In the system of local government in Norway, women now participate upon an equal basis with men. The movements which culminated May, 1901, had been going on since 1884 under the leadership of Miss Gina Krog, who may be called the Susan B. Anthony of Norway. In the latter year she organized a woman's suffrage association, delivered a series of lectures on the subject, and established a newspaper called the Nyloende—meaning "the new ground." Miss Krog is something over fifty years of age, of fine education and excellent family, and has been noted for her activity in literary and charitable affairs. She has been a teacher, a writer for the press, a director of charitable institutions, and has lived a life of great activity and usefulness, devoting her own means with generosity to the cause which she has undertaken.
The suffrage movement at first attracted little attention, but public sentiment grew slowly, and in 1890 Miss Krog succeeded in having a bill brought into the storthing giving women the right to vote in school matters. It received forty-four out of a total of one hundred and fourteen votes. The liberal party then made it an issue, and two years after the same bill received a majority in the storthing, but required two-thirds of the votes to pass. At that time a property qualification was required of men. The income tax returns were used as registration lists at the polls, and none but those who paid on incomes of $84 in the country and $92 in the city were allowed to vote.
The leaders of the movement for universal suffrage for men united forces with the women suffragists, and in 1898 accomplished their purpose. The women might have succeeded the same year but for an unfortunate division in their ranks. One faction wanted to limit suffrage to unmarried women who own property and deprive married women and dependent daughters and wage-earners of the ballot. But a compromise was finally arranged, the two factions were brought together, and in May, 1901, succeeded in accomplishing the purpose for which they have been engaged. They received the support of a large portion of the conservative members of the storthing as well as the unanimous support of the liberal and radical parties, only twenty votes being cast in the negative.
The women of Norway do not propose to rest on their present success. Miss Krog is continuing the fight to secure the right of participation in national as well as municipal affairs, and believes that the women will have all the political rights of men in Norway within the next few years. She insists that public sentiment favors the cause and that parliament will take a step further soon and amend the law by making it broader and more general. Universities are open to women on an equal basis with men, and many women are taking advantage of the opportunity to secure the higher education, and if ever, like the women of Finland, they are allowed to sit in parliament, they will be amply fitted to do so.
Under the present law only women who pay a certain amount of taxes can vote. An unmarried woman living at home is deprived of the ballot unless she has an income of her own; a married woman can not vote unless either she or her husband has a stated income. Thus many of the most intelligent and progressive women of the country are still outside the suffrage line. Everybody in Norway who earns a dollar pays an income tax. It may be very small, but a certain percentage of each day's wages of every peasant goes into the government treasury. Every person in Norway declares that it is the least objectionable means of raising money for national and municipal expenses that has ever been tried there, and that it stimulates the patriotism of the people, who realize that they are contributors to the support of their government, and should take an active interest in its management.
Many of the wisest men in Norway consider the universal suffrage amendment to the constitution, which was passed in 1898, a mistake for this reason—because it removes a powerful incentive for men to accumulate money. The Norwegian has a large and natural fund of patriotism. He loves his country like the Swiss. Nowhere else do men and women have to work so hard for a living, but life is the more precious the harder one has to labor to sustain it. We value things according to their cost. In the tropics, where no man need work, human life is held cheaply. Men die and kill without compunction; they excite revolutions and overthrow governments, sparing neither themselves nor others. But in Norway, as in Switzerland, where it is a ceaseless struggle from the cradle to the grave, there is more national pride and patriotism than in any land, and the privilege of living and working and suffering is esteemed as the most precious inheritance of man.
Women in America who are working for the ballot have only to go to Norway to find that having a voice in the making of the laws of the country does not remove every obstacle to the progress of the sex; that there are still many injustices, and that the women work as hard as the men. The Norwegian woman usually carries a little more than her share of the load, and can support a husband without difficulty if he insists upon it. There is nothing so admirable in this world as a useful woman, particularly if she is married to a man inclined to leisure and loafing. In Norway and other countries of northern Europe the ballad, "I Love to See My Dear Old Mother Work," is something more than an affectionate sentiment. It has a practical significance, and is frequently found in husbands as well as sons.
Of all the labor that the women of Norway engage in, especially women in the rural districts, is the occupation of caring for the saeter. A saeter is a summer ranch or dairy farm peculiar, to Norway—a cabin among the pastures way up in the mountains, where the cattle are driven during the summer months and butter and cheese are made. Almost every large farmer has a saeter. When the spring field work at home has been finished, the cattle are taken thither by the young women and girls,—often twenty and sometimes forty miles away,—where they stay during the summer and make butter and cheese, gather hay, knit stockings, and embroider linen. The dwelling is usually a rude hut with a single room, mud floor, an open fireplace without chimney, and a few pieces of rough furniture. Sheds and pens surround the hut, and there are patches of enclosed ground where hay is made and where the younger members of the flock are protected. The cattle are called at night by a horn made of birch bark. When blown lustily, it gives a clear note not unlike the cornet, and the cattle invariably respond to its sound.
There is a good deal of romance about saeter life in books, but I should say that there is very little in actual experience. Many of the charming fairy stories in Norwegian literature have their scenes in those mountain dairies. The saeter girls (saeterjenter they are called), have a peculiar and melodious cattle call, known as the Huldrelok, which is said to have been inherited from the Huldre-folk, a species of fairy that are very pretty, but unfortunately have tails. Usually a young farmer falls in love with one of the girls, and when he discovers that she has a tail, is so shocked and disappointed that he throws himself over a precipice; or perhaps the Huldre-folk gobble him up and carry him off into the mountains of the Josteldalsbrae and keep him there, while the girl he left behind him grieves herself to death because of his desertion.
The dairy maids are supposed to have a peculiar costume, and photographs are often seen of them arrayed in picturesque dress, but I never saw them worn. In all the saeters I visited the clothes worn were very plain and ordinary, and seemed to have been selected for wear and not for looks.