Glimpses of Three Coasts

by Helen Hunt Jackson

"Now my aunt did never see that old woman in all her life," continued the niece. "So what think you it was, in that garden, that both them did see the same thing at one time? And my aunt's friend she get so very sick after that, she were sick in bed for a long time. My aunt will believe always she did see the mother's ghost; and she says she have seen a great many more that she never tells to anybody."

All this ghost-seeing has not sobered or saddened the old lady a whit, and she looks the last person in the world to whom sentimental or mischief-making spirits would be likely to address themselves: but there is certainly something uncanny, to say the least of it, in these experiences of hers.

One of the most novel pleasures in Bergen is old-silver hunting. There are shops where old silver is to be bought in abundance and at dear prices: old belts, rings, slides, buttons, brooches, spoons, of quaint and fantastic styles, some of them hundreds of years old. But the connoisseur in old-silver hunting will not confine his search for treasures to the large shops on the thoroughfares. He will roam the city, keeping a sharp eye for little boxes tucked up on walls of houses, far down narrow lanes and by-ways,—little boxes with glass sides, and a silver spoon or two, or an old buckle or brooch, shining through. This is the sign that somewhere in that house he will come on a family that has tucked away in some closet a little box of old silver that they will sell. Often they are workers in silver in a small way; have a counter in the front parlor, and a tiny work-room opening out behind, where they make thin silver spoons with twisted handles, and brooches with dangling disks and crosses, such as all the peasant women wear to-day, and a hundred years hence their grandchildren will be selling to English and American travellers as "old silver." The next century, however, will not gather such treasures as this one; there is no modern silver to compare with the ancient. It is marvellous to see what a wealth of silver the old Norwegians wore: buckles and belts which are heavy, buttons which weigh down any cloak, and rings under which nineteenth-century fingers, and even thumbs, would ache. And the farther back we go the weightier become the ornaments. In the Museum of Northern Antiquities in Copenhagen are necklaces of solid gold, which it seems certain that noble Norwegian women wore in King Olaf's time,—necklaces in shape of a single snake, coiled, so heavy that they are not easily lifted in one hand; bracelets, also of the same snake shape, which a modern wrist could not wear half an hour without pain.

In these out-of-the-way houses where old silver is to be bought one sees often picturesque sights. Climbing up a narrow stairway, perhaps two, you find a door with the upper half glass, through which you look instantly into the bosom of the family,—children playing, old ladies knitting, women cooking; it seems the last place in the world to come shopping; but at the first glimpse of the foreign face and dress through the window, somebody springs to open the door. They know at once what it means. You want no interpreter to carry on your trade: the words "old silver" and "how much?" are all you need. They will not cheat you. As you enter the room, every member of the family who is sitting will rise and greet you. The youngest child will make its little bow or courtesy. The box of old silver will be brought out and emptied on a table, and you may examine its miscellany as long as you like. If an article pleases you, and you ask its price, it is taken into the work-room to be weighed; a few mysterious Norsk words come back from the weigher, and the price is fixed. If you hesitate at the sum, they will lower it if they can; if not, they will await your departure quietly, with a dignity of hospitable instinct that would deem it an offence to betray any impatience. I had once the good luck to find in one of these places a young peasant woman, who had come with her lover to bargain for the silver-and-gilt crown without which no virtuous Bergen bride will wed. These crowns are dear, costing often from fifty to a hundred dollars. Sometimes they are hired for the occasion; but well-to-do families have pride in possessing a crown which is handed down and worn by generation after generation. These lovers were evidently not of the rich class: they wore the plainest of clothes, and it was easy to see that the prices of the crowns disquieted them. I made signs to the girl to try one of them on. She laughed, blushed, and shook her head. I pressed my entreaties as well as I could, being dumb; but "Oh, do!" is intelligible in all languages, if it is enforced by gesture and appealing look. The old man who had the silver to sell also warmly seconded my request, lifted the crown himself, and set it on the girl's head. Turning redder and redder, she cried, "Ne, ne!" but did not resist; and once the crown was on her head she could not leave off looking at herself in the glass. It was a very pretty bit of human nature. The lover stole up close behind her, shy, but glowing with emotion, reached up, and just touched the crown timidly with one finger: so alike are men in love all the world over and all time through. The look that man's face wore has been seen by the eyes of every wife since the beginning of Eden, and it will last the world out. I slipped away, and left them standing before the glass, the whole family crowding around with a chorus of approving and flattering exclamations. Much I fear she could not afford to buy the crown, however. There was a hopeless regret in her pretty blue eyes. As I left the house I stepped on juniper twigs at the very next door; the sidewalk and the street were strewn thick with them, the symbol of death either in that home or among its friends. This is one of the most simple and touching of the Norwegian customs: how much finer in instinct and significance than the gloomy streamer of black crape used by the civilization calling itself superior!

