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”:
“So we go round the juniper bush, the juniper bush, the juniper bush,
So we go round the juniper bush early on Monday morning.
This is the way we wash our clothes, wash our clothes, wash our clothes,
This is the way we wash our clothes early on Monday morning.
“So we go round the juniper bush, the juniper bush, the juniper bush,
So we go round the juniper bush early on Tuesday morning.