“You just bet I do,” he replied, in first-class American slang.
He expected to go back to the Far West, he said; and it was quite evident that he had no intention of returning alone.
After leaving Trondhjem Fiord, we followed the coast of Norway pretty closely. Norway’s shores, you will remember, are mountains which stand with their feet in the sea. And near the shores are detached mountains which rose as islands on our right hand. Before retiring I went on deck to take a good-night look at sea and sky, expecting to find sea and sky only; and I was surprised and given “quite a turn” by the effect of the huge, weird, black, shadowy-looking mountain masses to right and left, with the lapping, gleaming ocean waves between. There was something about the scene which suggested bats and owls in forsaken houses at night.
The next morning the fiords were still there, but before the glory of the summer sunshine the “spooky” aspect had fled, and the mountains stretched away green and purple and wholesome and living and real.
We reached Molde, which is on Molde Fiord, in time for a late breakfast, of which I partook at a charming “pensionat,” set both picturesquely and precariously upon the dewy, green hillside. Here was served a genuine Scandinavian breakfast, Smörgåsbord and all. But here I met also a new delicacy—goats’ milk cheese. It looks like brown laundry soap—only more opaque and inedible—but it is fit fare for the divinities of Asgard. At least, so thinks one who likes Scandinavian cookery.
Breakfast over, I explored Molde, which is called “the City of Roses,” and it is appropriately named, for roses as well as other flowers were blooming in great abundance. From the natural park far up on the hillside—rocky and woodsy, with an abundance of ferns and flowers—I gained a beautiful panoramic view. At my feet lay the little town, peeping forth from its setting of tender green, bright with blossoms; beyond lay the fiord, dotted with woodsy islands; and, blending with the wonderful colors of the fiord, were the rugged, encircling mountains, shading from greens and purples, flecked with snow, in the foreground, to misty violet, or dazzling white, marblelike peaks outlined against the summer sky.
On the way down the slope I crossed the cemetery, filled with neatly-kept graves covered with smooth, rank grass and flowers as delicate as maiden hair, with the morning dew still upon them. Near the walk down which I passed was a neatly-dressed old woman with a white kerchief upon her head, working among the flowers. The country cemeteries of Scandinavia seem never to fail of gray-haired, white-kerchiefed old women with characterful, dignified faces who work among the flowers in loving memory of their dead.
While in Molde, I learned that the original of Axel Ender’s “He Is Risen” was an altar piece in the Lutheran church there; so I went to see it. But it happened that a wedding ceremony had just begun in the church when I arrived, and the sexton did not want to admit me. I was immediately fired with a desire to see the wedding, however, and after some coaxing he good-naturedly said that I might take a seat in the rear of the church. The service had just begun, I found. The white-ruffed, black-gowned clergyman was launched upon a sermon rich with good advice to the contracting parties, and calculated to impress them with the solemnity of the step which they were about to take. The sermon was followed by the conventional questions and replies and the exchange of rings; the priest offered prayer; the clerk sang a chantlike song; hand shakes and congratulations came next; and then the bridal party made their exit.
For its very usualness the bridal party deserves special mention. When I asked permission to see the wedding, I had visions of a bridal pair in native costume; but what I saw possessed no element of the picturesque. The couple looked just like the figures one sees on wedding cakes in third rate baker’s windows in the United States. The groom was in the conventional black suit and had very waxed mustaches and very shiny shoes; the bride wore the orthodox silk dress and tulle veil, and carried the usual bride’s bouquet of white blossoms. The only witnesses to the ceremony, besides the interloper in the back seat, were four young men and a young woman who looked as if they might be relatives of the bride. They wandered out in the wake of the bride and groom. It was a very tame, uninteresting wedding.
Speaking of weddings calls to my mind a mystery which my North Star lady cleared up for me. I had been constantly surprised since reaching Scandinavia at the unhesitating way in which people to whom I was an utter stranger addressed me as “Fröken” (Miss) rather than as “Fru” (Mrs.) and had been roused to deep admiration at the perspicacity which enabled those people to decide after a mere glance that I was a bachelor woman. But when I expressed to Fröken Nordstern my appreciation for this evidence of the superior quality of the Scandinavian mind, she swept aside the delusion with: “Why, they look at your hands; all married women here wear wedding rings.”