EIGHTH LETTER
Written on the train crossing the great Christiania-Bergen route. The prophet of Norway; Nicholas Breakspeare; a typical Norwegian hotel; the Gogstad ship takes us back a few centuries; Odin as poet; the practical opening of the Earlier Frostathing’s Law; the advertising propensities of the Norwegians; the liquor laws of Norway; the musical Spirit of the North; Ole Bull and Edvard Grieg.
En route. Christiana to Bergen, April 3.
My dear Judicia,
Again I seem to be writing to you from a train. I have traveled all day over one of the finest railroads, from a sightseeing point of view, in all Europe. At last darkness is settling down, and I have several hours yet before I reach Bergen, so I may as well employ my time in writing to you, not that I write to you on principle only when there is nothing else to do.
I am traveling on a circular ticket which I bought at Trondhjem of Bennett, “the traveler’s guide, philosopher, and friend,” as Mr. John L. Stoddard styles him in one of his lectures on Norway. Bennett is, to my mind, the final authority on Scandinavian travel. In Norway Thomas Cook is dwarfed into insignificance by Bennett. The same lecturer whom I have quoted goes on to say: “And who is Bennett? you perhaps exclaim. My friends, there is but one Norway, and Bennett is its prophet. Bennett is the living encyclopædia of Norway! Its walking guide book! Its animated map! He sketches lengthy tours back and forth as easily as sailors box the compass! And to still further aid the general public, he has begotten four young Bennetts who act as courteous agents for their father in Bergen, Trondhjem and Christiania.”
His most entertaining guide book contains testimonials from various celebrities. Ex-President Theodore Roosevelt writes a typical letter, bursting with half-suppressed energy and vehemence, in which he thanks the prophet of Norway for his courtesy. Other celebrities, such as the Zemudar of Palavipat (Judicia, don’t tell me you never heard of him!) write in glowing terms, and one anonymous enthusiast, with a poetic turn of mind, writes:
“So be you a clerk or a lord of the Senate
You’ll always do well to rely upon Bennett.”
I seem to be using a great amount of stationery in singing the praises of this tourist agency, but really, Judicia, Bennett is one of the “institutions” of Norway. Everywhere appears the sign Benyt Bennett’s Billetter, which command I have gladly obeyed.
I should have told you before that in coming from Trondhjem to Christiania we passed through a very interesting historic region, the district of which Lake Mjösen is the center. A few miles south of Lake Mjösen is Eidsvold, where the famous national thing was held on various occasions.
Christiania is distinctly a city of the modern type. Scarcely anything venerable remains. I stopped while I was there in a pleasant though modest hotel on Carl Johan’s Gate. Certainly part of the attraction lay in the name, for it is called Fru Bye’s Hotel. Right across the street Fru Bye’s daughters, Fröknerne Bye, keep a Privat Hotel. What a pleasure it must be to the good Fru to have the Fröknerne in business right across the street. The freedom of Fru Bye’s Hotel is delightful. Meals are apparently served at all hours. Supposedly breakfast, or frukost, comes about mid-forenoon; dinner, or middag, from two till four o’clock; and supper, or aftensmad, from eight until ten. On several occasions I got home to the hotel about eleven o’clock and had a full supper. Everything was spread out for me on the table, including mysost and fladbröd, and no one was hovering around anxiously to count the number of pieces I ate, or the number of glasses of milk I drank.
All around the wall are hung huge old copper platters, highly ornamented. The whole hotel is cozy and typically Norwegian.
The Railroad between Bergen and Christiania.
Carl Johan’s Gate, on which it is situated, is the most important street in the city, as it runs straight up to the royal palace. Not far from the palace are situated the National University, the National Theater, the Parliament or Storthing building, and various other public buildings very similar to those of any other European capital. The city has suffered so frequently from fire that it has given up the picturesque for the substantial. Among other buildings of particular interest to Americans is the headquarters of the Nobel Peace Commission.
