FOOTNOTES
[1] The families of Lejonhöved and Svinhöved were conspicuous in the wars of Gustavus Vasa, at which time Sweden threw off the yoke which Denmark, with the concurrence of Norway, had fixed on them, by taking undue advantage of the conditions stipulated in the Union of Calmar. The head of the former family perished in the treacherous massacre at Stockholm, generally spoken of by the name of the “Bloodbath.” Both families derive their names from their armorial bearings, as at that time there were no surnames in Sweden. These signify Lion-head and Boar-head, or Pig-head, respectively. Hence the Parson’s sarcasm.
[2] Långref—a poaching method of catching fish.
[3] Tjäder—the capercailzie. Taking him in his lek—that is to say, during his play, a very singular method which both the tjäder and the black-cock has of calling together the females of their respective species, is strictly contrary to law.
[4] Fjeld Ripa—The mountain grouse; a bird something like our ptarmigan, the pursuit of which is always attended with toil, and sometimes danger.
[5] According to ancient Scandinavian mythology, the earth, which is flat and surrounded by water, is continually guarded by Jörmungard the Sea Serpent, the daughter of Loki; who is so large that she encircles the whole earth, holding her tail in her mouth. She is sometimes called the Midgard Serpent;—Midgard meaning middle guard half way between the earth and the realms of the Hrimthursar, or Frost Giants, which is her post.
[6] The god Kvasir, or Unerring Wisdom, was the joint offspring of all the gods, and was created to aid their negociations with the Vanir. His blood, sweetened by mead, forms the drink of Poetic Inspiration, which was guarded by Gunlauth, the daughter of Thjassi, the chief of the Frost Giants. Odin, who was her lover, prevailed on her to give it up to him, and it is at present lodged in the heights of Asgard. That Poetic Inspiration should be wisdom, sweetened by honey and guarded by love, is in itself a beautiful allegory—and not less beautiful that it should be won by the gods and lodged in Heaven;—but the generation of Kvasir involves a most curious anomaly, and that is, that the gods should be able to create a being more intelligent than themselves,—unless, indeed, we interpret the allegory as implying that mutual council is more unerring than the unaided intelligence of any individual.
[7] The Indelta has very erroneously been stated, by one or two travellers in Sweden, to be the militia of the country. Sweden has a militia, and a very efficient force it is; but the Indelta is a feudal army raised and maintained by the holders of crown lands. The constitution of this force will be explained more fully hereafter; it is exclusively a Swedish institution, and does not exist in Norway.
[8] “Come over the river.”
[9] “Quick, here, with the boat! and so you shall have some money for drink.”
[10] One of the wild ideas of Scandinavian mythology is, that the sun is the eye of Odin, and that he once had two like other people; but, that coming one day to the well of Mimiver, the waters of which are pure wisdom, he bargained for a draught, and bought the horn gjoll full at the price of one of his eyes; no such great quantity either, if gjoll be the original of our English gill. However, this fully accounts for the fact that the moon is not now so bright as the sun, which it probably once was. It must be confessed that the whole of this story is entirely inconsistent with the theory of the sun and moon in the prose “Edda,” where these are represented as separate and independent divinities, the son and daughter of the giant Mundilfari,—the sun being feminine and the moon masculine; a tradition contrary to the notions of our poets, but fully borne out by our English peasants, who invariably speak of the moon as “he,” and the sun as “she.”
[11] Full-grown salmon have two or three ranges of very small teeth, whereas grauls (Scoticè, grilse) have only one. It is this distinction which, on the Erne, is technically termed “the mask,” and not the size, which determines the difference between a graul and a salmon.
[12] An ort, or mark, is the fifth part of a specie-daler, equivalent to ninepence or tenpence of our money. A skilling is about the same as an English halfpenny; the word, however, is pronounced exactly the same as our English word shilling, the k being soft before i; a circumstance which rather perplexes the stranger in his calculations.
[13] Since the abolition of capital punishment in Norway—a measure that does not seem to answer at all—murderers are confined, like other criminals, in the castle at Christiania. They may be seen in dresses of which each sleeve and leg has its own colour, sweeping the streets and doing other public work; and a very disgusting sight it is. The average of crime is very high in Norway—perhaps higher than in any country known, and particularly crimes of violence. This may be accounted for, partly by their wonderful drunkenness, and partly by the very inefficient state of the Church, and the almost total absence of the religious element in an education which is artificially forced by state enactments. In Norway there is a very great disproportion between intellect and religion.
