for a people that solely derives its nourishment from the sea is apt to get too much of its inconstancy, while trust and order are the products of the land.

At Helgeland the mountains already become almost inaccessible and isolated, so that they all begin to stand solitarily in the sea in this vicinity. These mountains often have a peculiar sort of moss covering that spreads itself upwards, gray-green and brownish-red, and, when the rest of the landscape affords powerful contrast, is able to evoke such novel effects of color amid the sunlight that an artist must feel them like the music of strange melodies, and might, with the power to seize them, produce a combined effect of fascinating beauty. A few historical spots are sailed by here, like that where Haarek and Tjotta dwelt; it shoots out into the sea like a long-boat just gliding into the water, the outline is broad and fine. eider-fowl that swim, sea-mews that shriek, Northern boats lying to, yachts with their single huge square-sail, encountered at every point, and the delightful breadth of the course, with perpetual perspectives of grand mountains, at length make it home-like, almost cosy, so perfectly does the one melt into the other and so powerful is the whole : conquers and takes you prisoner.

it

Flocks of

All this, however, is but a preparation for the hour when the Loffoden Mountains begin to loom. It is hard to say what is most glorious to have them in perspective, like a single deep-blue wall crowned with a thousand towers - looming over the immeasurable Titanic room into which we have glided at the same time, the floor of the West Fjord itself, brilliant with sunlight far as the eye can see, but often, too, shut off by mirages that set the mountain-chains on their heads before and behind you, ever fleeting, while the whales disport themselves, the birds shriek and dip; or, to approach them and see the wall open, every pinnacle becoming a mountain to itself, one more savage than the other, and that, too, in a single line as far as your vision stretches, even with the most perfect glass. When people boast of Ramsos with the goblin pinnacles, the Vaenga pinnacles, the Horn, &c., let me immediately add that Loffoden gives these mountain-pinnacles in hundreds, one after the other; or better expressed, the mountain panorama that is seen at Molde lasts up here, even with the swiftest steamer, an entire day. But so distorted are the mountain-forms that no image in my soul, from the circle of mythology, the Bible, or the drama, is appropriate to express the petrified motion I beheld-the menacing order of the giants, the quiet awfulness, the thousand-pinnacled multiformity of this single outgush You can defend yourself for the first hour, possibly for the first day, and struggle to keep it at beauty's distance; but when it remains for days equally grand, whether you sail to it or from it, you are conscious, at length, amid this passionless scenery, of a feeling of suspense, as if you stood amid living action. The poets that wrote once upon a time felt this, and also those that still tell the marvellous legends that linger around these spots in which the mountains take on dramatic life, appear as Titans and Titanesses, knights and maidens. The magnificence of it becomes still more striking in the immeasurable abyss of distance between the actors in this drama of

of stone.

stone. Those that sail and dream and poetise up there regard leagues as we do a walk, and in the transparent air everything is visible at eleven, even thirteen leagues' distance, which you fancy you will reach in a moment; and the light that shines over this fairy landscape does not intermit. A few moons ago a single night reigned where we now are; but now, perpetual day. Passengers in groups on the decks watch for the midnight sun: whatever preconceived ideas people may bring with them are said to fade away before the nocturnal splendor of the scene. And it is true. The instant the swimming fire-ball glides grandly up the horizon where its presence is only announced a moment before, heaven, sea, and mountain are transformed. It can be contemplated for hours even with the naked eye: no hindering halo stands about it; all flame is within its circumference, but its circumference is far greater than you are accustomed to imagine it by day indeed, so great that at first you are pre-occupied with that, and long with nothing else. At length, color wins the day: it is a blood-red meteor which one could fancy melting into a million shreds and tatters, if the tranquil majesty of the vision, the harmonious magnificence of the colors in the sky in which it floats augustly did not give peace-perfect and transfigured peace. When a shred of cloud glides in over the globe, it is instantly burnt through and becomes more darkly crimson, appearing on the disk like mountains or landscapes. But when a shred floats into the delicately-tinted sky, merely the edges sparkle white-hot or red-hot, while the centre retains its color and throws the surroundings into sharper relief. For heaven is a bed of every transition of color, from the richest crimson over the snow-peaks to the pallid indifference of the heights, but in such a manner that you cannot put a needle-point on one special spot and say, here one color runs over into another. If the vision stood still, one might possibly weary of it. But it shifts perpetually: now the sun is more violet, now red and yellow, now covered with a gauze of emerald, now illumined by white, but ever warm, red behind its shifting veils. At one moment a bit of mist slips in, becomes radiantly bright, then out again; at another, all is spotless radiance; now again, a long, narrow strip of cloud that quivers and flames and passes away. And the surrounding sky changes continually through every color as if it trembled throughout, and its clouds, according as they etherealised or thickened, according as they floated into the bluish-white layers or the crimson-violet ones, take fire more richly at the corners, whiten or darken in their centres. The scene is so constantly new that I have seen old people upon the spot gazing at it with the same absorbed attention as ourselves.

