“As we returned to Kongsberg, we stopped to see Hitterdal, the date-forgotten old wooden church so familiar from picture-books. Here we were told by our landlady that she would not give us any dinner—‘Nei, nei, nothing would induce her; perhaps the woman at the house with the flag would give us some.’ So, hungry and faint, Miss Holland and I sallied out as avant-couriers to the house with the flag. 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, pried into all the cupboards, lifted the lids of all the saucepans, and not till we had searched everything for food ineffectually, were met by the lady of the house, a pleasant young lady, speaking English perfectly, who informed us, with no small surprise at our conduct, that we had been committing a raid upon her private residence. Afterwards we found a lonely farmhouse, where also there had once been a flag, where they gave us a very good dinner. Two young girls, whom we had first met at the Rjukan-foss, dined with us, and made us acquainted with their parents. The father, an old man who smoked an enormously long pipe, turned out to be the Bishop of Christiansand.
“On the 25th we started from Kristiania for Throndtjem, the whole journey of three hundred and sixty miles very comfortable and only costing thirty francs. There is no great beauty in the scenery, but pleasant variety—rail to Eidswold, with bilberries and strawberries in birch baskets for sale at the railway-stations: a vibrating steamer on the long dull Miosen lake: railway again, with some of the carriages open at the sides: a night at Koppang, a large station, where several people, strangers to each other, are expected to share the same room. On the second day the scenery improves; the railway sometimes runs along, sometimes over the river, till the gorge of mountains opens beyond Storen into a rich open country, with turfy mounds which reminded us of the graves of the hero-gods of Upsala, till, beyond the deep cleft in which the river Nid runs between lines of old painted wooden warehouses, rises the burial-place of St. Olaf, the centre of Northern Christianity, the shrine of Northern faith, the stumpy-towered cathedral of Throndtjem.
“The most northern railway station and the most northern cathedral in Europe.”
“August 8.—To the last the unspeakable beauty of Throndtjem grew upon us. It is not at first sight of its wide streets of low timber houses, or even of its fiord with purple mountain background, or of its glorious cathedral in the wide-spreading churchyard, which is the town-garden as well as the centre of all its sympathies, that you learn to admire it, but after many sunsets have turned the fiord into rippling gold, and sent an amethystine glow over the mountains, and after many rambles along the shores to rocky points and bosky hillocks.