Aalesund, Norway,
August 31, 191—
Dear Cynthia:
My last letter to you was posted at Falun. Aalesund is well down the coast of Norway, so you see that I have zig-zagged quite a distance since last I greeted you.
My exit from Sweden’s back door was as pleasant as the entrance at the front. The long journey toward the northwest furnished the familiar—but never monotonous—alternation of grand forests, and tiny hay farms, and lakes and rivers filled with logs on their way to the saw mills. Bräcke is on one of these lakes, with the woods pressing close on the other three sides. Here we waited three hours, during which I breakfasted; and then we began our real climb toward the Swedish border where the mountains were more rugged and were flecked with snow. During the early part of the journey I shared a compartment of the car with a charming Swedish woman who busily knit white linen lace while she chatted with me. She was pleased to learn that I had been at Falun, and spoke with deep pride of Selma Lagerlöf. Strindberg’s best dramas, she hoped, were also known and appreciated in the United States. Some of his writings, it was true, showed traces of insanity; but didn’t I think “Swan-white” charming? The lady was very obviously a conservative, however, for she, as a woman, felt apologetic for Ellen Key, who is, however, I think, better known and appreciated in America than either August Strindberg or Selma Lagerlöf. She seemed inclined to attribute to Miss Key an unhealthy mind and questionable morals, which led me to recall the words the artist had put above Ellen Key’s portrait: “Could I but have represented your purity of soul!”
At Storlien (Great Line), very near the national boundary, we stopped for luncheon, which I obtained in the railroad restaurant all set forth in cafeteria style. The meal was as good as Swedish “home cooking,” and the cost was ridiculously slight as compared with the prices which one must pay in similar places at home.
As I was leaving the restaurant, whom should I see but my North Star lady! When we parted at Stockholm, she had remarked that she meant to cross the mountains to Trondhjem before returning to Gothenburg, but I had thought little about it, as I felt that there was no chance of our plans synchronizing. However, there she was, and I greeted her as an old friend. Her companionship added much to the pleasure of the remainder of my journey, and of my stay in Trondhjem. We secured a comfortable compartment and in a few minutes we had made our entrance into Norway, by Norway’s back door. Fröken Nordstern called my attention to the Great Line as we crossed it; it is a broad strip of deforested territory standing out in sharp contrast with the dark forest line on either side, and extends as far as the eye can reach over hill and dale to the north and south. This simple line separates the land of Sweden from the land of Norway; no blood-thirsty cannon punctuate its length. Preparations are being made to erect upon the boundary instead a fine monument in commemoration of the century of peace which is nearly complete between the two nations.
Soon the Norwegian customs inspector came into the car, but upon our assuring him that our suitcases contained nothing dutiable, he lifted his cap and passed on without asking to see their contents. I do not know whether his action was due to conviction of our honesty or of our poverty. Norwegians, however, like the other Scandinavians, are anything but liars; they generally tell the truth themselves and have a stimulating way of expecting the truth from others, and of getting it.
Do not let my calling the Storlien route Norway’s back door mislead you into the impression that the part of the land which we entered had the appearance of the average American backyard; on the contrary, it was grand. The Scandinavian Alps, which we crossed, remind me of my own Far Western High Sierras. They are not quite so rugged or majestic, but their beauty stirred me deeply, especially glorified as they were by the enchantment of the summer sun. The mountains not only offered the ever-attractive Scandinavian forests of evergreens and delicate birches and rowan with its cheerful bunches of red berries; there were also tender, golden-green ferns, strange sweet wild flowers—so near as almost to be plucked through the car windows—and trickling streams and waterfalls. That is, the streams trickled near their sources at the summit, but as our course descended, they united and widened and became Gudsaaen, which is, being interpreted, God’s Rivulet or River. And if the things of God are of especial beauty, the stream is well named. God’s River flows through Meraker Dal, or Valley, which, in the grip of bleak winter, is, I presume, anything but attractive. That golden afternoon, however, the place reminded me of Björnson’s “Synnove Solbakken,” and appealed so strongly that I wanted to stop off and spend a few weeks in one of the simple, homelike houses upon its sunny green slopes. Had I taken a vacation in Meraker Dal, I should have ridden over the mountain paths upon one of the shaggy little Norse ponies which frisked and played in the pastures. Perhaps I might have experimented upon the democracy of the Norwegian mind by milking one of the sleek cows!
But the train rolled on at a good speed toward the west, carrying me along. And soon we were near Trondhjem, which, five centuries ago, before Norway went into her four-hundred-years’ bondage to Denmark, was the Norwegian capital. The old saga accounts frequently mention the place as the destination or starting point of Norse chieftains, for Trondhjem Fiord, around which the city curves in a crescent shape, forms an excellent harbor.