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VII
A Drive Along the Baegna Elv – the Aurdals Vand and Many More to Skogstad

Skogstad, Norway, September 2, 1902.

Here we are eighty-four kilometers (sixty-one miles) from Frydenlund, where we spent last night. All day we have sat in an easy carriage, inhaled the glorious buoyant air, and driven over a superb macadamized road. We have skirted the shores of five lakes or vands– called fjords, – amidst towering snow-marked mountains, passing beneath cliffs rising sheer above us for thousands of feet, the highway sometimes a mere gallery cut into the solid rock, and we are now wondering how we were ever such simple things as to waste our time in tame England, or even linger among what now seem so commonplace, Scottish lochs and tarns. We have traversed the shores of the Aurdal, the Stranda, the Granheim, the Slidre and the Vangsmjoesen Fjords, each and all pools of the foaming river Baegna; and have looked across their limpid waters, their clustered islets, their shimmering surfaces reflecting field and forest and fjeld, and even portraying as in a mirror the snow-fields of mountain heights so far distant as to be indistinguishable to the naked eye, distant yet two full days’ journey to the west. We have been continually excited and astonished as each succeeding vista of vale and lake and mountain has burst upon us.

As we advanced further and further along the wide white military road, the valley of the Baegna Elv grew narrower and deeper, and the contrasts of verdant meadow and dark mountain increased in sharpness. The lower slopes are as green and well watered as those of Switzerland, and are dotted with farmsteads where the thrifty Norse farmer dwells upon his own land, independent, self-respecting, recognizing no lord but God – for the title of the “Swedish King” weighs but little here. Everywhere have I remarked a trim neatness, exceeding, if it were possible, even that of Holland. Upon the meadows were cattle, mostly red. The fields were ripe with rye and oats and barley where men and women were garnering the crops. The lands were cleared far up the mountain sides to where the forests of dark green fir stretched further up, until beyond the timber-line bare black rock masses played hide and seek among the clouds.

Back and beyond this splendid panorama of vale and lake and cloud-wrapped summit, far beyond it, binding the horizon on the west, there grew upon our vision all the afternoon enormous heights of stern and austere mountains, lifting themselves into the very zenith, their slopes gleaming with white bands of snow, their topmost clefts nursing glittering icepacks and glaciers. Ole Mon has constantly pointed toward them saying “Yotunheim!” “Yotunheim!” and we have known them to be the gigantic ice-bound highlands of the celebrated Jotunheim Alps, the loftiest snow mountains of Norway.

We left the inn at Frydenlund after a breakfast of brook trout, fried to a turn, and all we could eat of them, delicious milk like that from our blue grass counties of Greenbrier and Monroe, in West Virginia, and coffee made as only an Americanized Norwegian may know how.

Along the way we have met children evidently going to and returning from their schools, and it has been charming to see how the little boys pull off their caps, and the little girls drop down in a courtesy. The little caps always come off the yellow heads with sweeping bow, and the duck of the little girls is always accompanied by a smile of greeting. I regret that in America we have lost these pretty customs which were once taught as good manners by our forebears.

We have passed this morning a frowning stone jail, the prison of this province, and Ole Mon tells us that it is quite empty and has had no tenant for some two years; surely, convincing testimony of the innate honesty of these sturdy folk.

We have also to-day met many young men, tall and stalwart, clad in the dark blue uniform of the Norwegian National Guard. This is the season when the annual drills are going on, just at the end of the harvest time. Norway, like the rest of Europe, has adopted universal military training for her men. They are taught the art of war and how to shoot. It is calculated that in eight or ten years more every Norwegian of voting age will have had the necessary military training and will have become a part of the effective national defense. “We will never have trouble with Sweden,” they say, “the Swedes and ourselves only show our teeth.” “It is Russia, hungry Russia, that we fear. We will learn to march and shoot and dig entrenchments so that we may defend ourselves against the aggression of the Slav. Upon the sea, we are the masters. We learn in your navy how to handle modern warships and shoot the giant guns. Upon these mountains, we hope, ere another decade has elapsed, also to be safe against the encroachment of that ‘Great White peril.’”

