As this wonderful procession halted in front of the door, the gallant Kiögemester advanced and lifted the bride in his arms out of her vehicle. As she mounted the door-steps, a decanter of brandy in hand, all wreathed in smiles and streamers, flowers and feathers, I bowed with great reverence, which evidently gratified her vanity.
“I’ll tell you what she reminds me of,” said my English companion, who had left his profitless fishing to see the sight, “a Tyrolese cow coming home garlanded from the châlet. No doubt this procession would look rather ridiculous in Hyde Park, but here, in this wild outlandish country, do you know, with the sombre pine-trees and the grey rocks, and wild rushing river, it does not strike me as so contemptible. She is tricked out in all the finery she can lay her hands on, and in that she is only doing the same as her sex the world over, from the belle savage of Central Africa to Queen Victoria herself.”
The Kiögemester (head cook)—not that he attends to the cooking department, whatever he might have done in former days—is a very ancient institution on this occasion. He is the soul of the whole festival. Without him everything would be in disorder or at a stand-still. Bowing to the procession, he is also bowed down by the weight of his responsibility. In his single self he is supposed to combine, at first-rate weddings, the offices of master of the ceremonies, chief butler, speechifier, jester, precentor, and, above all, of peace-maker. His activity as chief butler often calls forth a corresponding degree of activity as an assuager of broils. The baton which he frequently wields is shaped like the ancient fool’s bauble. If he is a proficient in his art he will, like Mr. Robson, shine in the comic as well as the serious department, alternating original jests with solemn apophthegms. But the race is dying out. The majority are mere second-hand performers. The real adepts in the science give an éclat to the whole proceedings, and are consequently much in request, being sent for from long distances.
By-the-bye, I must not omit to mention that on the left arm of the bride hung a red shawl, just like that on the arm of the Spanish bull-fighter, whose province it is to give the coup de grace to the devoted bull. From the manner in which she displayed it, I fancy it must have been an essential item in her toilette. Hearing no pipe and tabor, or, more strictly speaking, no fiddle, the almost invariable accompaniment of these pageants, I inquired the reason.
“They are gudfrygtig folk (God-fearing people); they will have nothing to do with such vanities,” was the answer.
There seemed to me, however, to be some contradiction between this “God-fearing” scrupulosity and the size of the bride’s person. It struck me, as I saw the stalwart master of the ceremonies exerting all his strength to lift her into the cart again, that it was high time she was married.
At this moment up drives a gentleman dressed in black, with dark rat-taily hair shading his sallow complexion, and a very large nose bridged by a huge pair of silver spectacles, the centre arch of which was wrapped with black riband, that it might not press too much on the keystone. This is the parson who has tied the fatal noose, and is now wending his way homewards to his secluded manse.
Bidding adieu to my companion, who purposed driving round the coast, I now set off to the station, Mosby, to join the main route to Sætersdal, one of the wildest, poorest, and most primitive valleys of Norway, which I’m bent on exploring. On the road I once or twice narrowly escape coming into collision with the carriole of a young peasant who has been at the wedding. Mad with brandy, he keeps passing and repassing me at full gallop. The sagacious horse—I won’t call him brute, a term much more applicable to his master—makes up by his circumspection for his driver’s want of it. He seems to be perfectly aware of the state of things, and, while goaded into a break-neck pace, dexterously avoids the dangers.
Oak—a rare sight to me in this country—aspen (asp), sycamore (lön), hazel, juniper, bracken, fringe the sides of the road northward. Now and then a group of white “wand-like” lilies (Tjorn-blom) rises from some silent tarn (in Old Norsk, Tjorn), looking very small indeed after those huge fellows I have left reposing in the arms of the Isis at Oxford. Their moonlight-coloured chalice is well-known to be a favourite haunt of the tiny water-elves, so I suppose the Scandinavian ones are tinier than their sisters of Great Britain.