FOURTH LETTER
The color scheme of a Norwegian winter night; a trip up the coast; the “Maiden of Lekö” and Torg’s Hat; the home of Haarek remind us of the early methods of introducing Christianity into Norway; Thangbrand, the ferocious Saxon priest; Olaf Tryggvesson; some interesting sights en route for the Lofotens; the Maelström and Pontoppidan’s sea serpent; the great Lofoten fisheries; the long war between cod and herring; sea life in the Lofotens; approach to Narvik; certain Norwegian characteristics.
Narvik, Norwegian Lapland, January 12.
N. Lat. 68° 30´: E. Long. 17° 30´ (circa).
My dear Judicia,
I would just as soon wager that you never heard of Narvik before, and that you don’t know any more of its whereabouts than the heading of this letter tells you. I am basing my wager on the assumption that your knowledge of Norway is just about as extensive as mine was before I came here. Well, I cannot blame you much for your ignorance (if ignorant you are), for Narvik is a very young thing. It was born on January 1, 1902, but it is fast getting to be one of the important towns of this country, thanks to the iron hills of Lapland. However, I mustn’t tell you about Narvik before you get there. First I will ask you to go up along the coast with me by steamer and get something of the unconscious spell of northern Norway in winter, when it doesn’t suspect that it is showing off.
I decided to come to Trondhjem by rail instead of by steamer, so I hunted things up in my Norges Communicationer and found that I could go direct from Christiania to Trondhjem in sixteen hours and there take one of the mail boats of that Dampskibsselskab (I love to pronounce that word) up to Narvik. I have several thousand things to tell you about Christiania and Trondhjem, but these must wait until later, as I am planning to visit these cities again. In this letter I shall simply tell you about northern Norway in the cold, gloomy winter, which is really neither cold nor gloomy. It is wonderful, this Norwegian winter. The whole country does not realize that there is an American tourist north of Trondhjem, and if it did realize, it wouldn’t care, for it is attending to its own business. I get the same pleasure out of seeing this tourist-ridden country out of season that I got from seeing Oberammergau in the winter of 1905, when the natives had forgotten the previous decennial Passion Play and had not begun to think seriously of the next.
This “awful, uncanny darkness” that seems to frighten so many people is one of my chief delights. On the average there have been only three or four hours a day when I could see to read by daylight, but the twenty-hour nights have been anything but depressing to me. It has been clear weather nearly all the time, and there have been many substitutes for Phœbus. Even when there has been no moon and no northern lights, the starlight has usually been enough to bring out in sharp relief the changing outline of mountains and rocky headlands. But much of the time the stars have had assistance. A brand new moon came to the rescue soon after we left Trondhjem, and as it was not particularly bothered by the blinding sunlight it had a great chance to make the most of itself. It is surprising how much light even a very new moon can give when it is not annoyed or forced out of business by such a light trust as the sun.
Occasionally the aurora borealis has come to lend its very gentle, wavering quota of illumination. It is extremely timid, and a bright moon can frighten it into retirement. But when it does appear it is the most bewitching of phantoms. It is always restless, always timid. It darts a long, white ray up to the zenith and then snatches it back as if in terror lest something should seize it and hold it fast. Sometimes it is as if a dozen streamers of the softest phosphorescent material were blown out by the action of some huge electric fans at the North Pole. The scene is never twice alike, even when seen from the same point, and when seen from the deck of a little steamer, winding its way through a twisting, cliff-bound channel, the variety is endless.