“No. There have been two or three times when we have been in a klem (hitch); but the good, sturdy common sense, and quiet resolution of us Norwegians has won the day. And now I think of it, this appointment of the Crown Prince to be viceroy at Christiania will be of inestimable benefit to the country. Our future ruler will get to understand the people, and know their worth. He will see what our freedom is doing for us. He makes himself quite at home with all, gentle and simple: dances with the parsons’ wives and daughters, and smokes cigars with the merchants, but he is observing all the while very narrowly; and he sees we are all united in our attachment to our liberal institutions, and thriving under them wonderfully; while, at the same time, all are most loyal to the kingly house.”
“But don’t you think these religious schisms, Lammers on the one hand and the Roman Catholics on the other, will be causing a split in your national unity?”
“Oh! no. It is true the Roman Catholics have a great cathedral at Christiania; but they don’t number more than a couple of hundred in all.”
“Ah! but there are some more in the North. It was only the other day I heard that some Papists are engaged in an active propaganda about Tromsö.”
“No doubt; the people up there have always been peculiarly inclined to be carried about by every wind of doctrine. It is there that the Haugianer made way; and it is there that these Papists have pitched their tents. They are going to work very systematically. They have purchased an estate at Alten. Every Sunday they preach to whoever will come. One of their addresses begins with the following attractive exordium:—‘Beloved brethren, we have left father and mother, brothers and sisters, fatherland and friends, from affection to you.’ Again, they boldly talk of bringing into the country light for semi-darkness. The poor Laps much want some little book to be distributed gratis to explain to them the subtilty of these people. I wish you could make the case known to the excellent English Bible Society. And whereas the Haugians were always reputed to be cold and indifferent to the poor, these missionaries are very kind to them, visiting the sick, and offering food, clothing, and instruction gratis. The whole plan is most subtly contrived, especially when the fanatic character of the Laps, and their poverty is considered. If the Government does not take care, and see after their spiritual and temporal wants, they may fall, I grant, into the hands of those people. But I don’t think the Norwegians will ever listen to them. There is an independence in our character that rebels against all priestly domination.”
“So there is in England. But even there it is astonishing to see how far matters are going. Why! it is only the other day that a petition to our Queen, to restore the ‘Greater Excommunication,’ was put into my hands to sign.”
But our conversation now turned from the vanities and vagaries of man to another topic.
The woods around are not deficient, I find, in capercailzie and black cock. Woodcocks, also, from the priest’s description, must be here at times. It was a brown bird, he said, larger than a snipe, which at dusk flies backwards and forwards through an alley in the wood.
“That is the Linnæa borealis,” said my host to me, pointing to a beautiful little white flower. “A strange thing happened to me,” he said, “when I was at my mountain parsonage in the West. One Baron von Dübner, a Swedish botanist, drove up one day to my house. I found that he had journeyed all the way thither to make inquiries about a peculiar plant which grows, he said, just under the Iisbrae, on a particular spot of the Dovre Fjeld, and produces berries something like a strawberry, which ripen at the time when the snow melts in spring. I made particular inquiries, and at last found a lad who said he knew what the stranger meant. He had seen and eaten these berries while tending cattle on that particular part of the Fjeld. I gave him a bottle, and he promised next spring to get me some; the baron promising to give a handsome reward. But alas! poor Eric did not survive to fulfil his promise. He was drowned that winter by falling through the ice. Now, do ask your botanists at Oxford about it.”[23]