XIII Descending From the Fjelde — The Telemarken Fjords — The Arctic Twilight
Dalen, September 8, 1902, 7 P. M.
Our series of great rides on land and water is at an end. For eight days we have been inhaling the crisp, buoyant, ozone-laden atmosphere, viewing the majestic scenery, watching the sturdy, strong-faced men and women, the rosy, yellow-haired children; and now it is over. H and I agree that in our lives we will never again experience a more delightful outing—our sure-enough honeymoon.
This morning we left the Hotel Haukelid with only sixty kilometers for the day, and most of it down hill; since noon yesterday we have been coming down. Just a little snow was now to be seen far away upon distant summits, while forests of birches, interspersed with aspens, covered the nearer slopes. Our road led us along the borders of several exquisite lakes, the little Voxli Vand and then the greater Grungadals Vand, about a mile wide and ten or twelve miles long; frowning precipices and cloud-wrapped heights encircled us on every hand, their rocks now largely greened over with mosses, and birches—only a few firs—growing wherever trees might thrust their roots. Then we drove through a narrow clove, along a frothing torrent, and came to another vand equally shut in, but not so long nor so wide,—a greener, warmer valley, Boertedals Vand in the Boerte Dal. Here we dined at Hotel Boerte, rested till 3 p. m., and then got away for one of the finest thirty kilometers of the trip. If we only had had Ole Mon to drive us, how perfect would have been the day! I imagined we had already come down enough to be at the bottom, but we were yet to descend a mighty canyon with the road blasted out of the precipice’s side, and walled in with rock posts and iron defenders, much like the Laera Dal, while far beneath us wound a silver thread, the almost imperceptible roar of whose waters floated up a tremulous murmur. We came down at a rattling trot, every moment unfolding new vistas of vale and precipice and mountain. After two hours of this fearful, yet joyous, coasting we crossed a wide-spanning iron bridge and swept out into the charming vale of Dalen, at the head of the Bandaks Vand, where now we are. The mountains are here clothed in heavy forests of birch and much deciduous timber, only a little of the fir; I can scarcely realize that yesterday we were up amongst the mosses, the lichens and the snows. As we descended we kept taking off our wraps; our rugs were folded up; H took off her golf cape, then her jacket; she wanted to ride with bared head, so soft and warm had grown the air.
Kristiania, Norway, September 10, 1902.
Yesterday, we left Dalen at the head of navigation on the Bandaks Vand, boarded a taut little steamboat about 150 feet long, built for deep water, and traveled sixty-five kilometers through a succession of vands and fjords—the Telemarken Fjords—canals and locks—twenty locks in all—to Skien (called “Sheen”), where we took the railway for Kristiania, arriving at midnight.
The lakes were long, narrow and mostly shut in by heavily-timbered mountains, which as always, lifted up to enormous heights, green vales and valleys opening in between, where were picturesque hamlets and neat, thrifty-looking farmsteads.
Nothing here impresses me more than the great patience and tireless energy of the “Norsks,” as they call themselves. The magnificent roads, superior to those of England, equal, almost equal to those of France; the canals, blasted for miles through solid granite; the railways, which are as good as our own; the little boats so perfectly appointed. The Norwegians impress you as being born seamen; they know how to build and how to sail a boat, and you feel it.
Standing upon the forward deck, watching the changing panorama of vale and lake and mountain, I became so absorbed in the enchanting pictures that it was some moments before I noticed a slit-eyed, high-cheek-boned, black-straight-haired, short, pudgy youth or man—hard to tell which—a sure-enough Lap if ever there was one, who was making vain efforts to hold conversation with me. He spoke slowly and with some hesitation in perfect Cockney English. I at once gave him my ear, and asked him where he had learned to speak so well. “Hi ave been a cook in Lonnon,” he said. “Hi ave been hassistant cook in a Hinglish otel, you know. Hi am just now leaving the otel at Dalen, where Hi ave been hassistant cook this summer, you know.” Whereupon he told me of his experiences in London. How he landed there from a Norwegian ship, friendless and unknown, and made his way by his aptitude in wiping dishes! And some day he “oped” to go to “Hamerica” and there own a kitchen all for himself. “Ow strange it must be for an Hamerican to see real mountains,” he exclaimed, and I discovered that the only America he knew about was the prairie land of the flat west.
