Having sent on no forebud to-day, I experienced some delay at each station while fresh horses were procuring from the neighbouring farmers. Leaving Quist to bring on the carriage from Solheim, I walked forward to examine at leisure the scene of a remarkable historical event in which some countrymen of mine were concerned. Above the junction of a tributary from the west, the valley of the Logan becomes still more contracted than formerly. The hill-side, steep to an unusual degree, and rough with large blocks fallen from above, descends to the left bank of the river, leaving no level stripe to form a road. The public road is, in fact, by a preference of circumstances, conducted along the hill-face fully a hundred feet above the stream. In the year 1612, when the king of Denmark and Norway was at war with the king of Sweden, a Colonel Mönnichhofen was despatched to Scotland to hire troops for the assistance of the latter sovereign. He, with 1400 men, landed near Trondheim, and after an ineffectual attempt to surprise that city, made his way through Norway by Stordalen into Sweden. A second party of 900 men, under Colonel George Sinclair, landed a fortnight later at Romsdalen, and endeavoured to pass into Sweden by a different path. As all regular troops had been draughted away from Norway to fight the king of Denmark's battles, there seemed little likelihood of any difficulty being encountered on the march. The peasantry, however, became exasperated by the extortion of free provisions, and those of three parishes in this district assembled for the purpose of opposing the Scotch. According to a Norwegian ballad, which has been spiritedly translated by David Vedder—
——'the news flew east, the news flew west,
And north and south it flew;
Soon Norway's peasant chivalry
Their fathers' swords they drew.
The beacons blazed on every hill,
The fiery cross flew fast;
And the mountain warriors serried stood,
Fierce as the northern blast....
The boors of Lessie, Vaage, and Froen,
Seized axe, and scythe, and brand—
"Foredoomed is every felon Scot
Who stains our native land!"'[5]
A guide in the interest of the peasants conducted the Scottish party towards the narrow defile which has been described. The peasants themselves were gathered in force on the mountains above. As it was impossible for them to see what was going on in the pass, they caused a man mounted on a white horse to pass to the other side of the river, and move a little way in front of the advancing enemy, that they might know when he was near at hand. At the same time a girl was placed on the other side of the Logan, to attract the attention of the Scots by sounding her rustic horn. When the unfortunate strangers had thus been led to the most suitable place, the boors tumbled down huge stones upon them from the mountain-top, destroying them, to use their own expression, like potsherds. Then descending with sword and gun, they completed the destruction of the Scots. There is a romantic story, which seems far from likely, that Sinclair had been accompanied on this occasion by his wife. It is added that a young lady of the neighbourhood, hearing of this, and anxious to save an innocent individual of her own sex, sent her lover to protect the lady in the impending assault. Mrs Sinclair, seeing him approach, and mistaking his object, shot him dead. Some accounts represent the immediate destruction of the Scottish party as complete, excepting only that two men escaped. One more probable states that sixty were taken prisoners, and kept by the peasants till next spring, when, provisions failing, and the government making no movement in the matter, the poor captives were put into a barn and murdered in cold blood, only two escaping, of whom one survived to be the progenitor of a family still dwelling in these wilds. Such were the circumstances of the bloody affair of Kringelen, to commemorate which a little wooden monument has been erected on the wayside, at the precise spot where the Scottish party was surprised. The grave of Sinclair is also pointed out in the neighbouring churchyard of Quham. An inspection of the scene of the massacre gives a thrilling sense of the utterly desperate circumstances of the Scottish troops when beset by the Norwegian boors. One looks round with horror on the blocks scattered along the hill-side, every one of which had destroyed a life. 'Now all is peaceful, all is still,' on the spot where this piece of savage warfare was acted, save that which only marks the general silence—the murmur of the river. Resting here for a while, I could not but enter a mental protest against the triumphant spirit with which the affair is still referred to by the Norwegians, seeing that the assailants fought at such advantage, not to speak of the safety in which they fought, that nothing but the grossest misconduct could have failed to give them a victory. The grace of a generous mercy would have been worth twice their boast. I walked on about a mile to a hamlet where there is a sort of rustic museum, devoted to keeping certain relics of the Scottishmen. In the inner chamber of a little cottage a woman showed me, ranged along a wall, five matchlocks, two of them very long, two Highland dirks, a broadsword, a spur, two powder flasks, the wooden tube of a drum, and a small iron-hooped box. The sight of these objects so near the scene of the slaughter helps wonderfully to realise it; and it is impossible for a Scotsman at least to look on them without emotion. I thought, however, of the mercy of Providence, which causes the waves of time to close over the most terrible and the most distressing things, sweeping away all the suffering—exhaling calamity, as it were, into air—and leaving only perhaps a few tangible objects to remind us by association that 'such things were.'
In the evening I arrived at Laurgaard, where it was necessary to spend the night.
R. C.
[LONDON GOSSIP.]
November, 1849.