[14] Manchester has its faults, and a good many of them, but among them all its Anglo-Saxon virtue of order and capacity for self-government come out in strong relief.
“Where are your policemen?” asked the Duke, as he glanced at the masses that thronged the streets during the Queen’s visit,—perhaps the largest crowd that had ever been collected in England. The streets of the Borough of Manchester were not staked and corded off, and guarded by men in blue; but thousands of strong, active warehousemen and mechanics formed, by joining hands, a novel barricade. And in the evening, when numbers beyond computation were assembled in the streets to witness the illumination, amidst all the confusion there was nothing but good-humour.—Fraser.
[15] Alluding to a custom in Norway, of mixing the inner rind of the birch tree with their rye meal, during times of scarcity.
[16] The fisherman is very much recommended to tie his own flies for the Tay, or to get them at Edmondson’s. The author bought a good many pretty-looking specimens in the country, by way of patterns, all of which whipped to pieces in half-an-hour’s fishing. The fact is, there is a cheap way of tying flies, which it is impossible to detect by the eye; and it is just as well that the young fisherman should ask the character of his tackle-maker before investing his money in such very ticklish wares; the worthlessness of which he will not find out till he reaches his fishing-ground. The author, a fisherman of some experience, has tied a good many flies in his time, and has had a good many tied for him by his attendants and other professionals on the river’s banks; but the only tradespeople he has ever found trustworthy, in all points, in such matters are, Chevalier, of Bell-yard, London, and Edmondson, of Church-street, Liverpool. Their flies have never failed him, whether in their hooks, their gut, or their tying. All that the fisherman will want in their shops will be a little science, to enable him to choose his colours, and a little money to enable him to pay his bills.
[17] The real scene of this piscatorial exploit is on the Mandahl river. There is a Hell Fall on the Torjedahl also; indeed, the name is common in Norway, and in Sweden too, so as to become almost generic for a dark, gloomy rush of waters; but the Hell Fall of the Torjedahl is inaccessible to salmon, which, notwithstanding all that Inglis says to the contrary, are unable to surmount the great falls of Wigeland about a mile below it. It is, therefore, worthless as a fishing-place; and, the author suspects, altogether too dangerous to be attempted without good reason. When the water is low, the fall of the Mandahl may be fished in the ordinary manner from a boat, and it is well worth the trial; but if the river be full, the birch rope will be found necessary.
[18] The lower part of the Torjedahl is perfectly free from musquitoes, which cannot be said of all the rivers in Norway; this probably is owing to its rapidity, and to the absence of all tributaries and still water.
[19] It is no inaccuracy to give Birger a Scotch song, for there is a considerable infusion of Scotch blood among the Swedes, and Scotch family names are by no means uncommon among the nobility. In fact, Scotch names are to be met with even in their national ballads: for instance—
It was young Folmer Skot
Who rode by dale and hill,
And after rides Morton of Fogelsang,
Who bids him hear his will.
[20] The thirtieth of April.
Lie still, my child;
In the morning comes Fin
Thy father,
And gives thee Esberne Snorre’s eyes and heart to play with.
[22] Esberne Snorre is the Danish Faust. In no country whatever was the reformation popular among the peasantry, and therefore the popular legends invariably assign the leaders and causes of it to the devil, as in the case of Faust himself, who, whatever Goëthe may say, really was a very respectable tradesman, and had no more to do with the devil than is involved in the invention of that art which became so powerful an instrument in the hands of reformers—printing. Esberne Snorre was what very few of the Danish Reformers were, a really good and conscientious man, who might well have built the Church of Kallendborg, or even have given his eyes for it. Nevertheless, pre-eminently before all the reformers, the devil carries him off bodily in every legend of the time, just as he did Faust.
[23] Equivalent to “spoiling a market” in Ireland, or “opening a Sheriff’s ball” in England,—“Goth’s garden” being the cant name for a place of execution in Stockholm, which is adorned with permanent gibbets, and is so called from the name of the first man who was hanged there. The saying is Swedish, not Norwegian, not only because it is local, but because there are no capital punishments at all in Norway.
