A Sæter, Vetle Fjord
Page [44].
Chapter X
Wild Nature—Beasts
In a country like Norway, with its vast forests and waste moorlands, it is only natural to find a considerable variety of animals and birds. Some of these are peculiar to Scandinavia. Some, though only occasionally met with in the British Isles, are not rare in Norway; whilst others (more especially among the birds) are equally common in both countries.
There was a time when the people of England lived in a state of fear and dread of the ravages of wolves and bears, and the Norwegians of the country districts even now have to guard their flocks and herds from these destroyers. Except in the forest tracts of the Far North, however, bears are not numerous, but in some parts, even in the South, they are sufficiently so to be a nuisance, and are ruthlessly hunted down by the farmers. As far as wolves are concerned civilization is, fortunately, driving them farther afield each year, and only in the most out-of-the-way parts are they ever encountered nowadays. Stories of packs of hungry wolves following in the wake of a sleigh are still told to the children in Norway, but they relate to bygone times—half a century or more ago, and such wild excitements no longer enter into the Norsemen’s lives.
Yet less ferocious animals give the people trouble enough, and amongst these may be mentioned the lynx and the wolverine, or glutton, each of which will make his supper off a sheep or a goat if he gets the chance. Of the two the lynx is perhaps the worse poacher, and his proverbial sharpness renders him difficult to catch. Not so the glutton, who, if he succeeds in crawling through a hole in the fence of a sheepfold, stuffs himself so full that he cannot get out again. I think that most of us would rather be called lynx-eyed than gluttonous, and certainly a lynx is a much handsomer beast than a glutton.
With the exception of the rabbit, all our English animals are found in Norway—the badger, fox, hare, otter, squirrel, hedgehog, polecat, stoat, and the rest of them. But besides these there are little Arctic foxes and Arctic hares, with bluish-grey coats in the summer and snowy-white ones in the winter. This change of colour is a provision of Nature, rendering these particular animals, and some birds also, almost invisible among the snows. The ermine is another instance of this. In summer he is just an ugly little brown stoat; but in winter he comes out in pure white, with a jet-black tip to his tail, a skin worth a lot of money.
Of all these small Norwegian animals perhaps the most interesting is the lemming, who, for some reason best known to himself, does not trouble to put on a white coat in the winter, but keeps to his stripy jacket all the year round. He lives everywhere—up on the mountains and down in the valleys, and is hardly as large as an ordinary rat; but woe betide the dog that brings him to bay, for if he finds his road to escape barred, he will sit up and fight to the death, and he knows how to bite. Yet he would much rather run away if he could, as in ordinary life he is quite peacefully inclined, and feeds on nothing more than grass and herbs and roots.