We stopped for our first pony-feed at Fagernaes, where a road turns off to Lake Bygdin and its Elv, where the English go to fish; halted a half hour at Fosheim, where is a fine hotel, and then, passing the ancient stone church of Vestre Slidre, drove on to Loeken, where a reindeer-steak-and-salmon-trout-dinner awaited us. The inn, situated on a rocky point overlooking the picturesque Slidre Vand, was quakerly-clean, as all of these places are. The neatly dressed young woman who waited on us had lived two years in Dakota, and in Spokane, and spoke perfect United States. She had an uncle and a brother still there, and hoped to go back herself when the old folks had passed away. At Oeilo, fifteen kilometers further on, we also drew rein – each time we stop the ponies have the nosebags of oat meal – and then we paused again at Grindaheim at the Vang Hotel, close to the shores of the Vangsmjoesen Vand. Here the mistress of the inn had lived in Minnesota, and talked with us like one of our own countrywomen. She had come home on a little visit, she said. A stalwart Norseman had lost his heart and won her hand, and saved-up dollars – but yet her spirit longed for free America. Her boys would go there as soon as they were big enough to hustle for themselves.

In the dining room of the comfortable house was gathered a collection of stuffed and mounted birds of the surrounding countryside. There were several ptarmigan and one fine capercailzie, the cousin to the black cock, and the biggest thing of the pheasant-kind that flies in Northern Europe.

Our Minnesotan hostess pressed us to stay and tarry a few days, setting before us a big pitcher of milk and little caraway-seed-flavored tea cakes, all for the price of Te Oere, two and a half cents. We would like to have lingered here, for the house is nestled in one of the wildest and loveliest of dales. To the north, a mile across the vand, tower the black precipitous heights of the giant Skodshorn (5,310 feet) upon whose cloud-capped peaks, Ole Mon tells us, the ghosts of the ancient Scalds and Vikings meet in berserker combat with Thor and Odin, and whence, sometimes, when the air is still and there are no storms about, the clangs and clashes of their battle conflicts resound with thunder roars, waking the echoes in all the valleys round. Then the black mountain sides breathe forth gigantic jets of steamlike cloud, while it is at such times also that the Trolls and Gnomes creep forth from the shadows of the rocks to do honor to the warring giants. When questioned closely, he admitted he had never witnessed one of these combats, but declared that when a boy he had heard the roar on the summit of the mountain and had seen the white clouds shoot up, which is always the sign of victory for the gods. Our hostess also asserted that she had once heard the mountain roar, but admitted she had not seen the shooting clouds. Some scientists try to explain the mountain’s action according to natural laws, but so great is my faith in Ole Mon that I dare not dispute his word. Back of the little inn also rise the lofty masses of the Grinde Fjeld (5,620 feet) upon whose moorland summits it is, the capercailzie fly and the herds of reindeer range, whence came the juicy steaks we ate to-day at Loeken and have had to-night for supper.

All along the Baegna valley, including the fertile basins wherein nestle the many vands or lesser fjords, there were men and women in the fields mowing the short grass and ripening grain. But neither the grasses, nor the rye and oats and barley had reached maturity. Nor do they ever fully ripen in these cold latitudes. They must be cut green, and then the feeble sunshine must be made the most of. Long ricks, made of sticks and saplings, or poles barred with cross-pieces set on at intervals are built extending through the fields, and on these the grass and grain are carefully spread out, hung on a handful at a time, so that each blade and straw may catch the sun, and dry out, a tedious, laborious work on which the women were more generally employed. The men bring up back-loads newly cut by scythe and sickle, and throw them down before the women, who then carefully hang each handful on the ricks. What must a Norwegian feel, trained to such painstaking toil as this, when he at first sets foot upon the boundless wheat lands of Minnesota and the prairie West. No wonder he returns to his native homestead only to make a hasty visit, never to remain. In Switzerland, I also saw the grass cut when scarcely half ripe and but a few inches high, when it is stored in handy little log cribs where in the course of time it slowly dries out, but here every blade must be hung up in the sun and air if it shall turn to hay. When the hay and grain is fully dried, it is taken down and done up into loosely bound sheaves, or carried in bulk to the large, roomy barns. The grain is generally thrashed out with flails, I am told, although a few American machines are now being introduced.

The wire fence is not yet come into Norway, although timber is remote and costly, and the people are hard put to it for fencing material. I noticed that they generally depend upon slim poles and small saplings loosely strung together, for English hedges cannot be grown in these chilly northlands.

