In the neighbourhood of Bayeux, in Normandy, it is said that there still lingers a superstition which most probably came there originally in the same ship as Rollo the Walker. The country folks believe in the existence of a sprite (goubelin) who plagues mankind in various ways. His most favourite method of annoyance is to stand like a horse saddled and bridled by the roadside, inviting the passers-by to mount him. But woe to the unlucky wight who yields to the temptation, for off he sets—“Halloo! halloo! and hark away!” galloping fearfully over stock and stone, and not unfrequently ends by leaving his rider in a bog or horse-pond, at the same time vanishing with a loud peal of mocking laughter. “A heathenish and gross superstition!” exclaims friend Broadbrim. But what if we try to extract a jewel out of this ugly monster; knock some commonsense out of his head. Goethe turned the old fancy of Der getreue Eckart to good account in that way. What if a moral of various application underlies this grotesque legend. Suppose, for the nonce, that the rider typify the writer of a book. Unable to resist a strong temptation to bestride the Pegasus of his imagination—whether prose or verse—he ventures to mount and go forth into the world, and not seldom he gets a fall for his pains amid a loud chorus of scoffs and jeers. Indeed, this is so common a catastrophe, from the days of Bellerophon downwards (everybody knows that he was the author of the Letters[1] that go by his name), so prone is inkshed to lead to disaster, that the ancient wish, “Oh that mine adversary had written a book,” in its usual acceptation (which entirely rests, be it said, on a faulty interpretation of the original language), was really exceedingly natural, as the fulfilment of it was as likely as not to lead to the fullest gratification of human malice.

In defiance, however, of the dangers that threatened him, the writer of these lines did once gratify his whim, and mount the goblin steed, and as good luck would have it, without being spilled or dragged through a horse-pond, or any mischance whatsoever. In other words, instead of cold water being thrown upon his endeavours, The Oxonian in Norway met with so indulgent a handling from that amiable abstraction, the “Benevolus Lector,” that it soon reached a second edition.

So far the author’s lucky star was in the ascendant. But behold his infatuation, he must again mount and tempt his fate, “Ay! and on the same steed, too,” cries Mr. Bowbells, to whom the swarming sound of life with an occasional whiff of the sewers is meat, and drink, and all things; who is bored to death if he sees more of the quiet country than Brighton or Ramsgate presents, and is about as locomotive in his tastes as a London sparrow.

“Norway again, forsooth—nous revenons À nos moutons—that horrid bleak country, where the cold in winter is so intense that when you sneeze, the shower from your olfactories rattles against the earth like dust-shot, and in summer you can’t sleep for the brazen-faced sun staring at you all the twenty-four hours. What rant that is about

and all that sort of thing. Give me Kensington Gardens and Rotten Row!”

Still—in spite of Bowbells—we shall venture on the expedition, and probably with less chance of a fiasco than if we travelled by the express-train through the beaten paths of central Europe. There, all is a dead level. Civilization has smoothed the gradients actually and metaphorically—alike in the Brunellesque and social sense. As people progress in civilization, the more prominent marks of national character are planed off. Individuality is lost. The members of civilized society are as like one another as the counters on a draft-board. “They rub each other’s angles down,” and thus lose “the picturesque of man and man.” The same type keeps repeating itself with sickening monotony, like the patterns of paper-hangings, instead of those delightfully varied arabesques with which the free hand of the painter used to diversify the walls of the antique dwelling.

But it is not so with the population of a primitive country like Norway. Much of the simplicity that characterized our forefathers is still existing there. We are Aladdined to the England of three centuries ago. Do you mean to say that you, a sensible man or woman, prefer putting on company manners at every turn, being everlastingly swaddled in the artificial restraints of society; being always among grand people, or genteel people, or superior people, or people of awful respectability? Do you prefer an aviary full of highly educated song-birds mewed up so closely that they “show off” one against another, filled with petty rivalries and jealousies, to the gay, untutored melody of the woods poured forth for a bird’s own gratification or that of its mate? Do you like to spend your time for ever in trim gardens, among standards and espaliers, and spruce flower-beds, so weeded, and raked, and drilled, and shaped, that you feel positively afraid of looking and walking about for fear of making a faux pas? Oh no! you would like to see a bit of wild rose or native heather. (Interpret this as you list of the flowers of the field, or a fairer flower still.) You prefer climbing a real lichened rock in situ, that has not been placed there by Capability Brown or Sir Joseph Paxton.

