The Christiania Fjord being less influenced by the Gulf Stream than the fjords on the western and northern coasts, the winter is longer in Christiania than in many places farther north. Generally this piece of water is entirely frozen over, and the country is tightly locked in the arms of Winter from December until March; the snowfalls, untampered with by thaws, accumulate and cause gigantic obstructions. The cold, though much more intense than in the English climate, is more easily bearable than our milder winters. The atmosphere is dry and pleasant, and often the sun shines brilliantly during the short days, and the delightful sports of this season are innumerable. Skiing, of course, must take the first place. The skis are really snow skates. They consist of a pair of very long, but very narrow, strips of wood, very thin and elastic. In front they are slightly turned up and pointed. The correct length should measure a third more than the height of the wearer. The skis are attached to shoes, or merely to straps, set a little back from the middle of the strip of wood. The Norwegians are great adepts at getting about on skis. They make extraordinarily rapid progress over the snow, especially when it is neither too hard nor too sticky. They help themselves along and partly steer themselves by the aid of long poles. Sometimes a traveller on skis, becoming thirsty, will stop at a little unfrozen spring, and, lowering himself with wonderful cleverness until he lies at full length with his skis disposed just as they should be, he puts his mouth to the edge of the water and drinks. This is what is called "drinking goose wine," and I assure you there is a good deal of knack necessary both to get down and to get up.
SKIERS DRINKING GOOSEWINE
Skating is another favourite sport, for which there are plenty of opportunities. Sledging takes the place of driving through the winter months. Another gloriously exhilarating sport is tobogganing, either alone or in parties. The leader steers his rapid progress with a stick. One may meet with an unforeseen obstacle, and the occupants may be thrown out head-first with a jerk; but the fall in the soft snow is not often serious.
The shops in Christiania are very good, and generally, to the stranger at least, very dear; but at the big fur store there I bought for a ridiculously small sum two of the prettiest little reindeer-skin coats, made by the Lapps, and as worn by the Lapps. I brought them home with great glee to my babies, but was nonplussed by my boy, who absolutely refused to have anything to do with his after he had elicited by hundreds of questions that the stuff the coat was made of was fur, that fur was the skin of the reindeer, that reindeer were young and had mothers and fathers, and that his coat couldn't run about in the snow because it was dead, and at last, that it was dead because Loye had to have a winter coat.
When after some weeks I persuaded him that the reindeer would be much more sad if the coat was not worn, he consented to have it on, but only on condition that it should be slipped on over his feet. Both the little garments were a great success; but I am afraid that the children's nurse never quite approved them. I think she found it hard to get used to coats that had no hooks or buttons but were fastened with plaited leather strings, and she thought her charges looked rather outré.
Christiania has but one picture-dealer of any importance. From what we saw of the pictures there we concluded that Norwegian art on the whole is so intensely affected as to say absolutely nothing to the beholder. We met two art enthusiasts at luncheon at the house of an exceedingly clever friend of ours, who was and is one of the editors of Christiania's chief newspaper. These two were man and wife, and obviously it was the wife's opinion, on art at least, that dominated. Their greatest artist in Europe's eyes they scoffed at; scarcely would they admit that he was clever, beauty and success being two attributes which do not belong to art as they understand it. They belonged to the ever-increasing number of folk who, to appear original and extra-cultivated, refuse to see beauty unless it is expressed grotesquely or incomprehensibly. So insistent was this particular devotee that she carried us along on the wave of her heated argument out of our friend's dining-room through the cold streets to her flat, where she planted us in front of a picture by her favourite artist. It was dark-green and white in patches laid quite rawly on the canvas. "Isn't it wonderful?" she cried. "Now you must own yourselves vanquished!"
