On a lovely morning I took boat for Utne, further out in the Hardanger-Fjord. The English yacht had left some hours before, but was lying becalmed, the white sail hanging against the mast, under some tall cliffs flanking the entrance to the small Ulvik-Fjord. One or two stray clouds, moving lazily overhead, throw a dark shadow on the mountains, which are bathed in warm sunshine. Among the dark-green foliage and grey rocks which skirt the rocky sides of the Fjord for miles in front of us, may at times be descried a bright yellow patch, denoting a few square yards of ripening corn, which some peasant has contrived to conjure out of the wilderness. Near the little patch may be descried a speck betokening the cabin of the said Selkirk.
As you approach nearer, you descry, concealed in a little nook cut out by nature in the solid rock, the skiff in which the lonely wight escapes at times from his isolation. In fact, he ekes out his subsistence by catching herring or mackerel, or any of the numerous finny tribes which frequent these fjords; in some measure making up to the settlers the barrenness of the soil. Presently I hear a distant sound in the tree-tops. Look! the clouds, hitherto so lazy, are on the move; the placid water, which reflected the yacht and its sails so distinctly just now, becomes ruffled and darkens; and anon a strong wind springs forth from its craggy hiding-place. See! it has already reached the craft, and she is dancing out into the offing, lying down to the water in a manner that shows she will soon lessen her eight miles distance from us, and beat out to sea with very little difficulty. As for poor luckless me, the boatmen had, of course, forgotten to take a sail; so that the wind, which is partly contrary, and soon gets up a good deal of sea, greatly retards our progress.
At length we arrive at Utne, a charming spot lying at the north-western entrance to the Sör-Fjord. What excellent quarters I found here. The mistress, the wife of the merchant, a most tidy-looking lady, wearing the odd-looking cap of the country, crimped and starched with great care, bustled about to make me comfortable. Wine and beer, pancakes and cherries, fresh lamb and whiting—O noctes cœnæque Deum!—such were the delicacies that fell to my share, and which were, of course, all the more appreciated by me after a fortnight’s semi-starvation among the mountains, crowned by the stingy fare of the dollar-loving Magnus.[15]
I think I have not mentioned that in Thelemarken and the Hardanger district one meets with quite a different class of Christian names from elsewhere in Norway, where the common-place Danish names, often taken from Scripture, are usual. Ole, it is true, being the name of the great national saint, is rife all over, especially in Hallingdal; so much so that if you meet with three men from that district, you are sure, they say, to find one of the three rejoicing in that appellation. The female part of the family here rejoice in the names of Torbior, Guro, and Ingiliv.
“I wish, Guro, you would teach me the names of the various articles of female attire you wear,” said I to the said damsel, a rosy-cheeked lass, her mouth and eyes, like most of the girls in the country, brimfull of good nature, though, perhaps, not smacking of much refinement. Her hair-tails were, as usual, braided with red tape: and, it being Sunday, these were bound round her head in the most approved modern French fashion.
“Oh! that is called Troie,” said she, as I pointed to a close-fitting jacket of blue cloth, which, the weather being chilly, she wore over all; and this is called Overliv—i.e., the vest of green fitting tight to her shape, with the waist in the right place.
What can so good a judge as Sir Bulwer Lytton, by-the-bye, be about when he talks somewhere of a “short waist not being unbecoming, as giving greater sweep to a majestic length of limb.”
“And this is the Bringe-klud” (the little bit of cloth placed across the middle of the bosom); “and this is called Stak,” continued she, with a whole giggle, and half a blush.
“And who was that reading aloud below this morning?”