Through Scandinavia to Moscow Part 7

This morning we left the Hotel Haukelid with only sixty kilometers for the day, and most of it down hill; since noon yesterday we have been coming down. Just a little snow was now to be seen far away upon distant summits, while forests of birches, interspersed with aspens, covered the nearer slopes. Our road led us along the borders of several exquisite lakes, the little Voxli Vand and then the greater Grungadals Vand, about a mile wide and ten or twelve miles long; frowning precipices and cloud-wrapped heights encircled us on every hand, their rocks now largely greened over with mosses, and birches--only a few firs--growing wherever trees might thrust their roots. Then we drove through a narrow clove, along a frothing torrent, and came to another _vand_ equally shut in, but not so long nor so wide,--a greener, warmer valley, Boertedals Vand in the Boerte Dal.

Here we dined at Hotel Boerte, rested till 3 P. M., and then got away for one of the finest thirty kilometers of the trip. If we only had had Ole Mon to drive us, how perfect would have been the day! I imagined we had already come down enough to be at the bottom, but we were yet to descend a mighty canyon with the road blasted out of the precipice's side, and walled in with rock posts and iron defenders, much like the Laera Dal, while far beneath us wound a silver thread, the almost imperceptible roar of whose waters floated up a tremulous murmur. We came down at a rattling trot, every moment unfolding new vistas of vale and precipice and mountain. After two hours of this fearful, yet joyous, coasting we crossed a wide-spanning iron bridge and swept out into the charming vale of Dalen, at the head of the Bandaks Vand, where now we are. The mountains are here clothed in heavy forests of birch and much deciduous timber, only a little of the fir; I can scarcely realize that yesterday we were up amongst the mosses, the lichens and the snows. As we descended we kept taking off our wraps; our rugs were folded up; H took off her golf cape, then her jacket; she wanted to ride with bared head, so soft and warm had grown the air.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A NORSE CABIN.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: OUR HOSTESSES, HAUKELI SAETER.]

KRISTIANIA, NORWAY, _September 10, 1902_.

Yesterday, we left Dalen at the head of navigation on the Bandaks Vand, boarded a taut little steamboat about 150 feet long, built for deep water, and traveled sixty-five kilometers through a succession of _vands_ and _fjords_--the Telemarken Fjords--ca.n.a.ls and locks--twenty locks in all--to Skien (called "Sheen"), where we took the railway for Kristiania, arriving at midnight.

The lakes were long, narrow and mostly shut in by heavily-timbered mountains, which as always, lifted up to enormous heights, green vales and valleys opening in between, where were picturesque hamlets and neat, thrifty-looking farmsteads.

Nothing here impresses me more than the great patience and tireless energy of the "Norsks," as they call themselves. The magnificent roads, superior to those of England, equal, almost equal to those of France; the ca.n.a.ls, blasted for miles through solid granite; the railways, which are as good as our own; the little boats so perfectly appointed. The Norwegians impress you as being born seamen; they know how to build and how to sail a boat, and you feel it.

Standing upon the forward deck, watching the changing panorama of vale and lake and mountain, I became so absorbed in the enchanting pictures that it was some moments before I noticed a slit-eyed, high-cheek-boned, black-straight-haired, short, pudgy youth or man--hard to tell which--a sure-enough Lap if ever there was one, who was making vain efforts to hold conversation with me. He spoke slowly and with some hesitation in perfect c.o.c.kney English. I at once gave him my ear, and asked him where he had learned to speak so well. "Hi ave been a cook in Lonnon," he said. "Hi ave been ha.s.sistant cook in a Hinglish otel, you know. Hi am just now leaving the otel at Dalen, where Hi ave been ha.s.sistant cook this summer, you know." Whereupon he told me of his experiences in London. How he landed there from a Norwegian ship, friendless and unknown, and made his way by his apt.i.tude in wiping dishes! And some day he "oped" to go to "Hamerica"

and there own a kitchen all for himself. "Ow strange it must be for an Hamerican to see real mountains," he exclaimed, and I discovered that the only America he knew about was the prairie land of the flat west.

Upon my asking whether he was not a Laplander, he resented the suggestion with great vehemence, declaring himself to be a Viking pure, and he begged me to let him know if I should learn of any good openings for dish-wipers in America, especially if it would lead to the dignity of cook. His manner was frank and simple, wholly free from self-consciousness, except as he took great pride in being able to speak the English tongue. In Norway there are no cla.s.ses and all men stand equal before the law. It is as respectable there to work as it is in America, and similarly men meet you as your natural equals.

