During the middle of the nineteenth century flourished the great painter of peasant life, Tidemand. A series of his work is to be seen in the King's summer villa near Christiania, and his paintings, while not, perhaps, among the masterpieces of art, are very useful and interesting as showing the peasant life of Norway, under almost every condition, at a period when the people still wore their interesting costumes and had not lost any of their old ways and customs. These pictures are reproduced in every form, and are to be met with in many books on Norway, and in very many Norwegian houses.
There are also in Norway painters who devote themselves to the beauties of Nature, with which their fatherland is so generously endowed. This school has produced many fine pictures; but it seems to be rather falling out of favour in these days of exaggeration.
Arts in which the Norwegians have excelled since early times, and continue to excel, are those of weaving and embroidery. In these their nation shows an originality and charm, both of colour and of design, which are truly admirable. From as early as the twelfth century relics of cloths with figures interwoven are extant. One at present preserved in a church represents some of the months in allegorical pictures, and is evidently a fragment of a much larger piece which would include symbols of all the months of the year.
Examples of the history of picture-weaving become plentiful and important with the beginning of the seventeenth century. As with all arts of the period, this branch was principally dedicated to the representation of sacred subjects. Besides these there are many samples of purely decorative weaving, beautiful for their colour and quaint conventional designs, often geometrical, or a continued repetition of one or two very simple expressions of the form of a doubtful animal. The cultured Norwegians treasure these pieces of woven cloth, and hang them on their walls, or even have them framed. In the various museums are excellent examples of every branch of this art. To-day it is a very thriving industry. The weavers sit at an upright loom, and work in fast-dyed wools with an immense range of colours. The design is exactly the same on both sides, and the article when finished will wear almost indefinitely. Large quantities of it are used for wall-covering, and I can imagine nothing more delightful for this purpose. Any design can be produced, and their great artist, Munthe, has made many drawings, especially for this manner of reproduction. Embroidery in Norway I find all the more charming because it is not very varied. In other countries embroidery does many things; but here the workers cling to their very beautiful old-fashioned lines, and fill them in with strongly contrasted colours, mixing silk and wool. Mittens, gloves, bonnets, cloth, and all conceivable articles are gorgeously embroidered for personal wear or for sale, and the Norwegians themselves are by no means the least enthusiastic buyers.
SLEDGING BY TORCHLIGHT
Work in silver is another of the nation's handicrafts. In all the towns through which the tourist travels he will find large and small shops devoted to the sale of silver or silver-gilt filigree work and enamel. When he has seen one such shop, he has seen all; for over the country the same enamelled salt-cellars and butterflies and spoons, the same fairylike brooches and other ornaments, are repeated. Indeed, I became as heartily sick of these rather pretentious ornaments as I was enthusiastically charmed with the peasants' jewellery of an earlier age, frequently made by themselves, and showing an attractive absence of the machine-accomplished finish of the modern jewellery. By expressing the presence of the something which lifts hand work above machine work, I do not mean that there is not among the original silver work evidence of the greatest talent in this direction. The embossed filigree work is truly admirable. Precious stones do not take any important place. A coloured stone here and there, more often than not false, justifies its presence by increasing the beauty of the ornament, and not only by adding immensely to the expense of the object. One of the most striking pieces of jewellery is an enormous round brooch or buckle, often as large as a small plate. Dozens of these saucer-like pieces of metal, highly polished, are suspended by links to the body of the brooch, shaking and glittering with every movement.
