We were soon at the farm-house near the sea, where Ragnhild Bondehus, with her red stockings, blue polka-jacket and red boddice, looking quite captivating, albeit threescore-and-ten, put before us porridge and goat’s milk, which we devoured with keen glacial appetite.
“How is the harvest looking where you came from?” asked she, with anxious looks. This was a question that had been frequently asked me this summer.
“Very good all over Europe.”
“To God be praise and thanks!” she ejaculated. “We shan’t have corn then too dear to buy. We did hear that there was no grain sown in Denmark this year; that’s not true, is it?”
The old lady derived no small comfort from my assurance that this must be a fabrication of some interested person.
Our boatmen landing with their great provision boxes to dine at the rocky point where we reach the main Hardanger, we land and examine one of those singular “fixings” for catching salmon, called a laxe-stie, or salmon ladder. It consists of a high stage, projecting on a light scaffolding into the water. In front of this, under the water, is an oblong square of planks, painted white, from twenty to thirty feet long and six broad. This is kept at the bottom by great stones. Beyond this, and parallel with the shore, several yards out, is a fixed wall-net, to guide the fish into a drag-net, one end of which is fastened to the shore, the other sloped out to seaward. The dark-backed salmon, which in certain places are fond of hugging the shore, as they make for the rivers to spawn, swim over the white board, and are at once seen by the watcher perched on the stage above, and he speedily drags in the net set at right angles to the shore, with the fish secure in the bag. In some places the rock close by is also painted white[31] to attract the fish, who take it for a waterfall. The man lodges in a little den close by, his only escape from hence being most likely his boat, drawn into a crevice of the sheer rocks around him. Sometimes from twelve to twenty fish are taken in this manner in a day. St. Johann’s-tid (Midsummer) is the best time for taking them. The season is now over, and the solitary sentinel off to some other occupation.
According to the boatmen’s account, who, however, are very lazy fellows, the stream is hard against us; indeed, it always sets out in the Hardanger from the quantity of river water that comes into it.
“Ah!” said Ole, “that’s called Streit-Steen (Struggle-Stone). Satan once undertook to tow a Jagt from Bergen up the Hardanger. He had tough work of it, but he got on till he reached that stone; then he was dead beat, and banned and cursed dreadfully. It was he who called it Streit-Steen.”
The less said about the poisonous beer and bad food at Jondal, where we slept that night, the better.