Returning to the farm house I found that my bed was of straw, and the bedstead about a foot shorter than myself; but the bed linen was fresh and clean, and my long walk in the clear air quickly sent me to the arms of Morpheus.
A breakfast of fresh eggs, coffee with rich cream, good wheat and rye bread, and cheese, was neatly served, and paying forty cents for my lodging and breakfast, which was received with a thankful shake of my hand, I started on my twenty mile walk down the valley to Veblungsnaes, whence I had driven the previous day. The sky was cloudless, it was a warm and sunny day, and every breath of the sweet fresh air was as exhilarating as champagne.
The Romsdal is the finest valley in Norway, and the road running through it is one of the most celebrated routes in the country. Beyond Flatmark the valley broadens into a large basin, where the road and the river wind among a bewildering collection of boulders and great masses of rock, piled up in the wildest confusion, which during the flight of time, have been brought down by tremendous landslips. One would think that a great mountain had been split up, and its fragments scattered broadcast over the valley, and it seems the realization of chaos as one walks amid this maze of boulders, among which the river threads its way, lashing them with its foam. This wild and imposing scene was followed by quiet stretches of valley, where little farm houses nestled in the midst of green fields, and the river gleamed brightly in a grassy plain.
The station inn at Horgheim was in full possession of a large excursion party from Scotland, who had arrived the previous evening at Veblungsnaes, in the steamer that was taking them on a two weeks’ trip to the most accessible points in Norway.
They had swarmed up the valley that morning in a long procession of vehicles, and had halted at the little inn, where the inmates were almost distracted while trying to understand the many questions and satisfy the demands of the noisy crowd, amid the sound of bagpipes and the confusion of fifty voices talking all at once in a foreign tongue.
The rational traveller who visits a foreign country, not simply for the sake of saying he has been there, but to become acquainted with the life and customs of its inhabitants, and who finds one of its chief charms in the open-hearted, unsophisticated nature of its common people, views with dismay and sorrow its invasion by large conducted parties, whose members rush through the country like a flock of sheep, all crowding close to the leader. The simple natives are at first appalled at the sight of the noisy clamoring crowd, whose inquisitive glances and prying questions wound their honest pride and open nature, and they shrink from being made spectacles for the curious; their straightforwardness then changes into a cold, calculating nature, and they grow to consider their visitors as their reasonable prey, and in time, instead of finding a people who in a sincere unaffected manner receive you as a friend, and render your stay at an inn similar to a visit in a private house, you are met by a people who gauge all attentions by their money value, and extortion and overcharge, in modern hotels, follow the homelike cheer of the primitive inns. Happily, the greater part of the interior of Norway is yet inaccessible to large parties of Cookies and the “personally conducted,” and the unspoiled natives still minister in their simple way to intelligent, travelling, free moral agents.
Horgheim lies in the midst of the grandest scenery of the valley. The Romsdalshorn here rises with its huge pointed peak 5090 feet high, its granite sides in places as straight and smooth as if it were an immense cheese, and a knife had been used to cut off the blocks of granite, which lie piled up at its base and scattered over the valley. Opposite the Romsdalshorn are the Trolltinder, 5880 feet high, rearing their sharp-cut jagged pinnacles in such weird and fantastic forms that the name “witches’ pinnacles” has been applied to them. The deep crevices of this wall of rock are filled with snow; high up the mountain lies a crystal mass from which rise the clear-cut rocky shafts, and at times is heard the rumble and roar of the falling avalanche, as a great body of snow slides down the smooth surface of the rock, until caught in some deep depression or its course is arrested by a projecting ledge. In the narrow space between these scarred and rugged walls leaps and foams the river Rauma, adding life and animation to the grand and desolate scene. In the grandeur and abruptness of its rock formations, the Romsdal almost equals the far-famed Yosemite. The Romsdal is 235 feet above sea-level, while the Yosemite is 4060 feet; for that reason the mountains here appear much higher. The Romsdalshorn rises 1500 feet higher above its valley than does El Capitan, and in places its sides are nearly as abrupt and clean cut; but the magnificent waterfalls, and great variety of peaks and domes of the Yosemite far surpass those of the Norwegian valley in beauty and grandeur.
Back of the Romsdalshorn are still more lofty peaks; and viewed that day, when every outline of the mountain tops and sharp-cut pinnacles stood out against the blue vault of heaven, with the great Horn towering above, its seamed walls of rock destitute of every form of vegetation, with no sound to break the stillness save the rushing river and falling avalanche, it was a sublime sight.
At Aak, whence one obtains the most striking view of the mountains of the Romsdal, the little inn has been purchased by an English gentleman for a summer residence. One could not find a more charming spot, for there are also lovely views up the Isterdal, a valley lined by mountain peaks opening into the Romsdal at this point, and westward the view is closed by the village of Veblungsnaes and the fjord encircled by mountains.
The valley here becomes wider, with tracts of cultivated land, and cosy farm houses, among which winds a good road to Veblungsnaes, whose scenery and surroundings are its only attractions.