There is none of that offensive subserviency which so jars upon one in most of the monarchy and aristocracy bestridden lands.

The volume of water which flows from these lakes and through these deep ca.n.a.ls is immense and we have sometimes swept along the narrower channels at really an exciting pace. We had just pa.s.sed through the beautiful Flaa Vand and descended the deep full-flowing river, the Eids Elv, with its many locks, to the greater Nordsjoe Vand, when we drew up beside a little pier. There were many people upon it.

Evidently, there was here gathered an unusual crowd, and down the hillside leading toward us came yet others. The whole community had turned out. Two tall, rosy-cheeked, blue-eyed, fair-haired young men were the center of the throng; about them the others pressed. They were neatly dressed, fine-looking fellows, and the men and women were kissing them good-bye. They were going to America, perhaps never to return. The mother, a gentle-faced, white-haired old lady, wept on the necks of each of them, and the white-haired father kissed them upon either cheek, and then everybody rushed in to shake their hands. They were going to America where so many of Norway's most ambitious and able sons had gone before. The whole countryside would watch their career and wait for news of their success! Two iron-bound chests were dragged on to the boat. The young men stepped alertly aboard, their faces flushed with the excitement of the farewells and the antic.i.p.ations of the land across the sea. As I watched them and their family and friends waving their adieus I could not but ponder upon this instinct of the old-world races, my own among the rest, to go out and seize life's prizes even across the widest waters. The leave-taking I was now beholding must be not unlike that of the men and women who in the days of Pilgrim and Puritan and Cavalier left little England to found a community where freedom and opportunity are still the loadstones which attract the energy and youth of all the world.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HAUKELI SAETER.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A GOAT HERD'S SAETER, HAUKELI FJELD.]

In traveling through Norway, I have been greatly surprised to see so many newly-built farmhouses, barns and farm buildings, new fences and modern gates. Everywhere the old and tumbled-down is being replaced by the substantial and modern. I have seen nothing like this anywhere in Europe; nowhere so general a replacing of the old with the new. Many of the new farmhouses are not merely substantial, but are architecturally attractive. There must be abundant money coming from somewhere to pay the cost of this universal rebuilding. I have asked about it more than once and every time I receive the same reply. "The sons have gone to America, they are in Chicago, in Minnesota, in Dakota. They have grown rich. They are sending back the money. They want the old places made as trim and spick as though they were in America." "Put everything in good repair," they say, "never mind the cost." And then, every few years they return with the American grandchildren to see the beloved old folks. More and more of these American-Norwegians are coming every year to holiday in the fatherland. Many now regularly sojourn throughout the summer. A few, a very few, remain to end their days on the loved home-soil.

I also learn that it is to supply the demand of this increasing travel from America to Norway that the Scandinavian-American line have recently put on the large ocean steamers now sailing direct from New York to Kristiansand, with accommodations equal to anything which has. .h.i.therto entered the ports of Germany and England and France.

The other day at Loeken, we were waited on at table by a fine-looking young woman who spoke perfect United States. She had an air about her of comfortable independence. The house, the farm buildings, everything about the place was new and neat. While we were talking with her, she told us that she had a brother and an uncle in the far west, one at Spokane, who was rich. She was living with him when word came that the old father had pa.s.sed away. She was needed at home to care for the mother and the younger children, so she returned; and the brother sent back the money to have the old place put in perfect repair.

This intimate connection between our thriving west and Norwegian home life, largely explains, I think, that independent American spirit which now so prominently marks Norway, and the growth and a.s.sertion of which is driving her by natural momentum away from the hectoring ties of franchise-constricted, aristocratic Sweden, pushing her toward her inevitable destiny--to become a Republic.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DRYING OUT THE OATS.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: TENDING THE HERDS.]