Indeed, the avidity with which books of travel in primitive countries—whether in the tropics or under the pole—are now read, shows that the more refined a community is, the greater interest it will take in the occupation, the sentiments, the manners of people still in a primitive state of existence. Our very over-civilization begets in us a taste to beguile oneself of its tedium, its frivolities, its unreality, by mixing in thought, at least, with those who are nearer the state in which nature first made man.

“The manners of a rude people are always founded on fact,” said Sir Walter Scott, “and therefore the feelings of a polished generation immediately sympathize with them.” It is this kind of feeling that has a good deal to do with urging men, who have been educated in all the habits and comforts of improved society, to leave the groove, and carve out for themselves a rough path through dangers and privations in wilder countries.

“You will have none of this sort of thing,” said Dr. Livingstone, in the Sheldonian theatre, while addressing Young Oxford on the fine field for manly, and useful, and Christian enterprise that Africa opens out,—“You will have none of this sort of thing there,” while he uneasily shook the heavy sleeve of his scarlet D.C.L. gown, which he had donned in deference to those who had conferred on him this mark of honour. Yes, less comforts, perhaps, but at the same time less red tape.

“Brown exercise” is better than the stewy, stuffy adipocere state of frame in which the man of “indoors mind” ultimately eventuates. Living on frugal fare, in the sharp, brisk air of the mountain, the lungs of mind and body expand healthfully, and the fire of humanity burns brighter, like the fire in the grate when fanned by a draught of fresh oxygen. Most countries, when we visit them for the first time, turn out “the dwarfs of presage.” Not so Norway. It grows upon you every time you see it. You need not fear, gentle reader, of being taken over beaten ground. “The Oxonian” has never visited Thelemarken and SÆtersdal before. So come along with me, in the absence of a better guide, if you wish to cultivate a nearer acquaintance with the roughly forged, “hardware” sort of people of this district, content to forget for a while the eternal willow-pattern crockery of home. Thelemarken is the most primitive part of Norway; it is the real Ultima Thule of the ancients; the very name indicates this, and the Norwegian antiquaries quote our own King Alfred in support of this idea. It is true, that on nearer inspection, its physical geography will not be found to partake of the marvellous peculiarities assigned to Thule by the ancient Greek navigator, Pytheas, who asserts that it possessed neither earth, air, or sea, but a chaotic mixture of all three elements. But that may emphatically be said to be neither here nor there. Inaccessible the country certainly is, and it is this very inaccessibility which has kept out the schoolmaster; so that old times are not yet changed, nor old manners gone, nor the old language unlearned under the auspices of that orthoepic functionary. The fantastic pillars and arches of fairy folk-lore may still be descried in the deep secluded glens of Thelemarken, undefaced with stucco, not propped by unsightly modern buttress. The harp of popular minstrelsy—though it hangs mouldering and mildewed with infrequency of use, its strings unbraced for want of cunning hands that can tune and strike them as the Scalds of Eld—may still now and then be heard sending forth its simple music. Sometimes this assumes the shape of a soothing lullaby to the sleeping babe, or an artless ballad of love-lorn swains, or an arch satire on rustic doings and foibles. Sometimes it swells into a symphony descriptive of the descent of Odin; or, in somewhat of less Pindaric, and more Dibdin strain, it recounts the deeds of the rollicking, death-despising Vikings; while, anon, its numbers rise and fall with mysterious cadence as it strives to give a local habitation and a name to the dimly seen forms and antic pranks of the hollow-backed Huldra crew.

The author thinks that no apology is needed for working in some of the legendary interludes which the natives repeated to him, so curious and interesting, most of which he believes never appeared before in an English dress, and several of them in no print whatever. Legends are an article much in request just now; neither can they be considered trifling when viewed in the light thrown upon the origin of this branch of popular belief and pastime by the foremost men of their time, e.g., Scott, and more especially Jacob Grimm. Frivolous, indeed! not half so frivolous as the hollow-hearted, false-fronted absurdities of the “great and small vulgar,” is the hollow-backed elf, with the grand mythological background reaching into the twilight of the earth’s history, nor so trifling the simple outspoken peasant, grave, yet cheery, who speaks as he thinks, and actually sometimes laughs a good guffaw, as the stuck-up ladies and gentlemen of a section of the artificial world, with their heartless glitter, crocodile tears, their solemn pretence, their sham raptures.

I must not omit to say that the admirable troll-drawing, which forms the frontispiece of the first volume, is one selected from a set of similar sketches by my friend, T. G. Jackson, Esq., of Wadham College, Oxford. It evinces such an intimate acquaintance with the looks of those small gentry that it is lucky for him that he did not live in the days when warlocks were done to death.

F. M.