Sketches in Holland and Scandinavia

by Augustus J. C. Hare

We went by the railway which winds high amongst the hills to Kongsberg, a mining village in a lofty situation. Here, in a garden of white roses, there is a most comfortable small hotel kept by a Dane, which is a capital starting-point for all expeditions in Telemarken. There is a pretty waterfall near the village, and the church should be visited, for the sake of its curious pulpit hour-glass—indeed, four glasses—quarter, half-hour, three-quarters, hour—and the top of a stool let into the wall with an inscription saying that Mr. Jacobus Stuart, King of Scotland (James I. of England), sate upon it, Nov. 25, 1589, to hear a sermon preached by Mr. David Lentz, 'between 11 and 12,' on 'The Lord is my Shepherd.'

We engaged a carriage at Kongsberg for the excursion to Tinoset, whence we arranged to go on to the Ryukan Foss, said to be the highest waterfall in Europe. We do not advise future travellers without unlimited time to follow us in the latter part of the expedition by the lake, but the carriage excursion is quite enchanting. What an exquisite drive it is through the forest—the deep ever-varying woods of noble pines and firs springing from luxuriant thickets of junipers, bilberries, and cranberries! The loveliest mountain flowers grow in these woods—huge larkspurs of rank luxuriant foliage and flowers of faint dead blue; pinks and blue lungworts and orchids; stagmoss wreathing itself round the grey rocks, and delicate, lovely soldanella drooping in the still recesses.

Our midday halt was at Bolkesjö, where the forest opens to green lawns, hill-set, with a charming view down the smooth declivities to a many-bayed lake, with mountain distances. Here, amid a group of old brown farm-buildings covered with rude paintings and sculpture, is a farmhouse, inhabited by the same family through many generations. It is one of the 'stations' where it is part of the duty of the farmer or 'bonder' who is owner of the soil to find horses for the use of travellers. These horses are supplied at a very trifling charge, and are brought back by a boy who sits behind the carriole or carriage upon the portmanteau: but as the horses, when not called for, are turned loose or used by the bonder in his own farm or field work, travellers generally have to wait a long time while they are caught or sent for. They order their horses 'strax'—directly—one of the first words an Englishman learns to use on entering Norway, yet they scarcely ever appear before half an hour, so that Norwegians repeat with amusement the story of an Englishman who, when he wished to spend an hour at a station, ordered his horses 'after two strax's.' These halts are not always congenial to English impatience, yet they give opportunities of becoming acquainted with Norwegian life and people which can be obtained in no other way, and recollection will oftener go back to the quiet time spent in waiting for horses amid the grey rocks above some foaming streamlet, in the green oases surrounded by forest, or in clean-boarded rooms strewn with fresh fir foliage, than to the more established sights of Norway. Most delicious indeed were the two hours which we passed at Bolkesjö, in the high pastures where the peasants were mowing the tall grass ablaze with flowers, and the mountains were throwing long purple shadows over the forest, and the wind blowing freshly from the gleaming lake—and then, most delicious was the well-earned meal of eggs and bacon, strawberries and cream, and other homely dainties in the farmhouse where the beams and furniture were all painted and carved with mottoes and texts, and the primitive box-beds had crimson satin quilts. Portraits sent by well-pleased royal visitors hung on the walls side by side with common-coloured scripture prints, like those which are found in English cottages. The cellar is under a bed, beneath which it was funny to see the old farmeress disappear as she went down to fetch up for us her home-brewed ale.

BOLKESJÖ.

With the cordial 'likkelie reise' of our old hostess in our ears, we left Bolkesjö full of pleasant thoughts. But what roads, or rather what want of roads, lead to Tinoset!—there were banks of glassy rock, up which our horses scrambled like cats; there were awful moments when everything seemed to come to an end, and when they gathered up their legs, and seemed to fling themselves down headlong with the carriage on the top of them, and yet we reached the bottom of the abyss buried in dust, to rise gasping and gulping and wondering we were alive, to begin the same pantomime over again.

Late in the evening, long after the sunlight had faded, and when the forests seemed to have gone to sleep and all sounds were silent, we reached Tinoset. The inn is a wooden châlet on the banks of a lake with a single great pine-tree close to the door. It was terribly crowded, and the little wooden cells were the smallest apology for bedrooms, where all through the night we heard the winds howling among the mountains, and the waves lashing the shore under the windows. In the morning the lake was covered with huge blue waves crested with foam, and we were almost sorry when the steamer came and we felt obliged to embark, because, as it was not the regular day for its passage, we had summoned it at some expense from the other end of the lake. We were thoroughly wet with the spray before we reached the little inn at Strand, with a pier where we disembarked, and occupied the rest of the afternoon in drawing the purple hills, and the road winding towards them through the old birch-trees. An excursion to the Ryukan Foss occupied the next day; a dull drive through the plain, and then an exciting skirting of horrible precipices, followed by a clamber up a mountain pathlet to a châlet, where we were thankful for our well-earned dinner of trout and ale before proceeding to the Foss, the 560-feet-high fall of a mountain torrent into a black rift in the hills—a boiling, roaring abyss of water, with drifts of spray which are visible for miles before it can be seen itself.

OLD CHURCH OF HITTERDAL.

In returning from Tinoset, we took the way by Hitterdal, the date-forgotten old wooden church so familiar from picture-books. It had been our principal object in coming to Norway, yet the long drive had made us so ravenous in search of food that we could only endure to stay there half an hour. The church, however, is most intensely picturesque, rising with an infinity of quaintest domes and spires, all built of timber, out of a rude cloister painted red, the whole having the appearance of a very tall Chinese pagoda, yet only measuring altogether 84 feet by 57. The belfry, Norwegian-wise, stands alone on the other side of the churchyard, which is overgrown with pink willow-herb. When we reached the inn, as famished as wolves in winter, we were told by our landlady that she could not give us any dinner. 'Nei, nei,' nothing would induce her—she had too much work on her hands already—perhaps, however, the woman at the house with the flag would give us some. So, hungry and faint, we walked forth again to a house which had a flag flying in front of it, where all was silent and deserted, except for a dog who received us furiously. Having pacified him, and finding the front door locked, we made good our entrance at the back, examined the kitchen, peeped into all the cupboards, lifted up the lids of all the saucepans, and not till we had searched every corner for food ineffectually, were met by the pretty, pleasant-looking young lady of the house, who informed us in excellent English, and with no small surprise at our conduct, that we had been committing a raid upon her private residence. Afterwards we discovered a lonely farmhouse, where there had once been a flag, and where they gave us a very good dinner, ending in a great bowl of cloudberries—in which we were joined by two pleasant young ladies and their father, an old gentleman smoking an enormous long pipe, who turned out to be the Bishop of Christiansand. The house of the landamann of Hitterdal contains a relic connected with a picturesque story quaintly illustrative of ancient Scandinavian life. It is an axe, with a handle projecting beyond the blade, and curved, so that it can be used as a walking-stick. Formerly it belonged to an ancient descendant of the Kongen, or chieftains of the district, who insisted upon carrying it to church with him in accordance with an old privilege. The priest forbade the bearing of the warlike weapon into church, which so much affected the old man that he died. His son, who thought it necessary to avenge his father's death, went to the priest with the axe in his hands, and demanded the most precious thing he possessed—when the priest brought his Bible and gave it to him, open upon a passage exhorting to forgiveness of injuries.