These little horses will carry up and down steep mountains from fifteen Norwegian Bismark lbs. (nearly two hundred weight English) up to twenty-two. How the little nag, with my luggage and myself on his back, managed to win his way over the stream, which was at least two feet deep, and among the large slippery stones on its bottom, it was difficult to divine. They are very cats for climbing, though they do not share that animal’s aversion to water, which they take to as if it was their natural element.
CHAPTER VII.
An oasis—Unkempt waiters—Improving an opportunity—The church in the wilderness—Household words—A sudden squall—The pools of the Quenna—Airy lodgings—Weather-bound—A Norwegian grandpapa—Unwashed agriculturists—An uncanny companion—A fiery ordeal—The idiot’s idiosyncrasy—The punctilious parson—A pleasant query—The mystery of making flad-brod—National cakes—The exclusively English phase of existence—Author makes a vain attempt to be “hyggelig”—Rather queer.
It was already dark when we emerged from the morasses and loose rocks, and lighted by good luck on the little patch of green sward on the northern shores of the Misövand, adjoining the farm-house of Waagen. On referring to the map, reader, and finding this spot set down upon it, your imagination, of course, pictures a regular village, or something of that sort; but this is not the case. A couple of gaards, with a belt of swampy grass land, are all the symptoms of man to enliven this intensely solitary waste of grey rocks, bog, birch, and water.
The proprietors are Gunnuf Sweynsen and his brother Torkil, together with one Ole Johnson, a cousin. Gunnuf is absent, guiding the Germans across the Fjeld.
The best method to proceed is, I find, to take boat from here to Lien, which is about twenty-four miles distant, at the very top or north-eastern end of the lake; a horse must then be procured to carry my effects for the other seventy English miles across the mountains. A bargain is soon struck with Johnson, who has once before traversed most of the route; and for the sum of eight dollars (thirty-six shillings English) he undertakes to horse and guide me the whole way to the Hardanger.
The stabur, or hay-loft, affords me a tolerable night’s resting-place. There were no women-folk about to make things comfortable; so I managed with the three unkempt valets de chambre instead, who boiled me some coffee, greased my boots, and did the needful quite as well as one of those short-jacketed, napkin-carrying, shilling-seeking German kellners who supersede the spruce chamber-maid of the English inn.
By early day we walk across the dew-dank meadow down to the shore of the lake, while a few black ducks, which scuttle off at our approach, warn me to get my fowling-piece ready. The water is so shallow near the land, that the boat gets aground; and the men are in the water in a moment and pushing her off, and into the boat again in a twinkling as she shot into the deeps, the water streaming from their legs in cascades, about which they seemed to care as little as the black ducks aforesaid.