[24] Christina, daughter of the great Gustavus Adolphus, a popular and able sovereign, abdicated voluntarily,—wearied of the toils of government,—and is said to have uttered some such speech as that attributed to her by Torkel on crossing the little stream which in those days separated her late dominions from those of Denmark.
[25] Between “the two lights,”—that is to say, twilight,—is always the time in which all spirits of the middle earth have the greatest power; of course the reason is, that seen indistinctly in the doubtful light of morning or evening, natural objects take strange forms, and exhibit appearances which are ascribed to the supernatural.
[26] A sort of scallop, of very beautiful colour.
[27] In the Swedish Church there used to be a regular private confession made to the priest before every Communion, on which occasion an offertory, called confession-money, was deposited on the altar. It is, indeed, the rule of the Church still, though, since a royal ordinance, in 1686, forbade penitents to select their own confessors, confining them to the priest of their parish, the custom has fallen into disuse; still the old expressions are frequently retained.
[28] The mal is said to be a great-headed, wide-mouthed monster, with a long beard, of the same colour as the eel; and, like the eel, slimy and without any perceptible scales. It is said to grow to the length of twelve or fourteen feet, to weigh three or four hundred pounds, and to carry on his back fin a strong, sharp lance, which it can elevate or depress at pleasure. It is supposed to lie seeking whom or what it may devour in the deepest and muddiest holes of rivers or lakes. The author has heard this fish talked of very often, but has never seen one, and believes fully that it may safely be classed with the Black Horse, the Mid-Gard Serpent, and Dr. Clarke’s Furia Infernalis.
[29] The leading fish of each shoal, or school, as it is called,—usually a salmon of considerable weight and experience—is so termed by the Irish fishermen.
[30] Frue is properly a title of nobility, and is of Danish origin. No Norwegian titles date earlier than the Union of Kalmar. These, however, have been all abolished by a Storthing, which, consisting mostly of peasants, set itself strongly against aristocratical distinctions; and, taking advantage of that clause in the constitution which provides, that if a bill be carried three times it overrides the king’s veto, have succeeded in abolishing them. Habit and custom, however, are stronger than parliaments; and the mistress of a wealthy establishment is frequently designated, not by her husband’s name, but as Lady Marie, Lady Brigetta, or, as in the present case, Lady Christina—for that is the meaning of the title Frue.
[31] Not many years ago, the “summer parlour” was the only room in any house that had windows that would open.
[32] All livings in Norway have a dowager-house and farm belonging to them, for the widow of the late incumbent. At her death, it passes back to the present possessor of the living.
[33] Deep water.
Here the Neck strikes his harp in his city of glass,
And the Mermaids comb out their bright hair, green as grass,
And bleach here their glittering clothes.
[35] Those who are drowned at sea, and whose bodies are never recovered, are said to have been enticed away to the mermaids’ caves beneath the deep water.
[36] Those who are lost and starved to death in the forest—a thing which is of perpetual occurrence,—are said to be detained through the love of the Skogsfrue.
“We fly from day’s dazzling light,
But we joy in the shades of night,—
Though we journey on earth, our home must be
Beneath the shell of the earth and the sea.”
Mathisen.
[38] This legend is taken from the Brage Rädur, which, in the original, is obscure enough. Finn Magnussen, however, seems to have hit upon the right interpretation of it, which we have followed here. His explanation, as given in “Blackwell’s Northern Antiquities,” is this:—“Iduna, the ever-renovating Spring-being, in the possession of Thjasse, the desolating Winter,—all nature languishes until she is delivered from her captivity. On this being effected, her presence again diffuses joy and gladness, and all things revive; while her pursuer, Winter, with his icy breath, dissolves in the solar rays, indicated by the fires lighted on the walls of Asgard.”
[39] Niord and his wife, Skadi, had naturally some disputes about their future residence,—he preferring the brightness of his own palace, Noatun, she very naturally yearning after Thrymheim, the abode of her chilly father. The dispute was referred to Forseti, the son of Baldur, the heavenly attorney-general, who decided that they should alternately occupy Noatun for three months and Thrymheim for nine,—which is about the Norwegian proportion of summer and winter.
“Thrymheim, the land
Where Thjasse abode,
That mightiest of giants,—
But snow-skating Skadi
Now dwells there, I trow,
In her father’s old mansion.”
Elder Edda.
