Numbers of boats may be observed to creep mysteriously around the fire, at a safe distance from it, and the lively notes of the fiddle and of singing float sweetly over the water.
Another old custom still survives in this district of Sogn. When it becomes known that two young people are to be engaged to be married, the boys in the district shoot into the air with rifles, and fire small cannon around the house on the evening when the young man goes to ask of the parents their consent to the engagement. They also ring hand-bells and blow a horn; these noises must surely prove rather disconcerting to the newly betrothed.
In some cases the prospective bride-groom has many miles of rowing along the fjord before he reaches the home of his lady-love. His visit is usually paid at the end of the week, and he generally spends the night there. As a practical joke, the peasant boys have been known to take his boat, drag it up on shore, and hide it in some secluded place, much to his great discomfort and annoyance when he wishes to return in the morning.
At all large weddings, to which may be invited from 150 to 200 guests, festivities are usually kept up for a week or more.
Dancing and fiddling go on day and night continuously, the "Hailing" and "Spring" dances being general favourites on these festive occasions.
The music to these dances is exceedingly lively, even barbaric in character, and the dances are consequently wild and exciting. The services of the Hardanger fiddler are in great request, and he finds himself engaged throughout the springtime, going with his fiddle from one wedding to another.
Each wedding party engage their own fiddler, and he it is who leads the procession from the farm to the church door, and it often occurs that several weddings take place at the same church at the same time. There is great competition among the fiddlers on such an occasion, each one playing to the very extent of his ability. With a jaunty air the fiddlers step forward, and each neighbourhood upholds with pride the honour and reputation of their own fiddler.
It happened that on one such occasion the church folk were divided in their admiration between two fiddlers of about equal cleverness. One side claimed that a feat had been achieved on the way to the kirk by their fiddler, who, while all along playing his best, did at the same time chaff his comrades who stood on the roadside as he calmly went on with his difficult bridal march, as though it were quite the most easy and natural thing in the world.