Drink: ‘salon öl,’ which is the best Norwegian beer.
This supper does not come in in courses, but the whole of it is placed on the table at once; not spread out all over the surface of the board as at home, but arranged in small oval dishes all round the consumer, and radiating within easy reach from his plate, making his watch-chain the centre of a semicircle, and thus entirely dispensing with that creaking-booted fidget, the waiter. Such an arrangement cannot fail to coax the most delicate appetite. There is no coarse pièce de résistance; no vast joint to disgust you; but like the bee, you flit from dish to dish, toying, now with a prawn, now with a merry-thought, till you suddenly discover that you are unconsciously replete, and you rise from the table feeling that it was a good supper, and that existence is not such a struggle after all.
Altogether the ‘Victoria’ is a most charming inn, either to the wave-worn mariner wearied by the cruel buffetings of the North Sea, or to the weather-beaten sportsman returning straight from the bleak snow-fields of the interior of Norway. We never stayed there for more than two days, but for that time it is an uninterrupted dream of delight.
July 12.—
We had a very hard day, buying all sorts of things to make our stores complete: jam, butter, whisky, soap, and matches, Tauchnitz books, and several other necessaries. The butter is most important, as the best variety that can be got up country is extremely nasty; the worst is unutterably vile, though it is quite possible to acquire almost a liking for the peculiarities of the better kind after starvation has stared you in the face. We were much put out at not being able to get a small keg of whisky, as we fear that the bottles will fare badly in the rough travelling we shall have.
Accounts of Christiania may be found in many excellent guide-books, with which this simple story cannot hope to compete, so we will not attempt to describe the town, since, though our knowledge of all the grocers’ shops is voluminous and exhaustive, we are totally ignorant of the interior arrangements of either the churches or police stations.
The Skipper was very anxious to get some violet ink, because he is firmly convinced that it is the only sort fit for a gentleman to use. ‘A man,’ he said, ‘is known by his ink;’ so we went into many shops and asked for that concoction, always in the English tongue. Then we arrived at a shop where they did not speak our language; and here suddenly, to the intense surprise of Esau, the Skipper broke forth into a long harangue in Norse, concluding with an extremely neat peroration. The shopkeeper listened with respectful admiration, and then said, ‘No, this is a stationer’s shop, we do not keep it.’ Then Esau gave way to irreverent laughter, and the shopkeeper concluded that we were attempting a practical joke, and we had to fly. The Skipper was not angry, but very much hurt. It afterwards transpired that he had got up the whole of that magnificent burst of eloquence out of ‘Bennett’s Phrase Book,’ and then it had failed for want of two or three right words; truly very hard.
We took our canoes to the railway station, and despatched them to Lillehammer this afternoon; they had been a source of great interest to all beholders since our arrival, especially to the Norwegians, who have all a sort of natural affinity with any kind of boat, and seem very much pleased with the combined lightness and strength of their build. As far as we can learn they are the first of the kind that have yet been brought to this country.