And now we are at Skogstad, above the Vangsmjoesen Vand and lesser Strande Vand, with two or more vands to see to-morrow before we cross the height of land and come down to Laerdalsoeren, on the Sogne Fjord which holds the waters of the sea, sixty-five miles further on. The vands to-day have been like giant steps, each emptying into the one below by the roaring river, mounting up, each smaller than the one below and more pent in by towering mountain masses.

H is now tucked in between mattress and coverlet of eider down – we are beyond the latitude of blankets – in a narrow bed, and I am about to get into another on the other side of the room, on which I now sit writing to you by the light of a sperm candle, while the murmur of a thousand cascades tinkles in my ears.

VIII
Over the Height of Land – A Wonderful Ride Down the Laera Dal to the Sogne Fjord

Laerdalsoeren, Norge, September 3, 1902.

We left Skogstad early and began to climb a long ascent, a dozen miles of grade, still following the valley of the Baegna Elv foaming and tossing by our side. The two days so far had been clear and cloudless, but now the air was full of a fine mist, and we probably ascended a thousand feet before the curtain lifted and a panorama of snow-capped mountains, profound valleys, and sheer precipices burst upon us.

A thousand rills and rivulets and brawling brooks streaked the green slopes with threads and lines of white; mosses and lichens softened the black rock-masses; blooming heather, and a plant with fine red and yellow leaf gave color to the heights between the sombre greenness of the fir forests below and the whiteness of the snow-fields above. I have never before seen such stupendous precipices, such tremendous heights; neither Switzerland nor Mexico, Alps nor Cordilleras lift themselves in so precipitous ascent.

After a two hours’ climb, all the way listening to the roar of the Elv choking the gorge a thousand feet below our way, we met its waters issuing quietly from yet another lake, the little Utro Vand, surrounded by snow-crowned summits, the snow-fields creeping almost to the water’s edge, also passing on our right, the road which leads to the Tyin Vand and the ice-crowned summits of the Jotunheim. Here was a large and comfortable inn, Nystuen by name, and Ole Mon gave the ponies their first morning’s feed, adding an armful of mountain hay to the oatmeal diet. Half an hour’s rest is the usual limit, and the ponies seem to know their business and eat their fare on time. In Mexico, horses are fed grain but once in twenty-four hours, and that at midnight, so that all hearty food will be digested before the early morning start. Here a horse is kept full all the time to do his best; difference of climate and latitude, I suppose.

Just beyond the Nystuen Vand, we crossed the height of land between the waters of east and west Norway, and now the streams were running the other way. We were up 3,294 feet, and the summits round about us – rising yet two and three thousand feet higher – were deeply snow-marked – great patches and fields of snow. Then we came to another succession of four more vands, like steps, each bigger than the one above it, and a roaring river that proportionately grew in size. The road became steeper and we fairly scampered down to a fine inn, painted red with curiously-carven Norse ornamentation on the gables, called Maristuen. Here we had fresh salmon, and more good coffee. For breakfast we were given trout and eggs, now salmon and a delicious custard for dessert. At table we met a Mr. C and wife, of Chicago, going over our trail, and we may meet them again in Stockholm. They are anxious to go on to Russia after seeing Stockholm, and have urged us to go along also. Across the table from us sat a dear old white-haired grandmother from Bergen with a blue-eyed, flaxen-haired granddaughter – a Viking Juno. They are driving across to Odnaes in their own carriage, a curious, old-fashioned trille, low and comfortable with a mighty top. The old lady is stacked up between pillows of eider down, and the blue-eyed granddaughter is full of tender care. We spake not to them nor they to us, but we smiled at one another and that made us friends. They both waved farvel as they drove away.

And then, about two o’clock, we went on again for forty miles down to the level of Laerdalsoeren and the sea, on the Sogne Fjord, where now we are. We were to descend some 3,000 feet, and here began one of the most exciting experiences of my life. The mountains kept their heights; we alone came lower, all down a single dal. Most of the road was hewn out of the side of precipices – a gallery; great stones were set endwise about two feet apart on the outer edge, and sometimes bound together by an iron rail; a slope down which we rolled at a flying trot, coasted down – the roaring, foaming river below, far below. Close to us were falls and cascades and cataracts, and the stupendous mountains, the snow-capped rock-masses lifting straight up thousands of feet. H grew so excited, exclaiming over the mighty vistas of rock and water and distant valley, that I had fairly to hold her in; and ever we rolled down and down and down, spanking along with never a pause for nearly thirty miles, the spinning wheels never once catching the ponies’ flying heels. Great driving that of Ole Mon, great speeding that of the sturdy ponies; marvelous macadamized roadway, smooth as New York’s Fifth Avenue! Water bursts, misty cascades, descending hundreds of feet, sprayed us, splashed us, dashed us, as we went on and on and on, only the gigantic precipices growing higher and higher and higher, and the ever-present snowy summits more and more supreme above us.