It is strange too that the rest of the sky and the mountains that lie beneath it stand untouched. The same immovable coldness of color in the steel-blue sea, at the dark green mountain's foot, along the deep blue mountain-sides and pinnacles, reigns there, while here everything is radiant, beaming, shifting, jubilant with sunlight. But then again, a solitary mountain over yonder in the cold may separate itself completely, and stand bathed in carnation from top to toe: it is as if this mountain held its own little sun in ambuscade behind it. Then it turns so that it can be reached by the sun, and its brilliance

it is

enhances still more intensely the pellucid clearness of the surroundings.

Once, as the midnight sun was at its loveliest, the moon rose. Probably it did not know what was going on, for filthier, forlorner physiognomy, more distorted and sottish, can no opium-drugged Chinese imagine. It had indeed striking resemblance with this hairless specimen of the class of drunkards. It was not easy to understand that any poet had ever written odes to her, any lover ever languished after her. We hissed-so wretchedly did she waddle along and overwhelmed her with laughter. She had also become amazingly small and shrunken; she must have felt it herself, since she kept at a respectful distance.

The mountain-characteristics which Loffoden has, do not stretch. further northward, with exception of a series of a few peaks, somewhat like those we admire in the South, at Romsdal. We have them again in Lyngenfjord, partly too in Balsfjord, possibly in others which I have not visited, and along the coast here and there, though more rarely. Still we sail onward among mountains and see mountains alone, clothed and unclothed, sometimes green to the top, sometimes for leagues masses of gray, without grass. Hence you reach places that appear exceedingly repulsive; but if you ascend a bit, and a perspective of the spot opens so that the shapes and relations of the rocks, the deep color of the sea, the transparency of the air, gain their influence, then the feeling of infinitude rushes in over the immense wild land, and then it is beautiful. Hammerfest, for example, is so. The instant you come from little Trauby, kneaded together out of earth-huts, up on the "Hull," its mountain behind it, the town bending with the bay lies warm and regular. Fjord and roadside exhibit extraordinary activity, in vehicles, big and little, fishing-flakes, train-oil refineries, Fin-boats and steamships. In the immense league-wide dam which the sea seems to be, rimmed in by gray mountains, behind which snow-peaks seem to peep, a clifflike isle rises and a luxuriantly clad promontory juts forth. In the clearness of the air, the massive scenery looms up more genially, and the human activity within its framework is lifted with it too into an atmosphere of grandeur. This is the most northern city of the world, under the 71st parallel. All Norwegian scenery, in opposition to Danish, seems to have little grace close at hand, but all the more infinite loveliness in the distance. Norwegian scenery seems to me too to fascinate still more by its peculiarity, especially the coast and the further north you go. But to have a true susceptibility to this peculiarity, the mind must be attuned to a feeling of the life of man, bird and fish that presents itself. All along the coast of Norway one as infallibly encounters differences of feature, language, manners, and costume, as one invariably sees different sorts of boats heading towards one in the distance. The Northman's boat (varying the whole way up) appears altogether original to the traveller thinking the most beautiful thing in the land, arranged for his necessities in the immense distances up there, as swift sailers and for fishing purposes, being easy to turn and manage. Its shape is at once supple and strong- a peculiarity which the people themselves

to my

seem to have. The Northman has been called slothful, and he will appear so for a good while-being suspicious withal.

A more ill

treated, plundered and disregarded nation, until recently, the North has never had. It fills you with indignation to hear about the officials and ordinances during the Danish régime. But the Northman - the greatest fisherman of Scandinavia, its boldest and most dauntless sailor is far from being slothful. Behold him in his boat! - every man must be judged according to his profession not only does he excel as a vigorous rower, a quick wharfman, but his motions when he hoists his sails, or is engaged in manoeuvres, are more than quick - they are light, beautiful. Then, just speak to him! With what facility he follows you when you speak about what he has not read or meditated upon. He is, to be sure, somewhat absorbed in local politics for the time, but this is not to be wondered at considering his past; and then we ought to thank Providence that the Northman has passed so easily from being governed to governing himself. The men in office are now principally young men, who cling to the people with life and soul. It is the peculiarity of these districts to bewitch immigrants; magistrates from there always speak of their sojourn in the North as their most delightful experience. The young officials in association with the people will soon win their confidence of them have done so already. The tough, constitutional vigor of the people themselves, which has borne centuries of injustice, hardened as it was by the toil of the sea and the mutability of fortune, in comparison with which these tyrannical caprices had become ridiculous trifles-this tried natural power will now, assisted by the efforts of Parliament, whose pet children Finmark and the Northern Lands have become, push on these districts to a grand future.

