Fishermen Arranging their Nets at Balestrand on the Sognefjord.
There you have the Sogne, the poet’s Sogne perhaps, but I think not too fanciful, for the Sogne is the poet’s fjord above all others, and anyone who has no poetry in him should not invade its precincts. At Balholm, on this fjord, the German emperor is commemorating the famous Fridthjof with a statue. Longfellow translated the Fridthjof saga, so Balholm is thus connected with him too, and adds another point in favor of Sogne’s claim to the name of the poet’s fjord.
Longfellow wrote several poems connected with the northland. The most famous, as you know, and the one which connects Norway with America, is The Skeleton in Armor. I have read it half a dozen times since I came to Norway, and it has done more than anything else to make me feel and see the spell of the old vikings.
This has been a long letter and I have not touched upon Hardanger or Sætersdal or the North Cape, but those will keep for another letter, and if you will transform yourself into a “castle,” or, better still, remain a queen and move several squares due north, you will arrive at Marok again, where the gleaming Geiranger is beginning to be ruffled by evening breezes. I will write to you soon, probably from Sætersdal, where I know I shall find seventeenth-century Norway in all its charm.
As ever yours,
Aylmer.