Upon my asking whether he was not a Laplander, he resented the suggestion with great vehemence, declaring himself to be a Viking pure, and he begged me to let him know if I should learn of any good openings for dish-wipers in America, especially if it would lead to the dignity of cook. His manner was frank and simple, wholly free from self-consciousness, except as he took great pride in being able to speak the English tongue. In Norway there are no classes and all men stand equal before the law. It is as respectable there to work as it is in America, and similarly men meet you as your natural equals. There is none of that offensive subserviency which so jars upon one in most of the monarchy and aristocracy bestridden lands.
The volume of water which flows from these lakes and through these deep canals is immense and we have sometimes swept along the narrower channels at really an exciting pace. We had just passed through the beautiful Flaa Vand and descended the deep full-flowing river, the Eids Elv, with its many locks, to the greater Nordsjoe Vand, when we drew up beside a little pier. There were many people upon it. Evidently, there was here gathered an unusual crowd, and down the hillside leading toward us came yet others. The whole community had turned out. Two tall, rosy-cheeked, blue-eyed, fair-haired young men were the center of the throng; about them the others pressed. They were neatly dressed, fine-looking fellows, and the men and women were kissing them good-bye. They were going to America, perhaps never to return. The mother, a gentle-faced, white-haired old lady, wept on the necks of each of them, and the white-haired father kissed them upon either cheek, and then everybody rushed in to shake their hands. They were going to America where so many of Norway’s most ambitious and able sons had gone before. The whole countryside would watch their career and wait for news of their success! Two iron-bound chests were dragged on to the boat. The young men stepped alertly aboard, their faces flushed with the excitement of the farewells and the anticipations of the land across the sea. As I watched them and their family and friends waving their adieus I could not but ponder upon this instinct of the old-world races, my own among the rest, to go out and seize life’s prizes even across the widest waters. The leave-taking I was now beholding must be not unlike that of the men and women who in the days of Pilgrim and Puritan and Cavalier left little England to found a community where freedom and opportunity are still the loadstones which attract the energy and youth of all the world.
In traveling through Norway, I have been greatly surprised to see so many newly-built farmhouses, barns and farm buildings, new fences and modern gates. Everywhere the old and tumbled-down is being replaced by the substantial and modern. I have seen nothing like this anywhere in Europe; nowhere so general a replacing of the old with the new. Many of the new farmhouses are not merely substantial, but are architecturally attractive. There must be abundant money coming from somewhere to pay the cost of this universal rebuilding. I have asked about it more than once and every time I receive the same reply. “The sons have gone to America, they are in Chicago, in Minnesota, in Dakota. They have grown rich. They are sending back the money. They want the old places made as trim and spick as though they were in America.” “Put everything in good repair,” they say, “never mind the cost.” And then, every few years they return with the American grandchildren to see the beloved old folks. More and more of these American-Norwegians are coming every year to holiday in the fatherland. Many now regularly sojourn throughout the summer. A few, a very few, remain to end their days on the loved home-soil.
I also learn that it is to supply the demand of this increasing travel from America to Norway that the Scandinavian-American line have recently put on the large ocean steamers now sailing direct from New York to Kristiansand, with accommodations equal to anything which has hitherto entered the ports of Germany and England and France.
The other day at Loeken, we were waited on at table by a fine-looking young woman who spoke perfect United States. She had an air about her of comfortable independence. The house, the farm buildings, everything about the place was new and neat. While we were talking with her, she told us that she had a brother and an uncle in the far west, one at Spokane, who was rich. She was living with him when word came that the old father had passed away. She was needed at home to care for the mother and the younger children, so she returned; and the brother sent back the money to have the old place put in perfect repair.
This intimate connection between our thriving west and Norwegian home life, largely explains, I think, that independent American spirit which now so prominently marks Norway, and the growth and assertion of which is driving her by natural momentum away from the hectoring ties of franchise-constricted, aristocratic Sweden, pushing her toward her inevitable destiny—to become a Republic.
The immigration from Norway to the United States has taken from her nearly one-half the population, a much larger percentage than has yet come forth from Sweden. Although even there, so great is now the exodus, that the Swedish Ministry is alarmed; there is also uneasiness in Norway. Recently, laws have been enacted prohibiting the steamship agents from spreading among the people the glowing accounts of America, by means of which so many steerage tickets are sold, but all the same, the propaganda is persistently carried on. At Skogstad, the other day, I fell in with an alert-looking, quiet-mannered man, who, after he learned I was an American, confided to me that he himself was from Minnesota. He had been born in Norway, but went to America when a boy. He was now back in Norway representing large farming interests in the Northwest, and his business was to recruit farm hands for the western wheat fields. He said he had penetrated during the past three years into every nook and cranny of Norway, everywhere finding out what vigorous and sturdy young men would like to go to America, and then arranging with them to pay their passage, and supply sufficient funds to enable them to pass the immigration inspectors, and providing also their railroad transportation to the west. “They are a splendid and hard working lot of men,” he said. “We want all of them we can get. And most of them do well when they reach America; many of them become rich men.” He was traveling in the disguise of an itinerant doctor selling herbs and roots.
