Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
The Hardanger Glacier and Rembesdal Lake.
To me the most interesting thing about the Hardanger district is its people. On Sundays they appear in all their finery, and the women make a gorgeous showing. They wear long skirts of dark blue, trimmed with black velvet and silver braid; white chemisettes with full sleeves, over which shines a gorgeous red bodice, with the most varied assortment of ornaments, some of them made of brass, and saucer-shaped. A belt adorned with huge metal buttons adds considerably to their festive appearance. The headdress is most elaborate, and it must require great skill to arrange it well. It is of snow-white linen stretched on a wire frame in something the shape of a half moon, and plaited very precisely and carefully. Judicia, I am not an authority on women’s clothing, and I feel utterly at a loss to attempt to describe these Hardanger women as they appear. Please lend your most charitable imagination to my meager description.
Sunday is rather a gala day in Norway, after church is over. The people as a rule are sincerely religious, but Sabbath observance such as was known in Puritan America or England is unheard of. King Haakon VII, who is himself an Evangelical Lutheran, reports with pride that when he traveled through the country districts of his kingdom he found a Bible in every peasant’s cottage. He adds that he considers this one of the hopeful features of his nation. Ninety-seven and six tenths per cent of the people are Lutherans, and they will no doubt cling to that form of the Protestant faith for centuries to come.
This gala Sunday is invariably discussed and commented upon by all writers about Norway. One or two authors frankly delight in it, rejoicing that in this free country no such thing is known “as that sour, narrow Sabbatarianism which we find in England.” Another author, while finding good qualities in it, guardedly believes that perhaps on the whole it does not make for the advancement of religion. Still others mourn it as a sure sign of national decay. These latter are perhaps too pessimistic, for, however you may regard the day, there is certainly no more devotedly, healthfully religious people in the world than those in the country districts of Norway. I am afraid that this cannot be said so strongly of the cities. Certainly the gala Sunday has made vast inroads into Christiania church congregations. Many who are of mediocre tendencies, religiously speaking, go up to Holmenkollen early of a Sunday morning, coast all the forenoon (perhaps intending to drop in for a half-hour’s service in the Holmenkollen chapel), and spend afternoon and evening in great hilarity. The chapel service seems rather a farce, as very few of the sport-seekers really avail themselves of the opportunity of attending. So you can see that some of the Christiania pastors have good cause to mourn their national hilarious Sunday.
Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
View from Hammerfest.
But to return to Hardanger. At the occasional country weddings in Hardanger the bride’s costume would bear comparison with the plumage of the bird of paradise. It is only in the depths of the country that you can now see a real Norwegian wedding, for Norway is becoming sadly internationalized in this respect, and plain white for the bride and funereal black for the groom are fast supplanting the old gay costumes. In Sætersdal you may stand a better chance than in the Hardanger district of seeing a good, old-fashioned country wedding.
A tough, spudding little pony draws a two-seated stolkjaerre, on which is seated the bride in all her finery, and adorned for the occasion in a magnificent crown of brass. Beside her sits the groom, and on the step of the carriage the master of ceremonies, the ancient fiddler. He must be ancient, white-haired, toothless, and a bit doddering, or it is hardly a genuine wedding. All along the bridal procession this doddering fiddler plies his bow at a tremendous rate, and if you are some distance away it really sounds very well. All Norway has for ages been devoted to the violin. It seems to me that half the people in Norway must either play it or play at it; it is the national instrument.