Our first impression of the Norwegians was a favorable one, for as we left the hotel and were vainly trying to find our way to a steamship office with an unpronounceable name, we asked a man both in English and German to direct us. Not understanding, but finding out where we wished to go from our pointing to the name in our guide book, he immediately turned and conducted us a long distance, and even when we were within sight of the building would not leave us until we arrived at the very doorway, when he politely touched his hat and disappeared before we had a chance to thank him.
During June and July Throndhjem is full of tourists, who take the steamer here for the North Cape and the regions of the midnight sun.
The steamers start from Christiania and Bergen, but most travellers, instead of taking the long and disagreeable voyage along the coast, go directly from Christiania to Throndhjem by rail, a distance of three hundred and sixty miles. From the middle of June until the end of July two tourist steamers leave Bergen and Throndhjem weekly, and make the trip from Throndhjem to the North Cape and return in eight days. These steamers are handsomely fitted up, take only first-class passengers, and stop at but few places, yet in their course they include the grandest features of the scenery. The price of round-trip tickets, including everything, varies from 250 to 350 crowns ($67.50 to $94.50) according to location of state-room and number occupying the same. There are also two lines of mail steamers coming from Christiania, which leave Throndhjem weekly for the North Cape, and a line of steamers from Hamburg to the North Cape and Vadsö, leaving Throndhjem once a week. The mail steamers run up the fjords along the coast, call at all of the little out-of-the-way places, and occupy eleven days in the round trip between Throndhjem and the North Cape.
The ticket, including passage and state-room, costs 111 crowns ($30), and there is a daily charge, for meals and attendance, of five and a half crowns, making $16.50 for the meals, and a total of $46.50 for the cost of the round trip.
As our object was to see as much of the country and people as possible, and as we preferred to save half the cost of the journey to three days of time, we engaged passage in a mail steamer, and shall always consider ourselves very fortunate to have made this decision; for since making the journey we have often compared experiences with travellers who have been by the tourist steamers, and have found that we saw much more, visited more points of interest, and learned more about the people and the country.
THE NORWEGIAN NORDLAND.