Before we left, we contemplated the deep valley of the Aardal, and its wooded sides. Trees covered the summit of the cliffs, on either side the Mörkfos. One mountain ash, had caught its roots in a cleft, and overhung in mid-air. Scotch firs crowned the rocks above.
We left at a quarter to one. Never shall we forget a small patch of golden moss, forming a miniature island in a small forest tarn; its resplendent colour in the glowing sun. Near the sœter in the Vettismark forest, a few large trees scattered near, were without bark, and dead. The Vettismark Sœter, and the Fleskedal Sœter, Ole said, belonged to the same owner. The ascent to the Fleskedal Sœter was very steep, but we reached it at five minutes past two o’clock.
Our middags mad, on the banks of the stream, near the Fleskedal Sœter, consisted of cold bacon, fladbröd, a box of sardines, and kage bröd, or ovens bröd (bread baked in an oven), which we had brought with us. Ole boiled our water at the sœter, and we had two pannikins of tea. The Fleskedal Sœter is a new sœter. One woman, and some children, were staying there. The sœter is built of wood, and of the usual size. We paid the woman four skillings, for allowing Ole to boil our water at the sœter.
It appears that Messrs. Boyson and Harrison stayed at the Fleskedal Sœter one night, with three other gentlemen going to Lyster. We were told that for one bed, for two of the party, the other three sleeping as they could, and for some fladbröd, butter, and milk, they were charged two specie dollars, or nine shillings English money, when they left. An English gentleman, accompanied by a reindeer hunter, came to the Fleskedal Sœter the day before we arrived, and stayed all night. Early in the morning he had shot a reindeer in the mountains.
The English sportsman returned to the sœter for a pony, but could not get one, and went to obtain one somewhere else. He said he should reserve the reindeer’s skin for himself, and send the carcass to a friend at Bergen. Ole said he would probably have to pay two or three dollars, and if he had sent it down to Skögadals Sœter, the carrier would have met the steamer for Bergen, and it would have gone at a much cheaper rate.
Leaving Fleskedal Sœter at about four o’clock, we had a delightful walk along the mountain slopes. At one point, in the depths of the valley below, on the opposite bank of the Utladal Elv, we could see the Bondegaard of Vormelid. A deep dark shadow seemed to hang about it in the far distance below. What a solitary abode. Few footsteps would ever pass its threshold. Imagine the winter solitude of this homestead. The silence broken by the wolf’s howl. Ole said the bears had destroyed the cattle of the former owner. He was nearly ruined. The bridge across the torrent was broken down, and the house deserted. Ole signaled as we approached the Skögadals Elv. The gipsies were soon on the alert to give us welcome. The carrier brought two horses, and we crossed the river. Our tents were reached at seven o’clock.
The gipsies appeared to have slept most of the day. They had not even quarrelled. We began to think they must be ill, until we found they had diligently inspected nearly every single article we possessed, which were afterwards carefully arranged upside down. We decided to move very early the next day, and Ole had the gröd at once prepared for breakfast the next morning.
Before retiring to rest, we strolled on the turf near our tents, and watched the secluded valley by moonlight. Vast ranges of snowy mountains were before us silvered by the moon. As we looked down the valley, we could not help observing, a large shadowed outline, representing the figure of a woman, singularly distinct, and formed by the conformation of a hill above the ravine. It was Sunday, and no music was given at the sœters.
CHAPTER XXXV.
“That gipsy grandmother has all the appearance of a sowanee” (sorceress).—“All the appearance of one!” said Antonio; “and is she not really one? She knows more crabbed things, and crabbed words than all the errate betwixt here and Catalonia; she has been amongst the wild Moors, and can make more drows, poisons, and philtres than any one alive. She once made a kind of paste, and persuaded me to taste, and shortly after I had done so, my soul departed from my body, and wandered through horrid forests and mountains, amidst monsters and duendes, during one entire night. She learned many things amidst the Corahai, which I should be glad to know.”
Borrow’s Bible in Spain.