“Yes,” said Solomon, “but this is quite another branch of the family. The other one died quite out, and then the destiny altered. The present people have risen again in the world.”
Talking of heirlooms, there is no copper horse now, of course, but there are several quaint things about the gaard, mementos of ancient days. Among the rest were two curious old hand-axes, used, as above-mentioned, by the Norwegians as walking sticks, when not applied to more desperate service, the iron being then used as a handle. The door-jambs of an out-house, moreover, are of singularly beautiful carving. These are a couple of feet in width, and formerly adorned the entrance to the old church of Hyllenstad, and give an idea of the great taste displayed by these people in ecclesiastical ornament in the Roman Catholic days. A tale is told here in wood, which I could not make out. It is most likely connected with the building of the church. Sundry figures appear with bellows and hammers, and the implements of the carpenter. But these are afterwards exchanged for weapons of a more deadly nature. A man with a sword drives it right through another, while on the corresponding jamb a gentleman is seen in hot contest with a dragon, whose tail is artfully mingled with the arabesques around. All these figures are carved in bold relief. The work was no doubt by Norwegian artists, for the interlacing foliage is in that peculiarly graceful and broad style (mentioned by Mallet and Pontoppidan), which always seems to have been at home in this country. These beautiful panels, together with the slender pillars joined to them, sold at the auction of the old materials for one dollar!
So little has this valley been modernized, that I find in almost every house specimens of the Primstav, or old Runic calendar, handed down from father to son for centuries. “It is the same with those tales you have heard,” said the Lehnsman; “the oldest people in the valley got them from the oldest people before them, though not in writing, but by oral tradition.”
“And what is the state of morals up here?”
“The Nattefrieri is very much in vogue, but the evil consequences are not so great as may be imagined.”
I must own that the revelations of the Lehnsman stripped those people, in my eyes, of a good deal of the romance with which their literary tastes had invested them. Nor was my idea of the artless and unsophisticated simplicity of these rustic Mirandas enhanced, when I was told that match-making was not uncommon among the seniors, and the juniors consented to be thus bought and sold. Hear this, ye manœuvring mammas!
“With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter’s heart.”
Yes! marriage here, as among the grand folks elsewhere, turns upon a question of lots of money—a handsome establishment. Perhaps, too, the jilts of refined and polished society will rejoice, to hear that they are kept in countenance by the doings in Sætersdal. It sometimes, though rarely, happens that a girl is engaged to a young fellow, who means truly by her, the wedding guests are bidden, and she—bolts with another man.