The immigration from Norway to the United States has taken from her nearly one-half the population, a much larger percentage than has yet come forth from Sweden. Although even there, so great is now the exodus, that the Swedish Ministry is alarmed; there is also uneasiness in Norway. Recently, laws have been enacted prohibiting the steamship agents from spreading among the people the glowing accounts of America, by means of which so many steerage tickets are sold, but all the same, the propaganda is persistently carried on. At Skogstad, the other day, I fell in with an alert-looking, quiet-mannered man, who, after he learned I was an American, confided to me that he himself was from Minnesota. He had been born in Norway, but went to America when a boy. He was now back in Norway representing large farming interests in the Northwest, and his business was to recruit farm hands for the western wheat fields. He said he had penetrated during the past three years into every nook and cranny of Norway, everywhere finding out what vigorous and st.u.r.dy young men would like to go to America, and then arranging with them to pay their pa.s.sage, and supply sufficient funds to enable them to pa.s.s the immigration inspectors, and providing also their railroad transportation to the west. "They are a splendid and hard working lot of men," he said. "We want all of them we can get. And most of them do well when they reach America; many of them become rich men." He was traveling in the disguise of an itinerant doctor selling herbs and roots.

Crossing the mountain this side of Boerte, where the road wound up through the fir forest to avoid an immense cliff which jutted into the lake, I stopped and dug up a little seedling fir, surely a real Norway spruce. I took it up with care and have now brought it to Kristiania and to-day am sending it to America by mail wrapped in damp mosses, and trust that it will reach Kanawha with life enough to live and thrive in its West Virginia home. Along the roadside, not far from where I found the seedling, were lying a fine pair of _skjis_, just as the wearer laid them aside, only to be worn when winter shall return.

The Norwegian does not need to lock his door!

Upon the mossy, marshy, moorland summits and divides which we have traversed, I have noticed widespread beds of peat. In some places these are extensively worked, large areas being uncovered and the squares of peat piled up to dry. The existence of this fuel has proved a G.o.dsend to Norway, for the forests are often distant and year by year the woodlands diminish. Although there are some inferior coal beds in southern Sweden, there are none in Norway, and for fuel her peat beds and her forests are her sole domestic supply. And yet, despite this lack of fuel, it seems to me that Norway is dowered with enormous stores of power. She possesses water power without stint.

King Winter surely cannot freeze up all the streams. Will not the day yet come when the harnessed water powers of Norway may run the turbines which will supply the world?

[Ill.u.s.tration: DALEN ON THE BANDAKS VAND.]

It is yet early September; the belated summer of this far northern land, to our strange eyes, is just begun. The meadows are green; the fields of grain are scarcely yellowed; in the markets of Kristiania we see daily exposed for sale fresh-ripened strawberries; in our Virginian lat.i.tude it would be the season of the month of May. Yet we see big stacks of firewood piled near each farmhouse door; we see the cabin newly banked with earth against the frost; at blacksmith's shop we see men hammering on well-used sled; alongside the road, awaiting the winter's need, lies an upturned snowplow newly ironed; everywhere men are making ready for the cold. In a fortnight the highway across the Haukeli Fjeld will be blocked with new-fallen snow. In a month the jingling bells of sleighs and sledges will sound along the now verdant valley of the Baegna Elv.

A year ago, when traveling in Mexico, in southern Michoacan, the tropical precipitancy of the night was sure to take me unawares. I was never quite prepared for the sharp transition from day to night. The hot red sun rested a moment above the towering Cordillera, then it dipped behind, and the cold white stars instantly shone forth. Here in Norway my senses are equally surprised. It is already September and yet "early candle light," means near ten o'clock. The day dies slowly.

The contours of vale and mountain almost imperceptibly fade upon the eye. A violet blueness softens form and hue. Little by little the violet changes into gray, and then the grayness pervades the air as though the shadow of some phantom raven's wing overspread the world.

At nine o'clock, at half past nine, at ten o'clock, the goats and cattle are awake--we have made long day-drives by reason of the limits to our time--I wonder if they ever sleep. The sparrows and gray-coated crows fly soberly across our way; a magpie softly flutters to the road. I hear no bird-songs, only faint twitters, no chirping crickets, no piping frogs and newts, none of the evening sounds of my Virginian countryside. A hush creeps over _dal_ and _fjeld_ and _fjord_, even as do the mysterious violet and gray shadows. We ourselves are drowsed. I do not speak to H nor she to me. To the ponies Ole Mon has ceased to talk. The world is stilled. We draw long breaths, inhale the delicious air, lean back against the cushions of our seat, and daydream amidst this hush of man and thing. The old Norse driver of the Roldal cautions H to watch. "This is the hour," he says, "when the elves and pixies stir abroad. Count the fifth meadow from where you stand and there they are always sure to be." Thus have we driven through the twilight, the mysterious, lingering twilight of this far and almost Arctic North.

