“Oh, that was Torbior” (the mistress of the house).
“And what was she reading?”
“The Bible; she always does that every morning. We all assemble together in that room.”
Guro was fair; not so many of the inhabitants of the Hardanger district. The dark physiognomies and black eyes of some of the peasants contrast as forcibly with the blond aspect of the mass, as the Spanish faces in Galway do with the fair complexions of the generality of the daughters of Erin. One wonders how they got them. I never heard any satisfactory solution offered of the phenomenon.
Two Englishmen, who have also found their way hither, are gone to have a sight of the neighbouring Folge Fond. One of them is a Winchester lad, who has been working himself nearly blind and quite ill. His companion is of a literary turn, and indulges in fits of abstraction. Emerging from one of these, he asks me whether there is ever a full moon in Carnival-time at Rome. Eventually, I discover the reason of his query. He is writing a novel, and his “Pyramus and Thisbe” meet within the Colosseum walls, at that period of rejoicing, by moonlight. But more circumspect than Wilkie, who makes one of the figures in his Waterloo picture eating oysters in June, he is guarding against the possibility of an anachronism.
Among the luxuries of this most tidy establishment are some Christiania papers. The prominent news is the progress of the Crown Prince, who is travelling in these parts. He landed here, and sketched the magnificent mountains that form the portals of the enchanting Sör (South) Fjord. At Ullenswang, on the west shore of that Fjord, he invited all the good ladies and gentlemen, from far and near, to a ball on board his yacht Vidar, dancing with the prettiest of them. What particularly pleases the natives is the Prince’s free and easy way of going on. He chews tobacco strenuously, and to one public functionary he offered a quid (skrue), with the observation, “Er de en saadaan karl (Is this in your line)?” At a station in Romsdal, where he slept, he was up long before the aides-de-camp. After smoking a cigar with the Lehnsman in the keen morning air, finding that his attendants were still asleep, he went to their apartment, and, like an Eton lad, pulled all the clothes from their beds.
The great advantage which will ensue from the personal acquaintance thus formed between the Prince and this sturdy section of his subjects, is thoroughly understood, and the Norskmen appreciate the good of it, after their own independent fashion. One or two speakers, however, have greeted him with rather inflated and fulsome speeches, going so far as to liken him to St. Olaf, of pious memory. The only resemblance appears to be, that he is the first royal personage, since the days of that monarch, who has visited these mountains.
Utne has some curious historical recollections. In a hillock near the house several klinkers, such as those used for fastening the planking of vessels, have been discovered. Here then is a confirmation of the accounts given by Snorr. The ship, which was the Viking’s most valuable possession, which had borne him to foreign lands, to booty and to fame, was, at his death, drawn upon land; his body was then placed in it, and both were consumed by fire. Earth was then heaped over the ashes, and the grave encircled by a ship-shaped enclosure of upright stones, a taller stone being placed in the centre to represent the mast.
Sometimes, too, the dying Sea King’s obsequies were celebrated in a fashion, around which the halo of romance has been thrown. “King Hake of Sweden cuts and slashes in battle as long as he can stand, then orders his war-ship, loaded with his dead men and their weapons, to be taken out to sea, the tiller shipped, and the sails spread; being left alone, he sets fire to some tar-wood, and lies down contented on the deck. The wind blew off the land, the ship flew, burning in clear flame, out between the islets and into the ocean, and there was the right end of King Hake.”[16]