On our way to Tröndhjem from Copenhagen we stayed over a few days at Christiania, where we were the guests of Nansen, the Arctic explorer. His home, which stood out near the water's edge, was like a bungalow made of pine logs. There were no carpets on the floors, which were covered with the skins of animals he had himself killed. Trophies of all sorts were in evidence. It was a very memorable afternoon with the simple, brave, scientific Nansen.
At Tröndhjem we took the steamer "Köng Harald" for the North Cape. A party of American friends had just returned from there with the most lugubrious story about the bad weather and their utter failure to see the sun. As it was pouring rain when we started, it would not have taken much persuasion to induce us to give it all up. But we had started with a purpose, and silently but firmly we went on with it. Dr. Talmage never turned back at any cross road in his whole life. In a few hours after leaving Tröndhjem we were in the raw, cold Arctic temperature where a new order of existence begins.
We lose all sense of ordinary time, for our watches indicate midnight, and there is no darkness. The over-hanging clouds draw slowly apart, and the most brilliant, dazzling midnight sun covers the waters and sets the sky on fire. It neither rises from the horizon or sinks into it. It stays perfectly, immovably still. After a while it rises very slowly. The meals on board are as irregular as the time; they are served according to the adaptability of one's appetite to the strangeness of the new element of constant daytime. We scarcely want to sleep, or know when to do so. Fortunately our furs are handy, for there is snow and ice on the wild, barren rocks on either side of us.
On July 1, at 8 p.m., we sighted this northernmost land, the Cape, and were immediately induced to indulge in cod fishing from the decks of our steamer. It is the custom, and the cod seem to accept the situation with perverse indiscretion, for many of them are caught. Our lines and bait are provided by sailors. Dinner is again delayed to enable us to indulge in this sport, but we don't mind because we have lost all the habitual tendencies of our previous normal state.
At 10 p.m., in a bright daylight, the small boats full of passengers begin to leave the steamer for the shore. In about fifteen minutes we are landed at the base of that towering Cape. There are some who doubt the wisdom of Dr. Talmage's attempting to climb at his age. He has no doubts, however, and no one expresses them to him. He is among the first to take the staff, handed to him as to all of us, and starts up at his usual brisk, striding gait. It is a test of lungs and heart, of skill and nerve to climb the North Cape, and let no one attempt it who is unfitted for the task. Steep almost as the side of a house, rocky as an unused pathway, it is a feat to accomplish. We were the first party of the season to go up, and the paths had not been entirely cleared of snow, which was two and three feet deep in places, the path itself sometimes a narrow ledge over a precipice. A rope guard was the only barrier between us and a slippery catastrophe. Every ten or fifteen minutes we sat down to get our breath. It took us two hours to reach the top. It was a few minutes after midnight when the sun came out gloriously.
Coming down was much more perilous, but we got back in safety to the "Köng Harald" at 2 a.m. On our way down to Tröndhjem we celebrated the Fourth of July on board. The captain decorated the ship for the occasion and we all tried to sing "The Star Spangled Banner," but we could not remember the words, much to our mutual surprise and finally we compromised by singing "America," and, worst of all, "Yankee Doodle." Dr. Talmage made a very happy address, and we came into port finally, pledged to learn the words of "The Star Spangled Banner" before the year was up.
In our haste to reach the North Cape we had passed hurriedly through Sweden, so, on our return we went from Tröndhjem to Stockholm, where we arrived on July 7, 1900.
When in London Dr. Talmage had accepted an invitation to preach in the largest church in Sweden, with some misgiving, because, as he himself said when asked to do this, "Shall I have an audience?" Of course the Doctor did not speak the Swedish language. Dr. Talmage had been told in England that his name was known through all Sweden, which was a fact fully sustained by a publisher in Stockholm who came to the hotel one afternoon and brought copies of ten of the Doctor's books translated into Swedish. This insured a cordial greeting for the Doctor, but how was he to make himself understood?
The Immanuel Church in Stockholm, one of the largest I ever saw, with two galleries and three aisles, was filled to its capacity. Dr. Talmage was to preach through an interpreter, himself a foremost preacher in his own country. The Doctor had preached through interpreters three times in his life; once when a theological student addressing a congregation of American Indians, once in a church in Hawaii, and once in Ceylon through an interpreter standing on each side of him, one to translate into Cingalese, and the other to translate into Hindustan. No one who was present at that morning Sabbath service on July 8, 1900, will forget the strange impressions that translated sermon preached by Dr. Talmage made upon everyone. Sentence by sentence the brilliant interpreter repeated the Doctor's words in the Swedish language, while the congregation in eager silence studied Dr. Talmage's face while listening to the translation of his ideas.
"Whether I did them any good or not they did me good," said the Doctor after the service.