This is the last letter you will receive from Norway and I am sure that you will agree with me, after reading what I have sent you, that nowhere in all the world may one have a more delightful outing.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NORSE WOMEN RAKING HAY.]

As to expenses, I figure it up that the total cost for both of us is a little less than five dollars per day, which includes our carriage, our driver, our eating, our sleeping and the liberal fees which, like good Americans, we have everywhere bestowed. Here in Norway the _oere_ (two and one-half cents) is as big as the quarter, and the _kroner_ (twenty-seven cents) as big as the dollar.

How long the _oere_ will loom so large I dare not say, for the American invasion is begun, and I fear the _kroner_ will soon be no bigger than the dime.

XIV.

Kristiania to Stockholm--A Wedding Party--Differing Norsk and Swede.

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN, _September 12, 1902_.

We came over here night before last from Kristiania, by the night train; by _sovevogn_ (sleep-wagon), the first I have tried in Europe.

We traveled first-cla.s.s and had a compartment to ourselves. About 9 P. M. a porter came in at a way-station, put all our bags out in the corridor, pulled out the round cushions at the back of the seats and put them into the overhead racks; he then pulled out a linen cover with which he overlaid the long seat, and unholed small, wee pillows from a cavity at the end of each seat; the beds were made! Later, another man informed me that we could have sheets at one _kroner_ (twenty-seven cents) each; but these we declined. Fortunately, we had with us our heavy sea rugs. I put H into my long gray overcoat, did her up in the blanket and rug, and tucked her big golf cape over her.

Then I put on my blanket smoking jacket, my slippers and cap, rolled up in a blanket and rug, and so we slept comfortably on our narrow seat-beds. There was no heat in the car, and only one toilet room for both s.e.xes! The night was cold and it was with difficulty we managed to keep warm. Such is the modern European method of running a sleeping car.

[Ill.u.s.tration: STOCKHOLM.]

The train we traveled in was crowded. In our car every compartment was filled. There were two groups of travelers who interested us. The first was a party of Americans, a pet.i.te elderly woman, keen, lively, very much mistress of herself, evidently accustomed to command, and with her two pretty black-eyed American girls, "pert," "sa.s.sy," and used to receiving the homage of man! In their company were half a dozen tall, blond-bearded, blue-eyed Viking youths, entirely willing to be commanded and to render homage. They were all in uniform, a dark blue cloth with red facings and a very little gold braid. The blue eyes shot tender glances, we thought, the black ones defending against Cupid's darts with great vivacity. Each young man presented an enormous bouquet to the elderly woman, and one gave her a basket of fruit--the girls got nothing, only the blue-eye-flashes. And how eagerly the young men promised to call on the elderly woman, if ever they should be so fortunate as to visit New York! And all the while the two American belles laughed and smiled and smote yet deeper through the dark blue uniforms. The departing train almost carried away with us one fair-haired giant. All the military caps came off with sweeping bows, while two handkerchiefs fluttered from the windows.

The other group took us by storm and also captured the train. Before we knew it, there was a surging crowd outside the car and the roar of many Viking throats. And then into the compartment next to ours rushed a pack of ladies, one of them all in white, with a sweet face half hid in a pink satin bonnet. A little man with waxed moustache, curly black hair, wearing a stovepipe hat, and clad in evening dress, followed close behind. The women admitted him, as though by right, but no other man was let inside. It was a wedding party. A wedding in high life. He was a Professor at Upsala. She was one of Kristiania's fairest daughters. They had been married in the Fru Kirke in the afternoon.

She had had a big reception at her home. The friends and guests were now come down to the train to see them off. She was large and fair and rosy, yet in her early twenties. He was small and weazen, shriveled and swarthy. They called him "Herr Doctor," evidently recognizing his eminent standing. Flowers and rice and a white satin slipper were thrown into the window. There was tremendous hugging and kissing of the bride by all the women,--I could not see that here the men had any show,--and pandemonium still prevailed upon the station platform when the train pulled out. Later in the night I was awakened by shouts and then most glorious singing. I sat up with a start, the melody pulsing through my brain. The Student Corps from the University of Upsala had come down to the junction where the newly-wedded pair would change cars, to welcome their Professor and his bride. They were singing a mighty welcome. And it was such full-toned, full-voiced, perfect and practiced singing by the hundreds of young men who seemed to be on hand! I fell asleep as our train went on, the splendid harmony of the well-trained voices filling me with dreams of realms not far away from Paradise.

