Glimpses of Three Coasts

by Helen Hunt Jackson

Vossevangen is a little farming hamlet on the west shore of a beautiful lake. The region is one of the best agricultural districts in western Norway; the "Vos" farmers are held to be fortunate and well to do, and their butter and cheese always bring high prices in market.

On the eastern shore of the lake is a chain of mountains, from two to four thousand feet high; to the south, west, and north rise the green hills on which the farms lie; above these, again, rise other hills, higher and more distant, where in the edges of the snow tracts or buried in fir forests are the sæters, the farmers' summer homes.

As we drove into the village we met the peasants going home from church: the women in short green or black gowns, with gay jackets and white handkerchiefs made into a flying-buttress sort of head-dress on their heads; the men with knee-breeches, short vests, and jackets thick trimmed with silver buttons. Every man bowed and every woman courtesied as we passed. To pass any human being on the highway without a sign or token of greeting would be considered in Norway the height of ill manners; any child seen to do it would be sharply reproved. Probably few things would astonish the rural Norwegian more than to be told that among the highly civilized it is considered a mark of good breeding, if you chance to meet a fellow-man on the highway, to go by him with no more recognition of his presence than you would give to a tree or a stone wall.

It is an odd thing that a man should be keeping the Vossevangen Hotel to-day who served in America's civil war, was for two years in one of the New York regiments, and saw a good deal of active service. He was called back to Norway by the death of his father, which made it necessary for him to take charge of the family estate in Vossevangen. He has married a Vossevangen woman, and is likely to end his days there; but he hankers for Chicago, and always will. He keeps a fairly good little hotel, on the shores of the lake, with a row of willow-trees in front; dwarf apple-trees, gooseberry and currant bushes, and thickets of rhubarb in his front yard; roses, too, besides larkspur and phlox; but the rhubarb has the place of honor. The dining-room and the parlor were, like those at Eide, adorned with ivies and flowering plants; oleanders in the windows and potted carnations on the table. In one corner of the dining-room was a large round table covered with old silver for sale: tankards, chains, belts, buttons, coins, rings, buckles, brooches, ornaments of all kinds,—hundreds of dollars' worth of things. There they lay, day and night, open to all who came; and they had done this, the landlady said, for years, and not a single article had ever been stolen: from which it is plain that not only is the Norwegian honest himself, there must be a contagion in his honesty, which spreads it to all travellers in his country.

The next morning, early, we set off in a peasant's cart to visit some of the farm-houses.

"Now you shall see," said Sanna, "that it was not possible if you had all day to ride in this kind of wagon."

It did not take long to prove the truth of her remark. A shallow wooden box set on two heavy wheels; a wooden seat raised on two slanting wooden braces, so high that one's feet but just reach the front edge of the box; no dasher, no sides to seat, no anything, apparently, after you are up, except your hard wooden seat and two pounding wheels below,—this is the peasant wagon. The horse, low down between two heavy thills, is without traces, pulls by a breast collar, is guided by rope reins, and keeps his heels half the time under the front edge of the box. The driver stands up in the box behind you, and the rope reins are in your hair, or on your neck, shoulders, ears, as may be. The walloping motion of this kind of box, drawn by a frisky Norwegian horse over rough roads, is droll beyond description. But when it comes to going down hills in it, and down hills so steep that the box appears to be on the point of dumping you between the horse's ears at each wallop, it ceases to be droll, and becomes horrible. Our driver was a splendid specimen of a man,—six feet tall, strong built, and ruddy. When he found that I was an American, he glowed all over, and began to talk rapidly to Sanna. He had six brothers in America.

"They do say that they all have it very good there," interpreted Sanna; "and he thinks to go there himself so soon as there is money to take all. It must be that America is the best country in the world, to have it so good there that every man can have it good."

The roads up the hills were little more than paths. Often for many rods there was no trace of wheels on the stony ledges; again the track disappeared in a bit of soft meadow. As we climbed, the valley below us rounded and hollowed, and the lake grew smaller and smaller to the eye; the surrounding hills opened up, showing countless valleys winding here and there among them. It was a surpassingly beautiful view. Vast tracts of firs, inky black in the distances, emphasized the glittering of the snow fields above them and the sunny green of the nearer foregrounds below.

The first farm which we visited lay about three miles north of the village,—three miles north and up. The buildings were huddled together, some half dozen of them, in a haphazard sort of way, with no attempt at order, no front, no back, and no particular reason for approaching one way rather than another. Walls of hewn logs, black with age; roofs either thatched, or covered with huge slabs of slate, laid on irregularly and moss-grown; rough stones or logs for doorsteps; so little difference between the buildings that one was at a loss to know which were meant for dwellings and which for barns,—a more unsightly spot could hardly be imagined. But the owners had as quick an instinct of hospitality as if they dwelt in a palace. No sooner did Sanna mention that I was from America, and wished to see some of the Norwegian farm-houses, than their faces brightened with welcome and good-will, and they were ready to throw open every room and show me all their simple stores.