I am not certain whether Norse boys and girls are very good, or whether they are spoilt. You may travel all day on a steamer with a well-to-do family from the town, or you may live in a farmhouse with a peasant’s family for a month, and the chances are that you will never hear the parents say “Don’t.” One thing I am sure of: the children who live in the country parts do very much as they please; in the summer they go to bed when they feel tired, sometimes not till nearly midnight; and they are not worried about getting their boots and their clothes wet, because no Norwegian troubles his or her head about such matters. Moreover, the life is such a simple one that perhaps there is little opportunity for real naughtiness.

These country children have a very easy time, as for the greater part of the year they have no school to go to, and they spend all the summer out in the open air, looking after the ponies, cows, sheep, or goats, or hay-making, or rowing about, or fishing, or something of the kind. In the winter they, as well as the town children, are all obliged to go to school, from the age of seven to fourteen or fifteen—i.e., until their Confirmation, and until this takes place they receive religious instruction from the priest on Sunday afternoons, for there is no religious teaching in the schools.

There is a great difficulty about the country schools, because in some districts the farms are miles and miles apart, and it would be quite impossible for the children to walk to school and back in the day. In such districts the Government schoolmasters have to go about from place to place, and teach the children in their own homes. If there should be two or three farms close together, one of the farmers provides a schoolroom in his house, and the schoolmaster lives with him as his guest for a time, and then goes on to another house. But the schoolmasters must give every child twelve weeks’ schooling in the year. This does not amount to a great deal—only three months of school in the year!

The wonder is that the children contrive to remember anything that they have learned, with nine long months in which to forget it. Yet they work hard while they are about it; they are inspected every year, and they are required to pass quite difficult examinations at the end. It is expected, however, that before long the twelve weeks’ compulsory schooling will be increased to fifteen weeks.

In the towns the children are not forced to attend school for more than the twelve weeks in the year, but there are, of course, numbers of private schools, high schools, etc., to which parents can send their children, on payment, for a superior education. And at such schools the work goes on for a much longer period of the year—in fact, all through the year, except for two months in the summer and a week at Christmas and at Easter.

It is all much the same as our own arrangements in England. There is the Government school, where the education is free, and there are other schools, where a higher education is paid for. But the compulsory schooling does not end with the seven years at the Government schools referred to above, for there are continuation schools, at which the pupils have to put in a further twenty-four weeks.

In Norway there are no large public schools for boarders, so, in spite of their long holidays, the children do not have half the fun that English boys and girls have. There is no cricket, football, hockey, golf, or any game of that sort, and there is not a racquet-, fives-, or tennis-court in the land. How then, you will ask, do they manage to amuse themselves?

It must be remembered that the winter is much longer in Norway than it is with us, and even if the boys wanted to play football they would not be able to do so, as the ground is covered with snow. At that season they have their various winter sports to keep them busy—ski-ing, skating, tobogganing, and the like, and they do not require any other games. In the summer, instead of playing cricket, they go for walking tours into the mountains, or they go fishing in the rivers and lakes, or sometimes shooting.

Though the Norwegians boast that ball games have been played in the country since Saga times, such games are of the most elementary kind, and would be scorned by any English boy. But for all that the Norse boys are every bit as manly as any other boys, because they enjoy many forms of sport which make them so; and they are strong, because they take plenty of exercise, and have physical drill in their schools.

This brings us to other games played by Norwegian children—not the games which are purchased in the shops in Christiania, Bergen, and other towns, but the games which are played without any of the bought things. Of course the girls have dolls and dolls’ houses and dolls’ tea-parties, like the girls of every land, and there are toys of every description in the shops. The peasant children, however, who live far out in the country, never see a shop, and have to provide themselves with things to play with; but it is wonderful what an amount of amusement they can get out of an old bone, or a block of wood, tied to a yard or two of string.

As a rule their fathers are good hands at carving wood, so toys are easily made for the smaller children, and one finds everywhere such simple toys as wooden dolls, animals, miniature boats, sleighs, and carts.

But the real enjoyment of the Norwegian children—at any rate of the girls—is the outdoor game, played when the weather is fine, both in the town and in the country, wherever there are enough children to make a game. To see a bevy of these quaint little girls throwing heart and soul into their games is delightful, and they have scores and scores of different ones. In most of them dancing and singing play a great part, and the most popular form of game is what is called a “Ring Dance,” in which, as the name implies, the players join hands and dance round in a circle.

Many of these ring dances have their counterpart in English games, and the tunes and words sung to them are almost similar. Whether we adopted them from the Norwegians, or they adopted them from us, is a matter which will probably never be decided, but several games of this kind are common to all Europe. “Blind Man’s Buff,” “Hunt the Slipper,” and “Forfeits,” for instance, are found nearly everywhere. Here is the Norse version of “Round and round the Mulberry Bush,” which in some parts is called “The Washing-Maids’ Dance,” and in others “Round the Juniper Bush”:

The washing operations proceed through the next three days of the week, with a verse to each day. Thus on Wednesday they hang up the clothes, on Thursday they mangle them, and on Friday iron them. Then on Saturday they scrub the floor, and on Sunday go to church.

With each verse the children dance hand in hand round the imaginary juniper bush, singing lustily, and illustrating the different actions of the washing operations. Finally, two and two and arm in arm, they promenade round, as if going to church, and generally prolong the walk while they sing the last verse a second time.

Another very favourite game is SlÆngkompas, which is perhaps best translated almost literally as Scatter-Compass. It is a rapid game, and full of excitement. The players grasp hands in a circle and gallop round, singing the refrain as they go: