A VOSSE BRIDE
The farms surrounded by these necessary buildings are often many miles apart, and consequently social reunions are comparatively rare. In winter the snow-covered ground is traversed with great rapidity by sledges or on ski-shod feet, and, the farm work being not so heavy or so pressing as at other seasons, the country people give dancing parties on the slightest excuse. The music is primitive; but the hearts and feet are light, and food and drink go round in abundance. In summer all the residents on the farm are busily engaged in planting and gathering their small crops, cutting every available blade of the grass which is so precious and means so much to their supplies of milk and butter and cheese when the ground is frozen and deep in snow. Their method of drying the grass is rather strange. Tall stakes are planted in the ground at short intervals, and on these small bunches of grass are impaled. To facilitate the operation, the stake is capped with a sharp steel point. In this manner scarcely a blade of grass escapes the gatherers, and the drying process is much more rapid than it could otherwise be on these slopes. In summer the cattle, the goats, and the sheep are sent out to graze on the mountain slopes. In charge of each flock are two or three persons, generally girls. They spend their summer in tiny rough huts called saeters. Hearing of these saeters, I inquired by what means, if not by long and difficult daily journeys, the dwellers in them were provided with food, and how did the farm people obtain from the heights their daily supply of cheese, milk, and butter? Simply enough: one end of a thick wire rope is fixed up on the heights; the other is attached to a post below. The rope traverses precipices, ravines, and raging torrents. With the aid of a pulley and a second length of wire of less thickness, one may thus transport buckets of milk, bundles of hay, and packages of all sorts. The operators at either end are warned by a whistle that their attention is required. We were told, by the people of a farm where we stayed, that a young man sending down a bundle of hay slipped, and, clinging to the wire, slid with fearful rapidity to the opposite side. Midway over the fjord which this wire traversed his fingers were cut right through, and he dropped. Fortunately, there had been spectators of the adventure, and he was rescued without further injury. In spite of the dangers, I believe the peasants often avail themselves of this mode of descent from the saeters to their homes. They are courageous. On our long drives through different districts of Norway, we frequently met with these aerial wireways; and always on the steepest slopes one could gain on foot one saw cattle calmly grazing on the scanty grass at angles which make a poor human being dizzy. How the great beasts can keep their foothold on the loose soil, almost as steep as the side of a house, puzzled me often; and how they can look fat and well-fed on the miserable supply of green stuff which is all they find in many districts is indeed a problem.
FARM-HOUSES BUILT OF POLES
The devout Norwegians have a theory to explain the poorness of their soil. At the creation of the world the angels whose duty it was to scatter the soil forgot Norway. Seeing this, the guardian angel of the land made complaints to the Creator. What was to be done? Impossible to restart the whole of the creation for the sake of Norway. "Come, my little angels," said He: "look carefully, and perhaps you may still find a little earth." The conscience-stricken angels swept the floor of Heaven, and the little dust they found they gathered in their draperies and scattered over the Norwegian rocks. That is why, while Norway is rich in stones, she is poorly provided with soil. Even in many of the valleys the earth is plentifully bestrewn with big stones and boulders fallen from the mountains, and where there are small tracts without stones one frequently finds that the ground is so marshy as to be useless. That there is as much cultivated ground only shows what can be dragged from Nature by men endowed with patience and industry. Round the fjords the fisherman chooses for his log hut a spot where his wife may feed a cow and cultivate a small plot of potatoes, while he devotes his life to gathering the hard and difficult harvest of the sea.
At the country fairs or other rare meetings of folks for one reason or another, the young Norwegians meet and court. The girl must be a good housewife and should be able to make bread, to spin, and, in short, be capable of almost everything, for in this country of isolated homes it is impossible or difficult to provide a substitute for the invalid or incompetent member of a family. Sometimes among the humbler classes the betrothed couple wait years for the completion of their tie, as it is sometimes necessary to await the demise of an older couple to obtain a dwelling-place. During this time the bride-elect spins and makes up the linen that will last her for life. The betrothed couple are allowed all liberty to see each other and even to journey together.
I have taken from a Norwegian paper an accurate account of wedding customs in the middle of the last century, and I am assured that, with a few exceptions, everything remains much the same to this day. The usages vary slightly in different districts. The Norwegian writer has chosen Hardanger for his description.