Crossing the mountain this side of Boerte, where the road wound up through the fir forest to avoid an immense cliff which jutted into the lake, I stopped and dug up a little seedling fir, surely a real Norway spruce. I took it up with care and have now brought it to Kristiania and to-day am sending it to America by mail wrapped in damp mosses, and trust that it will reach Kanawha with life enough to live and thrive in its West Virginia home. Along the roadside, not far from where I found the seedling, were lying a fine pair of skjis, just as the wearer laid them aside, only to be worn when winter shall return. The Norwegian does not need to lock his door!
Upon the mossy, marshy, moorland summits and divides which we have traversed, I have noticed widespread beds of peat. In some places these are extensively worked, large areas being uncovered and the squares of peat piled up to dry. The existence of this fuel has proved a godsend to Norway, for the forests are often distant and year by year the woodlands diminish. Although there are some inferior coal beds in southern Sweden, there are none in Norway, and for fuel her peat beds and her forests are her sole domestic supply. And yet, despite this lack of fuel, it seems to me that Norway is dowered with enormous stores of power. She possesses water power without stint. King Winter surely cannot freeze up all the streams. Will not the day yet come when the harnessed water powers of Norway may run the turbines which will supply the world?
It is yet early September; the belated summer of this far northern land, to our strange eyes, is just begun. The meadows are green; the fields of grain are scarcely yellowed; in the markets of Kristiania we see daily exposed for sale fresh-ripened strawberries; in our Virginian latitude it would be the season of the month of May. Yet we see big stacks of firewood piled near each farmhouse door; we see the cabin newly banked with earth against the frost; at blacksmith’s shop we see men hammering on well-used sled; alongside the road, awaiting the winter’s need, lies an upturned snowplow newly ironed; everywhere men are making ready for the cold. In a fortnight the highway across the Haukeli Fjeld will be blocked with new-fallen snow. In a month the jingling bells of sleighs and sledges will sound along the now verdant valley of the Baegna Elv.
A year ago, when traveling in Mexico, in southern Michoacan, the tropical precipitancy of the night was sure to take me unawares. I was never quite prepared for the sharp transition from day to night. The hot red sun rested a moment above the towering Cordillera, then it dipped behind, and the cold white stars instantly shone forth. Here in Norway my senses are equally surprised. It is already September and yet “early candle light,” means near ten o’clock. The day dies slowly. The contours of vale and mountain almost imperceptibly fade upon the eye. A violet blueness softens form and hue. Little by little the violet changes into gray, and then the grayness pervades the air as though the shadow of some phantom raven’s wing overspread the world.
At nine o’clock, at half past nine, at ten o’clock, the goats and cattle are awake—we have made long day-drives by reason of the limits to our time—I wonder if they ever sleep. The sparrows and gray-coated crows fly soberly across our way; a magpie softly flutters to the road. I hear no bird-songs, only faint twitters, no chirping crickets, no piping frogs and newts, none of the evening sounds of my Virginian countryside. A hush creeps over dal and fjeld and fjord, even as do the mysterious violet and gray shadows. We ourselves are drowsed. I do not speak to H nor she to me. To the ponies Ole Mon has ceased to talk. The world is stilled. We draw long breaths, inhale the delicious air, lean back against the cushions of our seat, and daydream amidst this hush of man and thing. The old Norse driver of the Roldal cautions H to watch. “This is the hour,” he says, “when the elves and pixies stir abroad. Count the fifth meadow from where you stand and there they are always sure to be.” Thus have we driven through the twilight, the mysterious, lingering twilight of this far and almost Arctic North.
This is the last letter you will receive from Norway and I am sure that you will agree with me, after reading what I have sent you, that nowhere in all the world may one have a more delightful outing.
As to expenses, I figure it up that the total cost for both of us is a little less than five dollars per day, which includes our carriage, our driver, our eating, our sleeping and the liberal fees which, like good Americans, we have everywhere bestowed. Here in Norway the oere (two and one-half cents) is as big as the quarter, and the kroner (twenty-seven cents) as big as the dollar.
How long the oere will loom so large I dare not say, for the American invasion is begun, and I fear the kroner will soon be no bigger than the dime.