Glimpses of Three Coasts

by Helen Hunt Jackson

Stavanger is one of the most ancient towns in Norway. It looks as if it were one of the most ancient in the world; its very brightness, with its faded red houses, open windows, and rugged pavements, being like the color and smile one sees sometimes on a cheerful, wrinkled, old face. The houses are packed close together, going up-hill as hard as they can; roofs red tiled; gable ends red tiled also, which gives a droll eyebrow effect to the ends of the houses, and helps wonderfully to show off pretty faces just beneath them, looking out of windows. All the windows open in the middle, outwards, like shutters; and it would not be much risk to say that there is not a window-sill in all Stavanger without flowers. Certainly, we did not see one in a three hours' ramble. From an old watchtower, which stands on the top of the first sharp hill above the harbor, is a sweeping off-look, seaward and coastward, to north and south: long promontories, green and curving, with low red roofs here and there, shot up into relief by the sharp contrast of color; bays of blue water breaking in between; distant ranges of mountains glittering white; thousands of islands in sight at once. Stavanger's approach strikes Norway's key-note with a bold hand, and old Norway and new Norway meet in Stavanger's market-place. An old cathedral, the oldest but one in the country, looks down a little inner harbor, where lie sloops loaded with gay pottery of shapes and colors copied from the latest patterns out in Staffordshire. These are made by peasants many miles away, on the shores of the fjords: bowls, jars, flower-pots, jugs, and plates, brown, cream-colored, red, and white; painted with flowers, and decorated with Grecian and Etruscan patterns in simple lines. The sloop decks are piled high with them,—a gay show, and an odd enough freight to be at sea in a storm. The sailors' heads bob up and down among the pots and pans, and the salesman sits flat on the deck, lost from view, until a purchaser appears. Miraculously cheap this pottery is, as well as fantastic of shape and color; one could fit out his table off one of these crockery sloops, for next to nothing. Along the wharves were market-stands of all sorts: old women selling fuchsias, myrtles, carrots, and cabbages, and blueberries, all together; piles of wooden shoes, too,—clumsy things, hollowed out of a single chunk of wood, shaped like a Chinese junk keel, and coarsely daubed with black paint on the outside; no heel to hold them on, and but little toe. The racket made by shuffling along on pavements in them is amazing, and "down at the heel" becomes a phrase of new significance, after one has heard the thing done in Norway.

Just outside the market-place we came upon our first cariole; it was going by like the wind, drawn by a little Norwegian pony, which seemed part pincushion, part spaniel, part fat snowbird, and the rest pony, with a shoe-brush, bristles up, for a mane. Such good-will in his trot, and such a sense of honor and independence in the wriggle of his head, and such affectionateness all over him, no wonder the Norwegians love such a species of grown-up useful pet dogs. Hardy they are, and, if they choose, swift; obey voices better than whips, and would rather have bread than hay to eat, at any time of day. The cariole is a kind of compressed sulky, open, without springs; the narrow seat, narrow even for one person, set high up on elastic wooden shafts, which rest on the axle-tree at the back, and on a sort of saddle-piece in front. The horse is harnessed very far forward in the low thills, and has the direct weight on his shoulders. A queerer sight than such a vehicle as this, coming at a Norwegian pony's best rate towards you, with a pretty Norwegian girl driving, and standing up on the cross-piece behind her a handsome Norwegian officer, with his plumed head above hers, bent a little to the right or left, and very close, lovers of human nature in picturesque situations need not wish to see. Less picturesque, and no doubt less happy for the time being, but no less characteristic, was the first family we saw in Stavanger taking an airing; a square wooden box for a wagon,—nothing more than a vegetable bin on wheels. This held two large milk-cans, several bushels of cabbages, four children, and their mother. The father walked sturdily beside the wagon, his head bent down, like his pony's; serious eyes, a resolute mouth, and a certain look of unjoyous content marked him as a good specimen of the best sort of Norwegian peasant. The woman and the children wore the same look of unjoyous and unmirthful content; silent, serious, satisfied, they all sat still among the cabbages. So solemn a thing is it to be born in latitude north. Had those cabbages grown in the Campagna, the man would have been singing, the woman laughing, and the young ones rolling about in the cart like kittens.

From Stavanger to Bergen is a half-day's sail: in and out among islands, promontories, inlets, rocks; now wide sea on one hand, and rugged shore on the other; now a very archipelago of bits of land and stone flung about in chaotic confusion, on all sides. Many of the islands are nothing but low beds of granite, looking as if it were in flaky slices like mica, or else minutely roughened and stippled, as though cooled suddenly from a tremendous boil. Some of these islands have oases of green in them; tiny red farm-houses, sunk in hollows, with narrow settings of emerald around them; hand's-breadth patches of grain here and there, left behind as from some harvest, which the hungry sea is following after to glean. No language can describe the fantastic, elusive charm of this islet and rocklet universe: half sadness, half cheer, half lonely, half teeming, altogether brilliant and brimming with beauty; green land, gray rock, and blue water, surging, swaying, blending, parting, dancing together, in stately and contagious pleasure. On the north horizon rise grand snow-topped peaks; broad blue bays make up into the land walled by mountains; snow fjelds and glaciers glitter in the distance; and waterfalls, like silver threads, shine from afar on the misty clouds. At every new turn is a hamlet or house, looking as if it had just crept into shelter; one solitary boat moored at the base of its rock, often the only token of a link kept with the outer world.

