From Husum station my attendant is a very small boy, who with difficulty manages to clamber up on his seat behind. As we commence the ascent of the remarkable road which surmounts the tremendous pass beyond, a deep bass voice sounds close to my ear, startling me not a little. I’ll tell you what, reader, you would have started too, if a voice like that had sounded in your ears on such a spot, with no person apparently near, or in sight, that could be the owner of it. Could it come from that tiny urchin? Yet such was the case. Halvor Halvorsen was sixteen years of age, although no bigger than a boy of eight. The cause of his emitting those hollow tones was, that he wished to descend from his perch and walk up the pass, which he cannot do unless the vehicle is stopped; as if such a shrimp as that would make any possible difference to the horse. I suppose he has heard that the last ounce will break the camel’s back. His nickname is Wetle, the sobriquet of all misbegotten imps in this country. He cannot spell, and is nearly daft, poor child; but for voice, commend me to him. The whip he carries is nearly as long as himself; while his dress is exactly of the fashion worn by adults.
Further on the road branches in two directions; that to the left goes over the Fille-Fjeld. We take that to the right, and mount the Hemsedal’s Fjeld, and are soon on the summit. Some miserable-looking châlets dot the waste. One of these, Breitestöl, professes to give refreshment; but I did not venture within its forbidding precincts. The juniper scrub has in many places been caught by the frost, studding the wilderness of grey rock, and yellow reindeer moss, with odd-looking patches of russet. A series of sleet showers, which the wind is driving in the same direction as I am going, ever and anon spit spitefully at me. High posts at intervals indicate the presence here, for many months in the year, of deep, deep snow, when everything is under one uniform white, wedding-cake covering; funeral crust, I should rather say, to the unfortunate traveller, who chances to wander from the road, and gets submerged. Everything looks dreary in the extreme; the very brooks seem no longer to laugh joyously as they come tumbling down from the heights. There is a dull hoarse murmur about them to-day, whether it is the state of the atmosphere, or the state of the wind, or the state of my own spirit at the moment, I know not; perhaps they are loth to leave the parental tarns for the lowlands. The bosom of mamma yonder is also ruffled, I see, into uneasy motion. The writer of Undine ought to have been here to embody the imaginings suggested by the scene.
I was all alone, my attendant having gone back with another traveller. Presently, I meet a solitary peasant girl, sitting in masculine fashion on a white pony. The stirrups are too long, so she has inserted her toes in the leathers. It struck me that the lines in the nursery rhyme—
This is the way the ladies ride,
This is the way the gentlemen ride,
will have to be inverted for the benefit of Norsk babies. The damsel stares at me with much astonishment, and I stare at her, and, as we pass each other, a “good morning” is exchanged. And now the water-shed is passed, as I reach an old barrow, which appears to have been opened; and I dart down hill in company with a swiftly coursing stream, the beginning of the Hemsedal River.
Yonder to the left, auspicious sight, stands the change house of Bjöberg. I am soon in the Stuê, eating mountain trout, and regaling myself with Bayersk Öl, and then coffee. The biting cold, although August was not yet over, sharpened my appetite. The waiters, who alternately bustled in and out of the room, were a thickset burly man, wearing a portentously large knife, with a weather-beaten, “old red sandstone” sort of countenance; and a female, dressed in the hideous fashion of the country, her waist under her armholes; a fashion none the less hideous from her being in an interesting condition. These two were the landlord, Knut Erickson Bjöberg, and his spouse, Bergita.
Warmed by the repast, I have leisure to survey the apartment. There were the usual amount of carved wooden spoons, painted bowls and boxes, but the prints upon the log-walls were what chiefly engaged my attention. One of these was “The Bible map of the way to Life and Death.” A youth, in blue coat and red stockings, is beheld on the one side, bearing a cross. After a series of most grotesque adventures, he arrives at heaven’s gate, and is admitted by angels, who crown him with a chaplet. On the other side of the picture is a sort of “Rake’s Progress.” A man is seen dancing with a lady in a flame-coloured dress. Garlands, drinking, and fighting, are the order of the day. At last a person in black, with red toes and red horns, appears. There is a door into a lion’s mouth, and, amid flames burning, evil spirits are descried. In another picture the “Marriage of Cana,” is described not less graphically, and with equal attention to costume. The bizarre—an educated person would pronounce it profane—treatment, one would think, must sadly mar the good moral of the story. Knut was a most intelligent fellow, as I detected at a glance, and so I prevailed upon him to schuss me to the next station, Tuf, instead of sending a stupid lad.
“This is a strange wild country you live in, Knut,” said I, when we had driven a little distance.