Early that spring his father had said, “This summer we will take a vacation and go through the farm lands of Norway.” For weeks Roald waited for the day when that journey could begin.
Then one day in July the journey did begin. The family left Oslo by train. But to Roald the journey didn’t really begin until they left the train at a small town miles from the city and climbed into that two-wheeled buggy which Norwegians called a cariole.
The dun-colored horse took them only a short way. For most of their journey was to be on small steamboats on the waterways of Norway, called fjords, and by automobiles on mountain roads. But Roald gladly climbed on the boat.
Their first boat glided along narrow waterways for miles and miles between mountain walls that in some places rise almost straight up from the water. Roald began to wonder whether this could be a part of Norway’s farm land. But now and then, even in this mountainous region, his father pointed out a lone farmhouse perched up on the mountainside.
Soon the boat passed shores that were less steep and Roald saw stretches of low and rolling land between mountain peaks. He caught glimpses of farms lying close together. This farm land was like the farm land he had seen near Oslo.
Roald wondered what farmers grew in this land of mountains and water. But he did not need to leave his boat to see some of the farmers’ products. As the boat stopped at a small town along the fjords to deliver the mail and boxes of foodstuffs, boys came on deck to sell baskets of fruit—cherries, raspberries, blueberries, currants, and apples.
A TWO-WHEELED BUGGY OR CARIOLE
After a day on the fjords, the family traveled in an automobile. Roald soon asked, “What are those strange fences we see everywhere in the fields?” But he needed no answer to his question, for in a few minutes he saw one of those fences loaded with grass. All along the way he saw men, women, and children in the fields making hay. The men cut the grass and the women and girls and boys helped rake it into small stacks and hung it on the fencelike frames to dry in the sun.