[40] A proof of the authenticity of this legend is to be found in the etymology of the word, “gate,” (gatin—the street), being a Norwegian word.
[41] Hermod and Baldur were both sons of Odin. That is to say, Courage and Innocence are both children of Heavenly Wisdom.
[42] The moral of this legend is admirable. The Principle of Evil is of itself powerless against the Principle of Good, until it is assisted by well-intentioned, but blind Prejudice; but that same Prejudice, after its enlightenment, becomes its partner and ally.
[43] An attentive reader, who is also a fisherman, will see, by reverting to the time which the adventures in the Torjedahl and Soberud-dahl must have taken, that this voyage must have taken place much later in the year than the 24th of June, and that consequently he could not have seen the bale-fires he describes. The fact is, the author made two visits to Christiansand; he arrived there in June, but, finding the snow-water still in the river, he made a voyage among the islands, to occupy the time, and visited the place again at the end of July. To prevent unnecessary confusion, the incidents of both these visits are told together; but the fisherman must not conclude from this, that anything is to be done in any of the Tellemarken rivers before the second week in July.
[44] The whole Norwegian navy consists of one frigate, two corvettes, two brigs, three schooners, and a hundred and forty of these gun-boats. The Swedes, who have upon the whole rather a powerful navy, considering the poverty of their country,—that is to say, thirteen line-of-battle ships, fourteen frigates, some of them very heavy ones, and twenty-two steamers—possess also three hundred of these gun-boats. They carry generally one long tomer forward, and sometimes a carronade, sometimes a smaller gun aft. They are quite open, except a couple of bunks for the officers’ sleeping places, pull from twenty to thirty oars, and are generally sent to sea in squadrons, with a frigate or corvette to take care of them,—like an old duck with a brood of ducklings. The frigate forms a rallying point and place of refuge, as well as a place of rest, for the crews are changed from time to time, and in their turns enjoy a week’s rest and cover on board of her.
[45] In Sweden there really is an order of the Seraphim, and in Denmark one of the Elephant,—for the Goose and Gridiron we will not vouch.
[46] That ancient and distinguished family are said to read Gen. vi. 4 thus: “And there were Grants in the earth in those days.” The word “giants” being, according to the best authorities in that family, a modern reading.
[47] Bjornstjerna, a not uncommon name in Sweden, signifies “bear’s star.”
[48] Bör, civilized man,—from beran, to bear; the same etymology as that of barn, a child. Ymir, Chaos,—literally, a confused noise; the meaning is, “before civilization had subdued Chaos.”
[49] It must be remembered that the letter o, in Swedish, is pronounced like our oo, and that the g before ä e i ö, as well as the final g, is pronounced like the English y; the word “Modige,” therefore, will be pronounced very like the English word “Moodie.”
[50] Rubus Chamœmorus; called in the country, Möltebär.
[51] Baldur’s Eye-brow—Anthemis Cotula.—Linn.
[52] The Puritan Abbott, Archbishop of Canterbury, got into great trouble from his sporting propensities. One day, as he was shooting with Lord de le Zouch, at Branshill Park, he shot a keeper. According to canon law, a clergyman killing a man becomes, from that time forward, incapable of performing any clerical function; and three Bishops elect refused consecration at his hand,—“Not,” as they said, “out of enmity or superstition, but to be wary that they might not be attainted with the contagion of his scandal and uncanonical condition.” He was re-instated by a committee of Bishops, appointed for the purpose, but never entirely recovered his position.
[53] According to Scandinavian mythology, the sacred ash of Yggdrasil, which typifies the Vital Principle of the world, has seated on its topmost boughs an eagle, bearing perched between his eyes a falcon,—emblematic of Energy and Activity.
[54] According to the Prose Edda, the gods had originally no poetry in their souls. The mead of Poetic Inspiration was in the keeping of the giant Suttung, who entrusted it to his daughter, Gunlauth. Odin made love to her,—obtained possession of the mead, and deserted her. He had, however, the grace to be ashamed of himself, for these are the words of the Hávamál, in which he evidently alludes to this not very creditable passage in his life:
“Gunlauth gave me,
On a golden chair seated,
A draught of mead delicious;
But the return was evil
Which she experienced,—
With all her faithfulness—
With all her deep love!
“A holy ring oath
I mind me gave Odin,—
Now, who can trust him?
