When my holiday in Norway came to an end, I was very sorry to pack up and come away. Even when I drove the last thirty miles in a cart to the railway I carried my rod in my hand, and when I saw a good-looking pool or run in a river—we were generally near a river—I stopped the cart for a few minutes and tried for a trout, and, what was more, I occasionally caught one!
[Illustration: NORWEGIAN SCOUTS WERE VERY LIVELY.]
At last I got back to Christiania and to proper clothes and clean hands—and I didn't like it a bit.
However, I was comforted by being told that the Boy Scouts wanted me to Inspect them, and I did so.
There was a parade of nearly eight hundred of them; fine, strapping, big lads they were, too, just like a lot of British boys, and dressed the same as us, and very lively and active.
[Illustration: THE NORWEGIAN FLAG. As you will see, it is something like the Union Jack.]
I had to present Colours to some of their troops, and their national flag is in some ways a little like our Union Jack. And I told them that they were as like British boys as their flag was like ours, and that their forefathers, the Norsemen, were mixed up with our forefathers in the old days, and I hoped that we would all be mixed together, in a friendly way, in these days—as brother Scouts.
* * * * *
THE SWEDES.
In England we are apt to look upon Norway and Sweden as almost one nation, but they are not so in reality. The Norwegians in the old, old days formed one nation with the Danes, but the Swedes have always been a separate nation which has never been under the rule of any other people. And they are very proud of this. So when I got amongst the Swedes, I found a totally different people, but they were equally kind and friendly to me, and they had an equally British-looking lot of Boy Scouts.