The half-day's sail from Stavanger to Bergen is all like this, except that after one turns southward into the Bergen Fjord the mysterious islanded shores press closer, and the hill shores back of them rise higher, so that expectancy and wonder deepen moment by moment, till the moment of landing on Bergen's water rim. "Will there be carriages at the wharf?" we had asked of the terrible stewardess who had tyrannized over our ship for two days, like a French Revolution fishwoman. "Carriages!" she cried, with her arms akimbo. "The streets in Bergen are so steep carriages can't drive down them. The horses would tumble back on the carriage,"—a purely gratuitous fiction on her part, for what motive it is hard to conceive. But it much enhanced the interest with which we gazed at the rounding hills, slowly hemming us in closer and closer, and looking quite steep enough to justify the stewardess's assertion. By clocks, it was ten o'clock at night; by sky, about dawn, or just after sunset; by air, atmosphere, light, no time which any human being ever heard named or defined. There is nothing in any known calendar of daylight, twilight, or nightlight which is like this Norwegian interval between two lights. It is weird, bewildering, disconcerting. You don't know whether you are glad or sorry, pleased or scared; whether you really can see or not; whether you'd better begin another day's work at once, or make believe it is time to go to bed.

If somebody would invent a word which should bear the same interesting, specific, and intelligible relation to light and dark that "amphibious" does to land and water, it would be, in describing Norway twilight, of more use than all the rest of the English language put together. Perhaps the Norwegians have such a word. I think it highly probable they have, and I wish I knew it.

In this strange illuminated twilight, we landed on the silent Bergen wharf. The quay was in shadow of high warehouses. A few nonchalant and leisurely men and boys were ambling about; custom-house men, speaking the jargon of their race, went through the farce of appearing to ransack our luggage. Our party seemed instantaneously to have disintegrated, in the half darkness, into odds and ends of unassorted boxes and people, and it was with gratitude as for a succession of interpositions of a superior and invincible power that we finally found ourselves together again in one hotel, and decided that, on the whole, it was best to go to bed, in spite of the light, because, as it was already near midnight, it would very soon be still lighter, and there would be no going to bed at all.

The next day, we began Bergen by driving out of it (a good way always, to begin a place). No going out of Bergen eastward or westward except straight up skyward, so steep are the slopes. Southward the country opens by gentler ascents, and pretty country houses are built along the road for miles,—all of wood, and of light colors, with much fantastic carving about them; summer-houses perched on the terraces, among lime, birch, and ash trees. One which we saw was in octagon shape, and had the roof thick sodded with grass, which waved in the wind. The eight open spaces of the sides were draped with bright scarlet curtains, drawn away tight on each side, making a Gothic arch line of red at each opening. It looked like somebody's gay palanquin set down to wait.

Our driver's name was Nils. He matched it: short, sturdy, and good-natured; red cheeks and shining brown eyes. His ponies scrambled along splendidly, and stopped to rest whenever they felt like it,—not often, to be sure, but they had their own way whenever they did, and were allowed to stand still. Generally they put their heads down and started off of their own accord in a few seconds; occasionally Nils reminded them by a chuckle to go on.

There is no need of any society for the prevention of cruelty to animals in Norway. The Norwegian seems to be instinctively kind to all beasts of bondage. At the foot of steep hills is to be seen everywhere the sign, "Do not forget to rest the horses." The noise Nils made when he wished to stop his ponies gave us a fright, the first time we heard it. It is the drollest sound ever invented for such a use: a loud call of rolling r's; an ingenious human parody on a watchman's rattle; a cross between a bellow and a purr. It is universal in Norway, but one can never become accustomed to it unless he has heard it from infancy up.

The wild and wooded country through which we drove was like parts of the northern hill country of New England: steep, stony hills; nooks full of ferns; bits of meadow in sunlight and shadow, with clover, and buttercups, and bluebells, and great mossy bowlders; farm-houses snugged down in hollows to escape the wind; lovely dark tarns, with pond-lilies afloat, just too far from the shore for arms to reach them. Only when we met people, or when the great blue fjord gleamed through the trees below us, did we know we were away from home. It is a glory when an arm of the sea reaches up into the heart of a hill country, so that men may sail to and from mountain bases. No wonder that the Vikings went forth with the passion of conquering, and yet forever returned and returned, with the passion of loving their gamle Norge.