There is a legend connected with the rock, that while a maiden was pursued by her lover, her brother attempted her rescue; the lover shot and pierced the brother’s hat with an arrow, and the sun shone through the opening, changing the maiden into stone. Not far away, a curiously shaped mountain is known as the Giant Maiden, to which the Norwegians doff their hats as they sail by.
What are called the Seven Sisters is a group of six mountains, the summit of one being divided into two peaks, rising precipitously three thousand feet above the water; when we passed them their summits were veiled in clouds, and the captain facetiously remarked: “They have their nightcaps on, and like most Norwegian girls are coy and afraid of showing their faces to foreigners.”
In places along the narrow fjords we saw white marks and stripes painted on the rocks, and planks painted white, floating in the water, for the purpose of deceiving the salmon, that mistake them for their favorite waterfalls, and are thus decoyed into nets.
We stop at little stations with clusters of small red houses; the natives row out to us in graceful boats with high pointed stern and prow resembling the Venetian gondolas, bringing us passengers whose belongings are contained in gaily painted and decorated oval wooden boxes, of various sizes, ranging as large as a trunk. Heavy boxes of merchandise and supplies are lowered over the steamer’s side into the larger boats, the rowers laboring hard, as we steam away, to row their heavy load to the shore. At every place we leave the mail, for the steamer has a well-regulated post-office aboard, with a postmaster and assistant, who worked night and day during the first part of the journey, but they take their ease later, as we go farther north where stations are few, and the mail has been mostly delivered.
During the second day we crossed the Arctic Circle in latitude 66° 50´. The coast of Norway presents a wonderful combination of ocean and mountain scenery. Mountains rise abruptly from the water over three thousand feet high, their summits capped with snow, and masses of snow and ice in their rugged rocky clefts; waterfalls leap a thousand feet down the sides of barren mountains, seeming in the distance but small cascades like narrow bands of silver; glaciers from the realm of eternal ice, extending for miles on elevated plateaux four thousand feet above the sea, push their crystal mass around snowy peaks and crowd their way between mountains, sweeping away immense boulders and ploughing deep into the granite walls, on their downward course to within a few hundred feet of the sea.
The steamer turns up winding fjords between straight walls of rock, with here and there a less barren aspect, where dark fir and pine trees clothe the sides, or a solitary farm house in the midst of a few acres of cultivated land gives token of civilized life. We thread an archipelago of detached masses of granite; rocky ledges rise above the crested waves; here little islands, the home of the eider duck and other sea fowl; there, great solitary islands the abode of fishermen, who have spread their nets upon the rocks and drawn their boats into sheltering coves. The way seems lost amid a maze of islands, when a turn brings us out upon the open sea, where the foaming waves dash against the rockbound coast, and sea gulls whirl around the steep cliffs. Over all is the unending daylight glorifying mountain, glacier, and sea, and with every turn the prospect changes and fresh grandeurs are disclosed.
As we advanced amid this magnificent scenery we proceeded up a narrow fjord, where the glorious sight of the Svartisen glacier burst upon our view. The Svartisen is the second largest glacier in Norway, an enormous mantle of snow and ice forty-four miles long and covering a space of sixty-two square miles, spread out upon a plateau thousands of feet high, from which protrude snowy peaks. From this plateau descend several glaciers between the mountains, and we now viewed the one which descends the nearest to the sea. The bright afternoon sun shone upon this grand glacier, which for ages has been moving slowly downward, until its glittering mass of snow and ice extends almost to the blue water. Nothing could be more beautiful than this pure-white congealed stream, as we view its course, flowing from the great ice-fields above, amid its dark framing of barren rock, down to the green slopes at the base of the mountains.
We landed in small boats upon the rocky shore and started to walk to the glacier, but the distance, which from the steamer seemed but a few rods, lengthened into over a mile. After two days of confinement upon the steamer it was a great pleasure to walk along the rocky shore, gathering shells, sea-moss, and new and strange flowers blooming upon grassy slopes just beyond the rocks. At last we stood at the base of the glacier, which towered above us more than thirty feet; great pieces of ice had been broken off and stood detached in pools of water, or were piled against each other; as far as we could see, the surface of the glacier was of pure white, in great contrast with the Swiss glaciers, so soiled and dirty from piles of stones and great moraines. As we looked down the deep crevasses penetrating into the recesses of the glacier, we found that the ice was a beautiful dark blue, rivalling in tint the bluest of skies. We climbed up the glacier a short distance, but found it too difficult and dangerous an undertaking, and were content to walk along its margin, lost in wonder before this great crystal storehouse.
In beauty and grandeur the Svartisen glacier far exceeds anything we had seen in Switzerland; even the fine glaciers about Pontresina, Zermatt, Chamonix, Grindelwald, or those that sweep around the base of the Eggishorn, are surpassed by this pure-white glacier in the far North. We were rowed back to the steamer after two hours upon land, and as we sailed away we watched until the last moment the wonderful Svartisen, which was one of the most beautiful sights of the whole trip.
As we were within the Arctic Circle we all anticipated seeing the midnight sun for the first time, and remained late upon deck, but the heavens were covered with clouds and no sun made its appearance; yet it was as light as day, and some of the passengers, while waiting for a glimpse of the sun, were writing letters at midnight.