Suttung is cheated—
His mead is stolen—
Gunlauth is weeping!”
[55] A Norwegian slang expression, for “early rising.”
[56] There is a beautiful superstition—if it is not a real religious truth—in Norway, that those we have loved best on earth become our unseen guardians, and follow us always, to warn us of danger.
“Then shall brethren be
Each other’s bane,
And sister’s children rend
The ties of kin.
“Hard will be the age,
And harlotry prevail,—
An axe-age, a sword-age—
Shields oft cleft in twain,—
A storm-age, a wolf-age,
Ere earth shall meet its doom.”
The Völuspà.
[58] Stags are not common so far north, but they are to be met with now and then. Elks are much more often seen, and are now pretty plentiful. In the days of which the author is writing, the Game Laws were, on paper at least, very strict about both elks and red-deer. Time was, when the former of these were classed with the bear and the lynx, and were absolutely outlawed as noxious beasts. At the time the author was in Sweden, the laws had gone to the other extreme, and they were absolutely protected,—everybody being forbidden to shoot them; a prohibition which, though it prevented men from going after them openly, was, in fact, as little regarded as most laws are in the fjeld. Now, they may be shot, only under certain restrictions.
[59] A cant phrase in Sweden, for “going on foot.”
[60] The only time the author ever did get a sight of one was in the fjeld on the right bank of the Gotha, near Trollhättan, when he was making his way through some tangled ground in search of a lake, which lies at no very great distance from the fall. On leaping down from a low ledge of rock, he very nearly pitched upon the top of a filfras, as much to his own surprise as that of the beast. He struck at him with his spiked fishing-rod—the only weapon he had with him. Fortunately for both parties, as he now thinks, he missed him; so they parted, much to their mutual satisfaction, and have not met since.
[61] Nalle is the cant name for the bear kind, as with us Reynard is the cant name for a fox.
[62] “Rig,” the earthly name of Heimdall, the watcher of Heaven’s gate, when he disguises himself to go skylarking on earth. Hence the slang expression, “Running a Rig.”
[63] The Sun and Moon are continually pursued by the wolf Fenrir and her progeny, who sometimes nearly catch her. Hence the eclipses.
[64] The author will not answer for his orthography in the word “pein-compassen.” He can work a reckoning by it, but has never seen it spelt.
[65] There is no book so popular in Sweden as what they call “Peter Simpel aff Kapten Marrjatt.”
[66] In Preadamite times—that is to say, the times of Drake and Raleigh—this was the custom of the English service also; but it having been discovered that “what is everybody’s business is nobody’s business,” and that accidents and negligences were continually happening during the dog watch, a regular afternoon watch was established, and the dog watch reduced to four hours, and divided into two; so that the whole ship’s company could relieve one another systematically, and not, as before, by private arrangement; and that the whole could have two uninterrupted hours below, between four and eight in the evening, for their evening meal, or any other occupation. The whole afternoon watch was called the dog watch, because in the full light,—and Norwegian ships did not go to sea in the winter because they were frozen up,—the work was supposed to be so easy that the dogs were sufficient to keep it.
[67] Those drowned at sea, whose bodies are never found, are supposed to have been invited by the mermaids to their caves, and to have been fascinated by the beauty of their entertainers. Homer’s story of the Syrens enticing the comrades of Ulysses, has some such foundation.
[68] The words “smart” and “smartly,” which, at sea, have a signification very different from their shore-going meaning, are pieces of mis-spelling. They are evidently derived from the Norwegian words “snart” and “snartlig,” which bear precisely the same nautical meaning as our English words.
[69] This is a literal fact. Three weeks after sailing from Christiansand, and seventeen days after losing sight of land of any kind,—during which time there had been but two days in which the brig could lie her course,—the author was in the fore-rigging, on the look-out for the Outer Garboard buoy. He had but small hopes of seeing it, he admits, for the brig had been navigated by log, lead, and compass alone; nevertheless it is true, that within half-an-hour of his taking up his look-out place, and precisely in the direction in which he was looking, there was the buoy,—a little black speck, like a dancing boat. This, considering that the steamer in which he had gone out—a vessel commanded by a lieutenant in her Majesty’s navy—was fifty miles out of her reckoning, after a straight course of four days, seemed, to say the least, remarkable.