At last, and after they had well-nigh begun to despair, the trees began to be thinner. Here and there a patch of sky relieved the monotonous black, here and there a sunbeam would struggle down; then a little grass, weak and pale, would cast a shade of sickly green over the ashy brown of the dead fir leaves, and afford a somewhat steadier footing; a patch of birch was hailed with the joy with which one meets a welcome friend; cattle paths, deceptive as they are, afforded at least a token of civilization: and now the whort and the cranberry began to show themselves, and the hospitable juniper too, the remembrancer of bright crackling fires and aromatic floors, and—
“Oh, positively we must have a halt now, for the difficulties are over,” said Birger, and, though he had plenty of tobacco in his havresac, out of sheer sentiment he stuffed his pipe with the dead strippy bark of that useful shrub, which is generally its mountain substitute.
A few minutes were sufficient for their rest; breathing the fresh air again was in itself a luxury, and treading the firm elastic turf a refreshment. As they went on, the landscape began to resume its park-like character, glades to open, trees to feather down, gentians to embroider the green with their blue flower work, and lilies of the valley to perfume the air. They were as much lost as ever, but the country looked so like the beautiful banks of the Torjedahl, that they could not but think themselves at home.
“This will do,” said Torkel, at last, who apparently had recognised some well-known landmark, “we shall soon find a night’s lodging now, and a kind welcome into the bargain.”
The track into which he had struck, did not at first appear more inviting than any of the numerous cattle-paths which they hitherto passed on their way; but Torkel followed it with a confidence which, as it turned out, was not misplaced; for it soon widened out into a broad green glade, at the further end of which stood a sœter of no mean pretensions.
The portions of cultivated and inhabited land in Norway are almost always mere strips, the immediate banks of rivers or of lakes—most of them are actually bounded by the forest; and in no case is the wild unenclosed country at any great distance from them. Every farm, therefore, has, as a necessary portion of its establishment, its sœter, or mountain pasture, to which every head of cattle is driven as soon as the grass has sprung, in order to allow the meadows of the lower farms to be laid up for hay. At these it is often a very difficult thing to get a mess of milk in the summer, for almost all the cheese and butter of the kingdom is made at the sœters. They are generally abundantly stocked with dairy furniture, but, as they are abandoned in the winter, they seldom exhibit any great amount of luxury. They consist generally of rude log-huts, of sufficient solidity, no doubt, for these logs are whole trunks of pines roughly squared and laid upon one another, morticed firmly at the corners, but of very little comfort indeed, notwithstanding. They contain generally a single room, a chimneyless fire-place, and a mud floor, in most places sufficiently dirty, with a few sheds and pens surrounding the main hut.
The present sœter, however, was one of far greater pretensions, it was built of sawn timber, and boasted of an upper floor, implying, of necessity, a separation between human beings who could climb a ladder, and cows and pigs who could not. This projected some two or three feet on every side beyond the lower storey, forming at once a shade and a shelter for the cattle, according as the weather required one or the other, and, in its turn, was crowned with a low-pitched shingled roof, whose eaves had another projection of two or three feet, so that, seen end on end, it had the appearance of a gigantic mushroom standing on its stalk. The dairymen had been men of taste as well as of leisure, for the barge-boards which protected its gables were ingeniously carved and painted with texts from Scripture, and the heavy corners of the projecting upper storey terminated in pendants no less grotesque than elaborate. There was one window in each gable and two in the side, the sills of which had been planed and painted with some date, text, or motto, like the barge-boards.
Round these sœters there are generally some patches of enclosed ground where hay is made, or where the more tender of the herds or flocks are protected, but here there seemed to be a complete farm; full forty acres had been redeemed from the forest, and enclosed by the peculiar fence of the country; which, except that it is straight, is in its general appearance not unlike the snake fences of America. It is formed by planting posts in the ground by pairs at small distances between pair and pair, and then heaping a quantity of loose planks and stems, and any other refuse timber which comes to hand, between them, the tops being kept firm by a ligature of birch-bark or some such material. These fences, when they begin to rot, which they do very soon, are the harbour of all sorts of small vermin, and are, in fact, the great eye-sores of Swedish scenery.
In the present instance, this was pre-eminently the case; not only the fences, but everything else, was in a terrible state of disrepair—in many places the posts were gone, in others the birch ropes had rotted through, and the miscellaneous timber which had formed the fence was lying about entwined with a spiry growth of creepers and brambles, a mass of rottenness. The house itself was in a more promising state; it was evident that it had been partially repaired and put in order, and that very recently, for many of the timbers showed by their white gashes, the recent marks of the axe, and the axe which had made them was lying across the door sill.
Torkel lifted the latch—that was easy, for there was no bolt or lock to prevent him—but the place was evidently uninhabited—he looked on Tom with a face of disappointment.