Lower down we passed some ice-cold tarns, where I longed to bathe and take some of the limpid element into my thirsting pores, but prudently abstained. After a long descent we came upon a deserted châlet, the door of which we unfastened, and plundered it of some sour milk. We shall pay the owner down below. After this refreshment we plunged into a deep gorge, skirting an elv just fresh from its cradle, and which was struggling to get away most lustily for so young an infant.
“Ah! it’s only small now,” said Ketil; “but you should see it in a flom (flood). It’s up in a moment. Two years ago a young fellow crossed there with a horse, and spent the day in cutting grass on the heights. It rained a good deal. He waited too long, and when he tried to get over, horse and man were drowned. They were found below cut to pieces.”
I must take care what I’m about, thought I, as I nearly slipped down the precipice, which was become slippery from a storm of rain which now overtook us.
Below this the scenery becomes more varied, in one place a smiling little amphitheatre of verdure contrasting with the bold mountains which towered to an immense height above.
At length we descend to Suledal lake drenched to the skin. A ready, off-hand sort of fellow, Thorsten Brathweit, at once answers my challenge to row me over the water to Naes. The scenery of the lake is truly superb. The elv, which we had been following, here finds its way to the lake by a mere crack through the rocks of great depth. In one place a big stone that had been hurled from above had become tightly fixed in the cleft, and formed a bridge. Thorsten had plenty to say.
Two reindeer, he told me, were shot last week on the Fjeld I had just crossed. Large salmon get up into the lake. The trout in it run to ten pounds in weight; what I took were only small.
The landlord at Naes, where I spent the night, was astonished that I should have ventured through Sætersdal.
“They are such a Ro-bygd folk there,” observed he, punningly, i.e., barbarous sort of people.
The race I now encounter are, in fact, of quite a different costume and appearance. The married daughter of the house possessed a good complexioned oval face, with a close-fitting black cloth cap, edged with green, in shape just like those worn by the Dutch vrows, in Netscher’s and Mieris’ pictures. Her light brown hair was cut short behind like a boy’s; such is the fashion among the married women hereabouts.
“Long hair is an ornament to the woman,” observed I to her.