“Was the depth ever plumbed?” inquired I.
“To be sure, sir. That’s a long, long time ago—leastways, I have heard so. There was an old woman at Kos-thveit yonder, whose husband had the ill-luck to be drowned in the lake. She set people to work to drag for his body, but nowhere on this side of the country could she get a rope sufficiently long for the work. So she had to send to the city for one. At last they reached the bottom, and found the lake as deep as it was broad, with a little to spare, for the rope reached from Kos-thveit to Rauland, just across the water, and then went twice round the church, which you see standing alone, yonder on the shore, three miles off.”
“Who serves that church?” inquired I.
“Vinje’s Priest,” he answered. “That was his boat-house we passed.”
We landed on the eastern shore of the lake, at a spot called Hadeland, where a cluster of farm-houses were to be seen upon a green slope, showing some symptoms of cultivation. Richard Aslackson Berge, the farmer at whose house I put up, a grimy, ill-clad fellow, quite astounded me by the extent of his information. Catching sight of my wooden calendar, he immediately fetched an old almanack, which contained some explanation of the various signs upon the staff. Fancy one of your “alternate ploughboys”—as the Dean of Hereford and other would-be improvers of the clod-hopping mind, if I remember rightly, call them—fancy one of these fellows studying with interest an ancient Anglo-Saxon wooden calendar; and yet this man Berge, besides this, talked of the older and younger Edda, the poem of Gudrun, and, if my memory serves me, of the Nibelungenlied. He had also read the Heimskringla Saga. The promoters of book-hawking and village lending libraries will be interested to hear that this superior enlightenment was due to a small lending library, which had been established by a former clergyman of the district. There was a pithiness and simplicity about this man’s talk which surprised me.
“The wild geese,” says he, “come over here in the spring, and after tarrying a few days make over to the north, in the shape of a snow-plough.” Milton would have said, “Ranged in figure, wedge their way.”
Several old swords and other weapons have been dug up in the vicinity, indicative of rugged manners and deeds quite in keeping with the rugged features of the surrounding nature. On an old beam in the hay-loft is carved, in antique Norsk—“Knut So-and-so was murdered here in 1685”—the simple memorial of a very common incident in those days.
For the moderate sum of four orts (three and fourpence) I hire a horse and a man to the shores of the Miösvand. To the left of our route—path there is none—is a place called Falke Riese (Falcon’s Nest), where Richard tells me that his grandfather told him he remembered a party of Dutchmen being located in a log-hut, for the purpose of catching falcons, and that they used duen (tame doves) to attract them. This is interesting, as showing the method pursued by the grandees of Europe, in the days of hawking, to procure the best, or Norwegian breed. At one time, this sport was also practised by the great people of this country. Thus, from Snorro, it appears that Eywind used to keep falcons.
My guide, Ole, has been a soldier, but much prefers the mountain air to that of the town.