There is only one place (outside of Fru Bye’s Hotel) in all Christiania where I felt I was truly in Norway rather than in any other European city. That was when I was in the presence of the famous Gogstad viking ship, which is placed in a shed back of the University. This ship was found near the entrance to the Christiania fjord, buried in blue clay, where it had lain for a thousand years or so, and it convinced me that the marvelous tales which the sagas relate are tales of actual heroes; for certainly the sagas did not invent this Gogstad ship. In the center is the Death Chamber, where the captain was buried in his beloved ship. Here one may see just how the viking made his marauding expeditions, how the oars were arranged sixteen on a side, how the square sail was attached by means of pulleys to a mast fastened in the center, and how the rudder was attached on the right side (whence “starboard” or steerboard). The whole ship is only about eighty feet long and sixteen feet wide, and how the ancients managed to navigate the North Sea and the Bay of Biscay and sail far around into the Mediterranean in such primitive craft I cannot understand.
In this old Gogstad ship were found the bones of a dozen horses, several dogs, and a peacock. The owners of these bones were to be the chieftain’s bodyguard during his voyage to the next world. Du Chaillu says of this ship:
“Very few things in the north have impressed me more than the sight of this weird mausoleum, the last resting place of a warrior, and as I gazed on its dark timber I could almost imagine that I could still see the gory traces of the struggle and the closing scene of burial when he was put in the mortuary chamber that had been made for him on board the craft he commanded.”
This same author has written a book of two volumes of some twelve hundred pages about the vikings, and since I saw the Gogstad ship I have been intensely interested in reading of their customs. Their Bible was a long poem called Hávámal, supposed to have been written by Odin himself, containing much worldly wisdom. Odin, it seems, was the precursor of Horace Fletcher as an advocate of “dietetic righteousness.” He says:
“A greedy man
Unless he has sense
Eats ill-health for himself;
A foolish man’s belly
Often causes laughter
When he is among wise men.
“Herds know
When they shall go home
And then walk off the grass;
But an unwise man
Never knows
The measure of his stomach.”
The same god also poses as an authority on matters of the heart. He says:
“The words of a maiden
Or the talk of a woman
Should no man trust;
For their hearts were shaped
On a whirling wheel,
And fickleness laid in their breasts.”
Many epigrammatic gems of wisdom the poet utters, under the name of Odin. Most of them have rather a cynical turn, such as the following:
“A day should be praised at night;
A woman when she is burnt;
A sword when tried;
A maiden when she is married;
Ice when crossed;
Ale when drank.”
Many other quotations from the old Norse writers are extremely entertaining. The first item in the Earlier Frostathing’s Law, Section I, Article I, begins in a very practical way with the following words:
“Every child which is born into this world shall be raised, baptized, and carried to the church, except that only—whose heels are in the place of his toes, whose chin is between his shoulders, the neck on his breast with the calves on his legs turning forward, his eyes on the back of his head, and seal’s fins or a dog’s head.—It shall be buried in the churchyard and its soul shall be prayed for as well as is possible.”
Apparently there used to be considerable doubt whether a deformed child could be legitimately an object for prayer, but nevertheless the experiment was to be tried.
The Norwegians are great advertisers. I have never seen in any other country such a complete utilization of every inch of available space. Inside the electric cars layers of “ads,” three deep, line the car above the windows. A clock in the middle of the car is surrounded by them; the electric lights and windows have advertisements wrought into their very being. Every available inch and much that we should not consider available is used to instruct the passenger as to his needs, which range from insurance companies and banks all the way through cash registers and skates and lamp chimneys to bananas and margarine and Mellin’s Food.
The one thing which it is difficult to get in Christiania is liquor—not that I have personally tried to get any, but I have learned through my oft-quoted British author that he found it very difficult. He was considerably annoyed at finding himself unable to buy whisky anywhere in Christiania from 1 P.M. on Saturday until Monday morning. The liquor laws of Norway are very strict indeed, and cause annoyance to many tourists, who find themselves deprived of their “nip.” However, I hope they remember that these laws, which have been enacted in the last thirty or forty years, have, in a great degree, reduced drunkenness, poverty, crime, and disease. It would seem that a tourist who has a spark of unselfishness in him, however much he may long for his cocktail, would not grudge Norway the laws that have proved such a blessing to the whole country.
