“Dangerous paths these on a dark night,” observed I.
“Yes, and in broad daylight too,” was the response.
“Mind how you go—it’s very slape. Do you see that mark?” continued he, pointing to a long scrawl on the slippery surface, which terminated on the edge of one of these yawning chasms. “The best horse in the valley made that. He slipped in there, and was lost. Nabo (neighbour) Ole’s ox did the same thing in another place. Forfaerdelig Spraekke (frightful crack)! Pray take care; let me go first. It will be very bad going, I see, to-day. The snow is so much melted this summer,” said he, as we scrambled down into a deep basin, the bottom of which was occupied by grim Stygian pools of snow-slush and spungy ice. We were no sooner out of this slough of despond, than we were on a quasi glacier, with its regularly-marked dirt bands. The snow on which we trod was honeycombed and treacherous. Underneath it might be heard rumbling rills busily engaged in excavating crevasses. Now and then one of them came to the light of day, with that peculiar milky tint of freshly-melted snow, as if the fluid was loth to give up all at once its parent colour, dutiful child. To add to the strangeness of the scene, the sun, which was now high in heaven, catching the face of the mica-slate, bronzed it into the colour of the armour we have seen worn by the knights at the Christmas pantomime.
“We call that Swerre’s Sok,” said my guide, pointing to an eminence on my left, reminding me that the brave Norsk king of that name, when pursued by his foes, escaped with the remnants of his army by this appalling route. “He took his sleeping quarters at the sæter we are coming to,” continued Simon.
“That’s Yuklin,” said my cicerone, pointing to a rounded mountain to the right, muffled in “a saintly veil of maiden white,” and looking so calm and peaceful amid the storm-tost stone-sea that howled around us. To the left were two lesser snow mountains, Ose Skaveln and Vosse Skaveln, looking down on the scene of confusion at their feet with no less dignity than their sister. Striking images these of tranquil repose and rending passion! It was a magnificent, still, autumn day; if it had been otherwise, it would be difficult to imagine what features the scene would have assumed. I have seen a good deal of the Fjeld; but, until now, I had no notion how it can look in some places. “Vegetation has ceased now,” said the old man, with a kind of shiver, which was quite contagious, as we stumbled among
Crags, rocks, and mounds, confusedly hurled,
The fragments of an earlier world.
But a common-place comparison may perhaps bring what I saw home to my readers. Suppose a sudden earthquake, or a succession of them, were to rend, and prostrate, and jumble and tumble all London, choking up the Thames with debris of all imaginable shapes, and converting its bed into deep standing pools, with now and then the toppling tower of a temple or a palace reflecting itself in the waters. And, to crown all, not a single living mortal to be seen about the ruins. If this will not suffice to illustrate the scene, the blame must be laid on my barrenness of invention.