“Unless the weather is unusually stormy, and the passage of the vessel has consequently been delayed, the steamer remains in the outer harbour, called Klippen, for four or five hours; enabling the passengers who are going straight to Norway to inspect the city, which is well worth seeing. A miniature steamboat, the smallest I have ever seen, conveys you from the quay, at which the larger vessel remains moored, up the long harbour to the town itself, the journey occupying about half-an-hour. In the afternoon the Constitution continues her voyage, stretching much further out to sea, in crossing the Skager Rack, until, at an early hour the next morning, you reach Frederiksværn, the principal arsenal of Norway, situated at the entrance of the winding fjord of Christiania. From this place a smaller coasting steamboat conveys the passengers to Christiania, touching, in its passage up the Christiania fjord, at the various small towns and villages on either shore.
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“Steam vessels have for the last two or three years plied between Christiania and Frederiksværn and Bergen, but their times of leaving have hitherto been very irregular; beyond Bergen I am not aware that any regular communication has hitherto been projected.
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“No traveller has any business to intrude among the mountain fastnesses of Norway, unless he can not only endure a fair proportion of bodily fatigue, but can likewise put up with accommodations of the coarsest description. As far as Christiania this, of course, does not apply: the transport thither is by a comfortable steamboat, and the Hôtel du Nord sufficiently good to satisfy any man; but when you attempt to penetrate into the bowels of the land the case is different.
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“The Norsemen are strict Lutherans; scarcely an individual is to be met with professing any other creed, and no place of worship of any other kind exists in Norway. No Jew is allowed to set foot in Norway—a strange law in this free country. It has often struck me as a curious anomaly, that in the free cities of the Continent these unhappy outcasts were far worse treated than under many despotic governments. Commercial jealousy in a great measure accounts for this enmity in a city of merchants, but in a poor and thinly-populated country like Norway this motive could have no weight. I have been unable to learn from what cause the exclusion originated, though it is said to have originated from some idle fear that they would possess themselves of the produce of the silver mines at Kongsberg; but it is certainly a most startling fact that the freest people on earth should cling with such watchful jealousy to one of the most illiberal and inhuman laws that can be conceived.”
Soon after this our real sport-lovers began to discover the charms of Norway, Sir Hyde Parker, Sir Richard Sutton, and Lionel James leading the van; and within the space of forty years the transition has taken place from free fishing and shooting to the Scotch system of letting moors—a state of things that would astonish Forrester and Biddulph, whose work on Norway has now become historical and of the greatest interest. Forrester begins thus (a.d. 1834):—“Eight days in the North Sea, beating against foul winds, or, which was still worse, becalmed amongst fleets of Dutch fishing-boats, and ending in a regular gale of wind, which was worst of all, prepared us to hail the sight of land, and that of the coast of Norway.” This passage was made in a little Norwegian schooner, bound from Gravesend to the south of Norway.
How different is it now! Thanks to Messrs. Wilson, steamers take us thither almost to the hour, unless, indeed, the clerk of the weather should connive with old Neptune to teach us a lesson, by reminding us that the elements are not yet to be ordered about entirely as we like. English visitors commenced about 1824; Lord Lothian, Lord Clanwilliam, and Lord H. Kerr, 1827; Marquis of Hastings, 1829; and in 1830 we have Elliott’s account of Norway. Those were early days, when the bönder were astonished, and could hardly believe their own eyes, when Englishmen went down with a piece of thread and a kind of coach-whip to kill a salmon of thirty pounds; or, again, when the first flying shot opened a new world to them. Those were the times when members of the Storthing (or Parliament) appeared in the costume of their own district, with belts, tolle-knives, &c. They were not so eager to grasp at civilisation as the Japanese, who simultaneously took to elastic boots, tall black hats, and the English language within a year. No; they are a contented people, with no desire for change, or to have it thrust upon them, until they discover that they can make money of the delighted foreigner, who, elevated by the grandeur of the mountain scenery, grows more warm-hearted, kind, and generous than ever. Then the Norseman becomes rabid and exacting; but the provinces (thank Heaven!) still preserve their primitive simplicity.
Let us, then, hasten to these happy hunting-grounds. The fjeld life will blow all the smoke out of us, and if we love nature we can store up health and purity of thought, and bring back concentrated food for happy reflection, should we be spared to a good old age. How such reminiscences will then come out, brightened by the fact that all the petty désagréments of travel have been forgotten as they receded in the past! We need not enlarge on the pleasures of anticipation, the punctual meeting at the railway station, the satisfaction of knowing that nothing has been omitted or left behind—a congratulation sometimes a little blighted by the discovery that some one, after ransacking everything, cannot find his breech-loader or cartridge cases, or that some one else has left his pet “butchers” or “blue doctors” on his dressing-table. Should such mischances occur, they are soon dissipated in the general atmosphere of enjoyment and anticipation, assisted by the thought that it is of no use losing one’s temper, as it is sure to be found again, and the temporary loss of it grieves one’s friends unnecessarily, to say nothing of personal discomfort. Happy thought—always leave your ill-temper at home; or, better still, do not have one: it is not a home comfort.