; many

It is well known that a part of the people are Laplanders and Finnish Laplanders. The former (Fins of Finland) are a strong, clever people, good seal-hunters, walrus-catchers, and fishers of Greenland sharks, agriculturists too. When they marry Norwegians, they always compel them to speak Finnish. This does not come from intellectual superiority, as has been thought, but because it is a physical impossibility for the Finnish Laplander to speak Norwegian. The Laplanders are naturally the people whom one sees most frequently and inquires about principally from the moment the first Fin-Lap has come on board in his whitish woollen blouse bordered with red and belt on (in winter reindeer-furs are worn), and with his strange shoes and remarkable head-dress. They are generally diminutive, exceedingly friendly, chatty, full of fancy and feeling. Many of the sea Fin-Laps dress like Norwegians, and will pass over to them altogether in the course of time. The Finnish mountaineers, on the contrary, keep to themselves. They once owned all the land in these regions, but they have been driven back to the Highlands. Hence, they often come into controversy with the settlers, and cherish a general passionate antipathy to the Norsemen. In their tales about the devil, he always appears dressed like a Norwegian. If a Norwegian is found in the mountains without a Finnish companion, he is infallibly shot. I heard this confirmed from many sides, also by a

He

Fin, who gave me much information about this queer people, to
whom, in consequence of his culture and position, he could no
longer be said to belong, but whom he loved. What powers of
endurance this nation has, living in snow the greatest part of their
life, in conflict with wolves and the elements ! In his wanderings in
pursuit of lost or stolen reindeer most of the year, on snow-shoes as
long as the snow lasts, and then climbing in rubbish or on trackless
ways, the Finnish mountaineer has acquired a peculiar gait with his
crooked legs and loose-jointed knees; he appears rather to glide
than to walk. The distances he is able to accomplish with unchang-
ing facility, and often with great burdens on his back, seem as
incredible as his ability to go on for days without needing rest.
carries his food in his bosom with him a piece of reindeer-flesh
and bread. When he has seen traces of a wolf in his snow-shoe
wanderings, he follows until he reaches him. The wolf flees down
over the mountain, but the Fin after him on his snow-shoes more
swiftly, now up, now down, often for days, the Fin eating, the wolf
getting no chance either to eat or to stop; he has been known to be-
come so exhausted as to lie down on the slope and bite at the Fin
like a dog, and is then shot or knocked in the head with the snow-
shoe. The Fin gets ten specie dollars premium, besides the cost of
the hide. A wolf can never escape from a Fin on his traces in the
snow. The wolf is, nevertheless, his worst enemy. He prefers to
come in mist and darkness; the reindeer stand in the snow-furrows
which they have kicked up for the sake of the moss; they stand side
by side, often in hundreds, all with their hind-part up and head and
fore-body down in the furrow, hence unable to scent. The wolf then
steals up, and in a trice is on the back of the fattest reindeer; before
the dogs, who can be fooled also, rouse up the Fin, and he has crept
out of his hut with his rifle, the flock is scattered. It often costs
weeks to collect them if they are ever collected; for other people's
reindeer, falling in with a Fin's flock, are generally immediately
killed, and when the owner comes, there is nothing to be seen.
makes compensation when he can, of course, but he is not always

able.

make

He

When

The Fin lives remarkably. The reindeer's blood, out of which he makes his soup, and its flesh and milk, are so fat and strong, that not everybody can enjoy it even when we treat it in our manner. the meat is set out, meal and salt are offered at the same time; you your own bread and cook it on the iron shovel. I have so much to say about the Fins because I myself could never weary of lingering about them, and suppose that it will be the case with other travellers. The magistrates in that country like them, and are fond of telling stories about them. A circuit up there is frequently an excursion over desert mountains in lightning-like driving with reindeer. The guide drives in front, then the traveller, then a reindeer with the baggage; this reindeer is often an untamed animal, fastened to the Finnish sled, to be held in again, and often enough the most exquisitely droll scenes arise. The journey is perilous enough, for the reason that the best-tamed reindeer is after all a wild creature, that kicks loose both at man and sled when he gets tired-sits down on it