Then we swept out into a green valley, hemmed in on either hand by sombre precipices rising straight up for three and four and five thousand feet, and hove to at the farmstead of Kvamme for the ponies to be fed once more before their last descent. A mile or two further on the precipices choke together forming a deep gorge, called the Vindhelle, where it looks as though the mountains had been cracked apart.

The Norwegian farmer, like the Swiss, not only makes his living from the warm bottom-lands, which he cultivates, but also from the colder uplands to which his goats and cattle are driven in the early summer, and where the surplus grasses are painstakingly gathered with the sickle. We were driving quietly along when my attention was attracted to a[Pg 71][Pg 72] couple of women standing with pitchforks in their hands near a cock of hay. The hay was fresh mown, but I could see no hay-fields round about. They were looking intently at the distant summit of the precipice towering above them. My eye followed theirs. I could barely make out a group of men shoving a mass of something over the edge, and then I beheld the curious sight of a haymow flying through the air. Nearer it came, and nearer until it landed at the women’s feet. I then made out a wire line connecting a windlass set in the ground near where the women stood and reaching up to the precipice’s verge, whence came the hay. The hay was wound about this line. In this manner is the hay crop of these distant uplands safely delivered at the little gaard or farmstead in the valley’s lap. From these mountain altitudes the milk and cheese and butter which the goats and cows afford are also sometimes lowered by this telegraph. In Switzerland, I have seen communications of this sort for shorter distances, but never before beheld a stack of hay flying through the air for half a mile.

This Laera River with its dal (dale, valley), is famous for its trout and salmon. We passed several men and boys trying their luck, one, an Englishman, up to his waist in the ice-cold tide. We have now put up at a snug hotel, quite modern; English is spoken here. And – but I forgot; when we stopped to feed the ponies, right between the two descents, we made solemn friendship with the old Norseman who here keeps the roadhouse; his daughter “had been in Chicago,” she spoke perfect United States, and took us to see, hard by, the most ancient church in Norway, the church of Borgund, eight hundred to one thousand years old. It is very quaint, with strange Norse carving and Runic inscriptions. I gave our pretty guide a kroner for her pains. On returning to the house, she handed it to the old man, who took out a big leathern wallet and put the coin away. We had meant it all for her, and by reason of her knowing Chicago had made the fee quite double size.

To-morrow we sail for six hours out upon the Sogne Fjord to Gutvangen, then drive by carriage to Eida, on the Hardanger Fjord, all yet among these stupendous mountains.

I was sitting in the little front room of the inn waiting for supper, when our driver, Ole Mon, came in to settle our account, for his trip was at an end. After I had paid him and added a few oeres and a kroner for trinkgeld, at the liberality of which he seemed to be much gratified, he produced from the inner pocket of his coat a goodly-sized blank book, which he handed to me, and begged that I would set down therein a recommendation of his qualities as a driver and a guide. In the book were already a number of brief statements in French and German and Norwegian, by different travelers, declaring him to be a “safe and reliable man,” who had “brought them to their journey’s end without mishap.” I took the book and wrote down some hurried lines. When I had finished, he gazed upon the foreign writing and then disappeared with the book into the kitchen to consult the cook, who had lived in Minneapolis. He presently reappeared, his eyes big with wonder and a manner of profound deference. He now advised me that he would deem it a great honor to be permitted to drive us free of charge, next morning, from the hotel to the steamer, a couple of miles distant. He further said, that he had decided to take the sea trip to Gutvangen on our ship and would there secure for us the best carriage and driver of the place. He evidently regarded me as some famous bard, to whom it would be difficult to do sufficient honor. The lines were these:

 
Aye! Ole Mon, you are a dandy whip,
You are a corker and a daisy guide.
You talk our tongue and rarely make a slip,
You’ve taken us a stunner of a ride.
And when from Norge’s fjelds and fjords we sail,
And in America tell of what we’ve seen,
Our friends will stand astonished at the tale,
And next year bid you take them where we’ve been.