While he is gone, I amuse myself with watching the logs; and had I been gifted with the moralizing powers of the melancholy Jacques, I might easily have set down in the journal some apt comparisons about the people of this world racing each other in the battle of life, pushing, scrambling, dashing other people out of their road. “If a man gets in your way, stamp on him,” says one of Thackeray’s people; and some of them suddenly brought up all of a heap in the dark inexorable round of one of life’s backstreams. The Storthing has, I hear, at length decided that there shall be a bridge thrown across this gully; the only wonder is that it has not been done long ago, as it might be built at a very trifling expense, and the foundations are all ready to hand.
Above the lone hut of the ferryman, who is a famous wood-carver, lies the new church of Sannes, rising on some flat meadow land. What a contrast that pure white image of it, reflected athwart the waters, presents to the huge, dreary, threatening shadows projected by yonder dark, weather-stained masses of everlasting mountains. And yet, when the rocks and mountains shall fall in universal ruin from their lofty estate, that humble spire,—although, perhaps, originally suggested by the towering Igdrasil of Scandinavian Pagan mythology,—shall rise still higher and higher, and pierce the clouds, and the small, and seemingly perishable fane, expand into the vast imperishable temple of the God above.
From its various associations, such a sight as that is very pleasing to the traveller in a lone country like this, where Nature’s brow is almost always contracted, frowning in gloomy, uncompromising grandeur. No larks carolling blithely up aloft; but instead, the scream of some bird of prey, the grating croak of the raven, the demon screech of the lom, or the hoarse murmur of the angry waterfall.
At Froisnaes I spend the night, intending next day to cross the lake, and walk over the mountains opposite to another lake, called the Högvand, the trout of which are renowned throughout the valley. After undergoing the usual artillery of questions and staring, I fall to discussing my frugal meal of trout and potatoes, while the good woman fills the bedstead with fresh straw. In this she is assisted by one of her sons, whose trousers rise up to his gullet, and are actually kept up by the silver studs of his shirt collar. These, with a brooch, are the lad’s own handiwork, he having learned the art of the silversmith from a travelling descendant of Tubal Cain. He is very anxious to buy a gold coin from me, and brings half an old gold piece, and asks the value of it. By poising it in the balance against half a sovereign, I am enabled to guide him respecting its true worth.
“Now then,” said the landlady, “the bed is quite clear of fleas, though I won’t say there are not some on the floor.”
Having no cream, she brings me her only egg, which, after a sound drubbing, I force to do duty as cream to my coffee. She laments that she has no more eggs. All the family has been away at the Stöl, and have only just returned, and the thieving magpies took the opportunity, in lieu, I suppose of the good luck which they bring to the household, to suck the eggs as fast as the hen laid them. Guardian angels of this description come expensive.
The gude-man of the house, whose hair is cut as short as Oliver Twist’s—probably for similar reasons—with the exception of a scalping lock on his forehead, now comes up the steep, unbanistered stair to have a chat. The trout, he says, bite best a week after St. Johann’s tid (June 21), that being, no doubt, the time when the first flies appear.
Among other things, he tells me that about four miles to the west of this, in a mountain valley called Skomedal, there are the remains of an ancient church, at a spot named Morstöl, i.e., the chalêt on the moors. Underneath it is a sort of crypt. The graves, too, are plain to see. According to the country side tradition, which is no doubt true (for there never was such a country as this for preserving traditions, as well as customs, unimpaired), all the church-goers were exterminated by the black death in the middle of the fourteenth century. The people have not dared, says the man, to build any fixed habitation there since, and the place is only used as a summer pasture. More courage has been shown elsewhere, as the following story will show; but perhaps the real reason is, that in this valley it would not pay to build a gaard, the site being very elevated and cold.
Where the great Gaard (Garth) of Mustad now stands, there used, once on a time, to be a farmstead called Framstad, the finest property in all Vardal. But when “the great manqueller” visited these parts, all the inhabitants of the valley, those of Framstad among the number, were swept away, and a century later it was only known in tradition that the westernmost part of the valley had ever been inhabited. One day a hunter lost himself in the interminable forest which covered the district. In vain he looked for any symptom of human dwellings. After wandering about for a length of time in a state of hopeless bewilderment, he suddenly descried what looked like a house through the trees, which were of immense age. All around was so dreary and deserted that it was not without a secret shudder he ventured into the building. A strange sight met his eyes as he entered. On the hearth was a kettle, half consumed by rust, and some pieces of charcoal. On one of the heavy benches which surrounded the fireplace lay a distaff, and some balls of rotten thread, with other traces of female industry. Against the wall hung a cross-bow, and some other weapons; but everything was covered with the dust of centuries. Surely there must be some more vestiges of the former occupants, thought he, as he clambered up into the loft by the steep ladder. And sure enough there were two great bedsteads, the solid timbers of which were let into the end walls of the room. In each of these were the mouldering skeletons of two or more human beings.