The street was full of men and women going to and from the market-place: women with big wooden firkins strapped on their backs, and a firkin under each arm (these firkins were full of milk, and the women think nothing of bringing them in that way five or six miles); men with big sacks of vegetables strapped on in the same way, one above another, almost as high as their heads. One little girl, not nine years old, bore a huge basket of green moss, bigger than herself, lashed on her fragile shoulders. The better class brought their things in little two-wheeled carts, they themselves mounted up on top of sacks, firkins, and all; or, if the cart were too full, plodding along on foot by its side, just as bent as those who were carrying loads on their back. A Bergen peasant man or woman who stands upright is a rare thing to see. The long habit of carrying burdens on the back has given them a chronic stoop, which makes them all look far older than they are.

The sidewalks were lined with gay displays of fruit, flowers, and wooden utensils. Prettiest among these last were the bright wooden trunks and boxes which no Norwegian peasant will be without. The trunks are painted bright scarlet, with bands and stripes of gay colors; small boxes to be carried in the hand, called tines (pronounced teeners), are charming. They are oval, with a high perch at each end like a squirrel trap; are painted bright red, with wreaths of gay flowers on them, and mottoes such as "Not in every man's garden can such flowers grow," or, "A basket filled by love is light to carry." Bowls, wooden plates, and drinking-vessels, all of wood, are also painted in gay colors and designs, many of which seem to have come from Algiers.

Everybody who can sell anything, even the smallest thing, runs, or stands, or squats in the Bergen streets to sell it. Even spaces under high doorsteps are apparently rented for shops, rigged up with a sort of door, and old women sit crouching in them, selling blueberries and dark bread. One man, clad in sheepskin that looked a hundred years old, I saw trying to sell a bit of sheepskin nearly as old as that he was wearing; another had a basket with three bunches of wild monkshood, pink spiræa, and blue larkspur, and one small saucer full of wild strawberries; boys carrying one pot with a plant growing in it, or a tub of sour milk, or a string of onions, or bunch of juniper boughs; women sitting on a small butter-tub upside down, their butter waiting sale around them in tubs or bits of newspaper, they knitting for dear life, or sewing patches on ragged garments; other groups of women sitting flat on the stones, surrounded by piles of juniper, moss, green heath, and wreaths made of kinni-kinnick vines, green moss, and yellow flowers. These last were for graves. The whole expression of the scene was of dogged and indomitable thriftiness, put to its last wits to turn a penny and squeeze out a living. Yet nobody appeared discontented; the women looked friendly, as I passed, and smiled as they saw me taking out my note-book to write them down.

The Bergen fish-market is something worth seeing. It isn't a market at all; or rather it is a hundred markets afloat and bobbing on water, a hundred or more little boats all crowded in together in an armlet of the sea breaking up between two quays. To see the best of it one must be there betimes in the morning, not later than seven. The quays will be lined with women, each woman carrying a tin coal-scuttle on her arm, to take home her fish in. From every direction women are coming running with tin scuttles swinging on their arms; in Bergen, fish is never carried in any other way. The narrow span of water between the quays is packed as close as it can be with little boats shooting among the sloops and jagts, all pushing up to the wharf. The steps leading down to the water are crowded with gesticulating women; screaming and gesticulating women hang over the railings above, beckoning to the fishermen, calling to them, reaching over and dealing them sharp whacks with their tin scuttles, if they do not reply. "Fisherman! I say, Fisherman! Do you hear me or not?" they shout. Then they point to one particular fish, and insist on having it handed up to them to examine; if it does not please them, they fling it down with a jerk, and ask for another. The boats were full of fish: silver-skinned herring, mackerel, salmon, eels, and a small fish like a perch, but of a gorgeous dark red color; others vermilion and white, or iridescent opal, blue, and black; many of them writhing in death, and changing color each second. Every few minutes a new boat would appear darting in, wriggling its way where it had seemed not one boat more could come; then a rush of the women to see what the new boat had brought, a fresh outburst of screams and gesticulations; then a lull and a sinking back to the noisy monotone of the previous chaffering. Some of the boats were rowed by women,—splendid creatures, in gay red bodices and white head-dresses, standing with one foot on the seat, and sculling their little craft in and out, dexterously shoving everybody to make way.

On the wharf were a few dealers with stands and baskets of fish; these were for the poorer people. "Fish that have died do be to be brought there," said my guide, with a shudder and an expressive grimace, "for very little money; it is the poor that take." Here were also great tubs of squirming eels, alive in every inch from tip to tip. "Too small to cook," said one woman, eying them contemptuously; and in a twinkling she thrust her arm into the squirming mass, grasped a dozen or more at once, lifted them out and flirted them into the seller's face, then letting them fall back with a splash into the tub, "H'm, pretty eels those are!" she said. "Put them back into the water with their mothers:" at which a great laugh went up, and the seller muttered something angrily which my guide would not translate for me.

On our way home I stopped to look at a group of peasant women in gay costumes. Two of them were from the Hardanger county, and wore the beautiful white head-dress peculiar to that region: a large triangular piece of fine crimped dimity pinned as closely as a Quaker cap around the face; the two corners then rolled under and carried back over a wooden frame projecting several inches on each side the head; the central point hanging down behind, over the shoulders,—by far the most picturesque of all the Norwegian head-dresses. A gentleman passing by, seeing my interest in these peasant dresses, spoke to the friend who was with me, whom he knew slightly, and said that if the American lady would like to examine one of those peasant costumes he had one which he would be happy to show to me.