Besides forbidding the sale of liquor on Sundays and holidays, and on the eve of festivals, many districts, under government permission, have absolutely prohibited it. There is not a saloon in Norway, but in the larger towns a few of the hotels and restaurants are allowed to sell liquor under certain restrictions. All profits from its sale, with the exception of the company’s expenses and five per cent interest, must be devoted to public and philanthropic purposes. Consequently the trade does not offer great inducements to ambitious merchants.
My train has already passed Voss and is rapidly nearing old Hanseatic Bergen, and I have not even begun to tell you of the glories of this day’s ride. We left Christiania soon after daylight, and in a little less than three hours reached the town of Hönefos, which is one of the centers of the Norwegian wood-pulp industry. There is a great mill here which receives trees in its capacious maw and turns them out again in the form of pulp. Gigantic letters on the side of a barn announce that from here comes the pulp which eventually is made into Lloyd’s Weekly and the London Daily Chronicle.
A little farther on we catch a glimpse of some lofty pine forests which inevitably bring to mind Milton’s lines:
“His spear, to equal which the tallest pine
Grown on Norwegian hills, to be the mast
Of some great admiral, were but a wand,
He walked with.”
Soon after leaving Hönefos, we begin to climb and leave the tall, Norwegian pine and even the scrubby, Norwegian birch far below. This is the only regular railway in Europe which travels above the tree line. To get beyond the tree line in Switzerland, the railway would have to reach an altitude of at least seven thousand feet, but here of course the line is much lower. The resort of Finse has not a single wild tree to its name, though it is only four thousand feet above sea level. Finse is the most unique sporting center in the world, for its winter season lasts from August 1 to July 31, inclusive. Every year there is held a Midsummer Skiing Contest, which attracts people from all over Europe. Here one may ski at midnight by daylight on soft, feathery snow. Of course it is too far south to afford a midnight sun, but it is not too far south to afford midnight daylight.
To-day our train started out in a light rain, ran through a terrific blizzard, and into a bright, sunlit afternoon. I have never seen such concentrated essence of winter as I saw at Finse. The snow must have been four or five feet deep on the average, and in drifts it was ten or twelve feet deep. Finse’s freight house was buried; a big white mound showed where it ought to be, and where it might some day appear if the sun, by its heat, or men, by their shovels, ever attained energy enough to remove the white shroud. Giant snow plows kept the track clear, and our train ignored the blizzard. We “skirted” several invisible valleys, absolutely shut out by the driving snow, and, as Baedeker would say, “threaded” several tunnels, and to my infinite surprise emerged from one of them into a bright, sunny afternoon at Myrdal. We had passed the highest point of the line and had left our blizzard on the other side of the watershed.
From Myrdal I could look far, far down the Flaam Valley, which is one of the finest in Norway. Here and there, clinging to the rocky sides of the valley, were sæter huts. It would be easy enough for one of the milkmaids to “fall out of her sæter,” as the peasant of Mark Twain fame once “fell out of his farm.”
Whenever I think of a sæter, my mind invariably jumps to the romantic figure of Norway’s greatest violinist, Ole Bull. Are you acquainted with a plaintive Norwegian air called Sæterjentens Söndag? You must have heard it, even though you may not recognize it by name. Well, that was written by the great Ole Bull, and it is unquestionably the most familiar and the most beloved of Norway’s national melodies. Ole Bull was born at Bergen, so I am less than a half-hour’s journey from the place which this musician, whose tones thrilled all Europe and America, called home.
He is not the only musician who achieved world-wide fame, with Norway as a starting point. Every one who loves music knows Grieg’s famous Peer Gynt Suite, with its Anitra’s Dance, which seems to reflect the wild, free spirit of the north. Nordraak and Kjerulf and many other lesser musical lights have made all the world familiar with the music of the northland.
I must “pack up” now, as we are fast nearing Bergen. I shall be in an atmosphere there almost as historical as that of Trondhjem, so if some history creeps into my next letter I hope you will forgive me. I shall write you soon from there.
As ever yours,
Aylmer.