Like rivers, and yet so unlike them in width, depth, and placidity, with their broad mouths guarded by clustering islands, one can find nothing in nature more grand, solemn, and impressive than a Norwegian fjord. Now and again the shores are lined for short distances by the greenest of green pastures, dotted with little red houses and groups of domestic animals, forming charming bits of verdant foreground backed by dark and shadowy gorges. Down precipitous cliffs leap cascades which are fed by ice-fields hidden in the lofty mountains. These are not merely pretty spouts, like many a little Swiss device, but grand, plunging, restless torrents, conveying heavy volumes of foaming water.
CHAPTER XVII.
As we advance northward, our experiences become more and more peculiar. It seems as if humanity, like nature, is possessed by a certain sleeplessness in these regions during the constant reign of daylight. People are wide awake and busy at their various occupations during all hours, while the drowsy god appears to have departed on a vacation to the southward. The apparent incongruity of starting upon a fresh enterprise at midnight is only realized on consulting one's watch.
All along the coast the birds are nearly as numerous as the fishes, and many islands are solely occupied by them as breeding-places. Their numbers are beyond calculation, consisting of petrels, swans, geese, pelicans, auks, gulls, and divers. These last are more particularly of the duck family, of which there are over thirty distinct species in and about this immediate region. Curlews, ptarmigans, cormorants, and ospreys are also seen in greater or less numbers.
The steamer lands us for a few hours at Tromsöe, a small island in latitude 69° 38´ north, a thriving place of six thousand inhabitants, a goodly number for a town within the Arctic Circle. It is the capital of Norwegian Lapland. Both to the north and south of the town snow-clad mountains shut off distant views. During the winter months there are only four hours of daylight here out of the twenty-four,—that is, from about ten o'clock A.M. until two o'clock P.M.,—but the long nights are made comparatively light by the glowing splendor of the Aurora Borealis. The birch-trees in and about Tromsöe are of a remarkably developed species, and form a marked feature of the place.
Just outside of the town a field is seen golden with buttercups, making it difficult to realize that we are in the Arctic regions. A pink-blooming heather also covers other fields, and we are surprised by a tiny cloud of butterflies, so abundant in the warm sunshine, and presenting such transparency of color as to suggest the idea that a rainbow has been shattered, and is floating in myriad particles in the air.
The short-lived summer perhaps makes flowers all the more carefully tended. In the rudest domestic quarters a few pet plants are seen whose arrangement and nurture show womanly care. Every window in the humble dwellings has its living screen of drooping, many-colored fuchsias, geraniums, forget-me-nots, and monthly roses. The ivy is especially prized here, and is picturesquely trained to hang about the window-frames. The fragrant sweet-pea, with its snow-white and peach-blossom hues, is often mingled prettily with the dark green of the ivy, the climbing propensities of each making them fitting mates. Surely there must be an innate sense of refinement among the people of these frost-imbued regions, whatever their seeming, when they are actuated by such delicate tastes.
One of the most interesting subjects of study to the traveller on the journey northward is to mark his progress by the products of the forest. The trees will prove, if intelligently observed, a means of fixing his position. From the region of the date and the palm we come to that of the fig and the olive; thence to the orange, the almond, and the myrtle. Succeeding these we find the walnut, the poplar, and the lime; and again there comes the region of the elm, the oak, and the sycamore. These will be succeeded by the larch, the fir, the pine, the birch, and their companions. After this point we look for no change of species, but a diminution in size of these last named. The variety of trees is the result of altitude as well as of latitude, since there are mountain regions of Southern Europe, as well as in America, where one may pass in a few hours from the region of the olive to that of the stunted fir.