Sooth to say, the navigation of this coast by night is very dangerous. Lord Dufferin, I think, says there are no lighthouses. He is wrong; there are more than twenty. But what are these among so many shoals, islands, narrow channels, ins and outs, as this coast exhibits?
“Yonder,” said a Norwegian gentleman on board, “is the Skratteskjaer (skerry of shrieks).” This spot takes its name from a tragic event of which it was the scene many hundred years ago. Olaf the Holy, being resolved to get rid of the Seidemaend (magicians and necromancers), who then abounded in Norway, made a quantity of them drunk, and, in that condition, set fire to the house where they were assembled, and made a holocaust of them. Eywind, however, a noted warlock, escaped through the chimney-hole; but afterwards he, with three hundred others, were caught, and chained down on that skerry, which is covered at high water. As the tide rose, the shrieks of the victims pierced the air; but the royal executioner was inexorable.
Crossing the mouth of the Buknfjord, we stopped for half-an-hour at Stavanger, where I had an opportunity of examining the cathedral, which really exhibits some fine pieces of early Gothic. The nave was built in 1115. The verger was profoundly ignorant of all architecture, and so were some Norwegian gentlemen who accompanied me. What they chiefly attended to was a plaster model of Christ, after Thorwaldsen, and some tasteless modern woodwork. The pulpit is two hundred years old.
We here shipped a deputy, on his way to the Storthing now sitting at Christiania. He was a very staid person, who evidently considered that he was called upon to set the passengers an edifying example of superior intelligence and unmoved gravity. I heard that he had formerly been a simple bonder, but was now a thriving merchant. Perhaps I shall best describe him by saying that his parchment visage reminded me of a Palimpsest, whence a secular composition had been erased to make room for a sanctimonious homily; but, at the corners of the parchment, some of the old secular characters still peeped out unerased. Next me, after dinner, sat a sharp young Bergenser. To while away the time, I asked him if he could recite me any popular songs or rhymes. He responded to the call at once, and produced a couple of broad sheets from his pocket-book, containing two favourite old Norsk ballads; one of which was the famed “Bonde i Brylups Garen;” the other was, “The Courtship of Ole and Father Mikkel’s Daughter.”
The deputy’s attention I observed to be caught by our conversation, and he smiled gravely. Only think of a Storthingsman, clad in a sober suit of brown, whose mind was supposed to be full of the important business of the country, listening to such trifles. Gude preserve ye! Mr. ——, what childish stuff. Nevertheless, he had once been a child, and a peasant-child, too; and there was a time when he sat on the maternal knee, and heard the lullabies of his country. Nay, he went so far as to recite a country jingle himself. It was what we call in England a Game rhyme. Seven children are dancing round in a ring; suddenly the ring is broken, and each one endeavours to seize a partner.
Shear shearing oats,
The sheaves who shall bind?
My true love he shall do it,
Where is he to find?
I saw him yestere’en