Peeps at Many Lands: Norway

by A. F. Mockler-Ferryman

School and Play

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.