That these words actually passed through the lips of the Captain, and escaped, what Homer calls, the protection of his teeth, we will not take upon ourselves to affirm—as indolently he reclined on the paddle-box of the Gefjon steamer, with his eyes shut, his muscles relaxed, his arms and legs sprawling about in all directions, while the indolent smoke of his cigar, that from time to time floated out lazily from between his lips, afforded the only sign of life about him; he seemed as if he was totally incapable of making any such exertion—but certainly, these ideas passed through his mind, and pictured themselves on the light grey clouds that proceeded from his mouth.
Breakfast, so far as the English portion of the guests was concerned, had long been over, and though some hardy Norseman or persevering Swede was still lingering over the scenes of his departed joys, and dallying with tempting morsels of raw smoked salmon, or appetizing caviare, the first great act of Northern daily life might be looked upon as completed.
“You an artist,” said Birger, whose sketching tablet was already slung round his neck, and who was looking round him from the bridge, unable to choose, in such a panorama of beauty, which of all the lovely views he should attempt to transfer to his paper—“You an artist, and asleep among scenes like these? you are not worthy of them; as if you could not smoke your cigar while the rain was falling, and sleep in the night-time.”
“I was not asleep,” said the Captain, lazily, “I was thinking.”
“Thinking,” said Birger, “look round you, and you may think that you are in fairy land, if fairy land, itself, has anything half so lovely. Look at that beautiful lake, which we are just opening, on the north—see how those wooded capes partly intercept the view, with their soft outline of birch, and that long reach of blue water dancing in the sunlight, and that little island, a single spot of shade, with its three picturesque fir trees, and that dark red rock that overhangs it, with its iron stains of brown and yellow starting up from among the bright green foliage; and look how the ash fringes the edge of that precipice: get up, and if you are too lazy to work, at least admire.”
Really, the scene was a scene of fairy land, such as, in our most poetical of moments, we picture fairy land to be. The steamer’s course lay among the groups of islands that fringe the southern shore of Norway, and these, in that portion of the chain, at least, which lies between Hellesund and Lyngör, are, for the most part, bold rocks, clothed with every variety of foliage which Norway produces, and, being sheltered from the sweep of the sea breezes by the outer chain exhibit that foliage in its fullest perfection. The idea usually connected in our minds with Norwegian scenery, is that of wild and desolate grandeur; and fully is that idea realized in the mountains of the Hardanger and the Alpine deserts of the Fille Fjeld—wild, rugged, treeless scenes of utter desolation, almost beyond the limits of vegetable life. But it is far otherwise with the coasts—nowhere is seen a colouring half so vivid as among the sheltered islets of the southern shores; the turf with which their glades are clothed is more brilliantly green than anything that we have in England, where the grass is invariably interspersed with weeds. Take a square yard of any English turf whatever, and you will find in it, from ten to twenty different sorts of plants, all of which are, more or less, glaucous in their colouring, and these, though at a little distance undistinguishable in their forms, yet, blend their hues with the emerald green of the grass, and present what, side by side with Norwegian turf, would be but a soiled and faded picture. The foliage, too, is far more bright and luxuriant than anything in England, even in the interior of the country, but as different from our wind-worn and frost-nipt sea-side greenery as can well be conceived.
There is no such thing as early spring in those latitudes, or those warm, sunny, deceitful days, which tempt forth the young bud and leaflet, only to be pinched and shrivelled by the April frosts. Week after week does stern winter bind up all nature in its iron fetters; all is still, and cold, and dead; and though the sun rises higher and higher, he seems to shine without power; and though the days lengthen, and the empire of night be invaded, winter still holds on, and the snows look even whiter in the stronger light—the Norway of April, is but the Norway of December: more bright and more chilly—When all at once, and without preparation, the scene is changed—the snows are gone, the ice is broken, the leaves are already green, and the country is in the garb of full-blown summer. Spring is a season unknown in Norway.
The consequence of this is, that the leaf, which has not begun to spring at all till the frost is thoroughly out of the ground and the air free from chill, is never blackened, or nipped, or dwarfed in its proportions, as it is in England, and therefore preserves, through the short summer, a greenness and depth of colouring which with us is unknown.
“There is a beautiful legend about this,” said Birger, as he pointed out this peculiarity, “I do not believe in it myself, altogether,” added he, smiling, as the recollection of the Tellemarken legends and the sacrifice to Nyssen came across his mind; “I will not vouch, myself, for more than the allegory, but if we may trust to the fires of Walpurgis Night, my countrymen believe it implicitly: ‘Iduna, the goddess of youth, is among the Æsir, the guardian of the apples of immortality—gods, like men, are subject to decay; but whenever they feel any symptoms of it, they renovate their existence by the apples of Iduna. The possession of these apples was, as might be supposed, earnestly coveted by the Hrimthursar, or Frost Giants, whose territories, called Uttgard, surrounded on every side the sea that encompasses the earth. Time was when the earth enjoyed a perpetual spring, but Loki, who had not then forfeited his place among the gods, attacking, one day, the giant Thjassi, the chief of the Hrimthursar, whom he had taken for an eagle, found his hands frozen to his plumage.