curate, he is bound to take one who is out of employment; and he cannot get rid of him, but must retain his services as long as he is rector. His successor in the living, however, is not similarly bound. It is conceivable that the rector and curate may have differences, and that this perpetuity of connexion may in some instances become irksome to both. Generally, however, it is found to work well—they make the best of it, like a sensible man and wife. And the curate is not exposed, as he sometimes is in England, to the caprices of a rector, or a gynÆcocratical rectoress. Nor, again, is the public eye offended in this country with those unpleasant advertisements of curates holding the views of Venn, with strong lungs, or of Anglicans skilful in intoning and church decoration.

“What examinations have you at the University of Christiania?” I asked.

“There are three. First, the Philosophisk, i.e., a mixed classical examination; second, one in mathematics, physics, theology, and other subjects; and, three years later, there is what is called an Embeds examen (faculty examination), which, for the future clergyman, is in divinity; for the lawyer, in law; and so on. After this examination, however, a clergyman is not compelled to be ordained directly—indeed, he can put this off for some years.”

“And are the Norwegian students such ardent spirits as their brethren in Germany?”

“Ardent enough, but blessed, I hope, with more common sense. They are intense lovers of liberty, and their minds are full of the idea of Scandinavian unity—i.e., a junction not only moral, but political, of the three kingdoms, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. It was only the other day that a thousand Norwegian students paid a visit to Upsala and Stockholm, and then went over to Copenhagen. They were received with open arms by the Danes. The shopkeepers would have no money for the articles they disposed of to them, begging them to take what they had asked for as a souvenir of Denmark. They lived in private houses, and partook of the best during their stay, entirely gratuitously; the King himself bore his share of the Leitourgia, lodging and boarding them in the palace. This Scandinavian party is gaining ground. It would be a great thing for Norway if the Bernadotte dynasty could succeed to the throne of the three kingdoms. They are of a much better stock than the descendants of Christian the First. Look at Oscar and his eldest son, the free-hearted, outspoken soldier; and then look at the throne of Denmark—a king who first marries a respectable princess and divorces her for another, and does the same by her for no reason but because he has set eyes on a sempstress at a fire one night in the capital, and is determined to be possessed of her—and there she is, the Countess Danner. But he is blessed with no offspring, and when he dies the Danes get a Russian for their king, or what’s next to it. No wonder, then, that the Scandinavian idea finds favour in Denmark. Even the king favours the idea; his toast, ‘Denmark, Sweden, and Norway—three lands in peace, one in war,’ shows that, selfish as he is, and careless of trampling on the feelings of those he has sworn to love and cherish, he has some little regard for the future of his people, and has not so far forgotten Waldemar and Knut, as to wish Denmark to be a mere appanage of Russia—in short, he has always aimed at being a popular monarch.”

“A grand idea,” said I, “no doubt, this of Scandinavian unity. I hear that Worsaae, and many of the Danish professors, have taken it up. But I don’t think professors, generally, are practical men—at least, not in Germany, judging from what they did in Frankfort in 1848. They were with child for many months, big with an ineffable conception, but they only brought forth wind after all.”

“Ay! but we Norwegians don’t manage in that way. Look at Eideswold, in 1814, and say whether we are not practical men.”

“Don’t you think Norway has anything to fear from the jealousy of Sweden?” I went on, changing the subject.

“No. There have been two or three times when we have been in a klem (hitch); but the good, sturdy common sense, and quiet resolution of us Norwegians has won the day. And now I think of it, this appointment of the Crown Prince to be viceroy at Christiania will be of inestimable benefit to the country. Our future ruler will get to understand the people, and know their worth. He will see what our freedom is doing for us. He makes himself quite at home with all, gentle and simple: dances with the parsons’ wives and daughters, and smokes cigars with the merchants, but he is observing all the while very narrowly; and he sees we are all united in our attachment to our liberal institutions, and thriving under them wonderfully; while, at the same time, all are most loyal to the kingly house.”

“But don’t you think these religious schisms, Lammers on the one hand and the Roman Catholics on the other, will be causing a split in your national unity?”

“Oh! no. It is true the Roman Catholics have a great cathedral at Christiania; but they don’t number more than a couple of hundred in all.”

“Ah! but there are some more in the North. It was only the other day I heard that some Papists are engaged in an active propaganda about TromsÖ.”

“No doubt; the people up there have always been peculiarly inclined to be carried about by every wind of doctrine. It is there that the Haugianer made way; and it is there that these Papists have pitched their tents. They are going to work very systematically. They have purchased an estate at Alten. Every Sunday they preach to whoever will come. One of their addresses begins with the following attractive exordium:—‘Beloved brethren, we have left father and mother, brothers and sisters, fatherland and friends, from affection to you.’ Again, they boldly talk of bringing into the country light for semi-darkness. The poor Laps much want some little book to be distributed gratis to explain to them the subtilty of these people. I wish you could make the case known to the excellent English Bible Society. And whereas the Haugians were always reputed to be cold and indifferent to the poor, these missionaries are very kind to them, visiting the sick, and offering food, clothing, and instruction gratis. The whole plan is most subtly contrived, especially when the fanatic character of the Laps, and their poverty is considered. If the Government does not take care, and see after their spiritual and temporal wants, they may fall, I grant, into the hands of those people. But I don’t think the Norwegians will ever listen to them. There is an independence in our character that rebels against all priestly domination.”

“So there is in England. But even there it is astonishing to see how far matters are going. Why! it is only the other day that a petition to our Queen, to restore the ‘Greater Excommunication,’ was put into my hands to sign.”

But our conversation now turned from the vanities and vagaries of man to another topic.

The woods around are not deficient, I find, in capercailzie and black cock. Woodcocks, also, from the priest’s description, must be here at times. It was a brown bird, he said, larger than a snipe, which at dusk flies backwards and forwards through an alley in the wood.

“That is the LinnÆa borealis,” said my host to me, pointing to a beautiful little white flower. “A strange thing happened to me,” he said, “when I was at my mountain parsonage in the West. One Baron von DÜbner, a Swedish botanist, drove up one day to my house. I found that he had journeyed all the way thither to make inquiries about a peculiar plant which grows, he said, just under the Iisbrae, on a particular spot of the Dovre Fjeld, and produces berries something like a strawberry, which ripen at the time when the snow melts in spring. I made particular inquiries, and at last found a lad who said he knew what the stranger meant. He had seen and eaten these berries while tending cattle on that particular part of the Fjeld. I gave him a bottle, and he promised next spring to get me some; the baron promising to give a handsome reward. But alas! poor Eric did not survive to fulfil his promise. He was drowned that winter by falling through the ice. Now, do ask your botanists at Oxford about it.”[23]