Next morning I was about dressed, and H was adjusting her skirt, when the doors, which I thought securely locked, flew open and a burly red-faced uniformed official thrust himself in. He came to take away the pillow cases! He did not seem to think he in any way intruded; privacy is not much respected this side the sea.

Our toilets were scarcely made when the train came to a stop in the station at Stockholm. Indeed H was not yet quite ready, when another official in uniform again burst open the door and began grabbing our effects. To his astonishment he was forthwith ejected and the door shut in his face. When we were finally dressed I went out and found him waiting for us on the station platform. He was a licensed porter.

We were first obliged to fetch all our belongings to the Custom House, where important-looking officials, in gray uniforms trimmed with red, asked perfunctory questions and hurriedly pa.s.sed us through--an exercise of Swedish authority which seemed quite unnecessary since we came direct from Norway under the same King. This done, our porter then gathered up our bags and rugs, put them into a little two-wheeled push cart and started out across the square. Here again I came near meeting the fate of the tenderfoot. We did not know the location of the Hotel Continental; I stepped up to a cabby and told him we wanted to be taken to that hotel. A man in uniform gave me a bra.s.s check with "No. 5" marked on it, pointing to a cab standing in a long row which also bore a No. 5. I handed the bra.s.s check to No. 5 cabby, and was putting in my bag when our porter pointed to the farther side of the square. There was our hostelry, not three hundred feet away! I took out my bag from the carriage, in spite of protest, and walked to the hotel. The driver claimed a fare of half a _kroner_ and raised a mighty clamor, but I vowed I would not give him an _oere_. Thus you must have your eyes about you when you come to a city you do not know.

The Continental is a fine hotel. The rooms are supplied with electric lights and with telephones (good ones, not the imperfect London system). We have a large front room, facing the Vasa Gatan, with dressing room and ante-room, handsomely furnished, and as clean as anything can be. We are fain to be content with the fourth story, although we asked for the tenth, and a new modern elevator takes us up and also down; all this costs only six _kroner_ a day ($1.62) for the two of us. Our breakfasts are served in our room, two eggs each, a pot of coffee, boiled milk and cream, a basket of rolls, fresh radishes, cold tongue, cold veal, smoked goose breast, anchovies, cold smoked salmon, cheese, each in a neat little dish by itself, and a big round flat slab of slightly salted b.u.t.ter; all for one and a half _kroner_ each, three _kroner_ for us two (eighty-one cents). You receive much for your money here in Scandinavia.

[Ill.u.s.tration: KING'S PALACE, STOCKHOLM.]

The spirit of Stockholm, although intensely Scandinavian, is yet widely different from that of either Copenhagen or Kristiania. It is a difference, not so much to the eye, as to the feeling.

The city presents the same substantial and solid types of buildings, there are the same high walls of stone and dark red brick, and sharp-gabled roofs covered with heavy tiles, the same square towers, the same spindly leanness to the steepled churches, and in the older sections the narrow streets are paved from wall to wall with the same big squares of granite. The people are mostly blue-eyed and fair-haired like their kindred Danes and Norsks. But here the likeness ends and you feel it the instant you pa.s.s out upon the street. I missed at once that certain self-containment, based upon unostentatious self-respect, which marks the Norsk, where no man knows a lord but G.o.d, and manhood suffrage everywhere prevails. I missed that composure of manner and self-a.s.surance to the step, which lets men look you calmly in the eye without offense, that spirit, which takes for granted the perfect equality of man and man. I instantly felt myself among men of another temper. The alert, frank, self-respecting manner of the Norsk is lacking in the Swede. I found myself again among a "lower cla.s.s," who have no votes, and treat you with sullen servility, and also among men with the swashbuckling manners of military caste. Stockholm is full of young officers in natty uniforms, who strut along the streets aping the braggart insolence one meets among the soldier-bestridden Germans. The peasant and townsman must also here step aside to let these Yunker soldiery pa.s.s on. Militarism hangs heavy over Stockholm, where the scions of an impecunious aristocracy think to find in dashing uniform and truculent German manner a restoration of the n.o.ble military traditions of the past.