The Sun.
London, England, 1868-09-11 00:00:00

A MONTH IN NORWAY.

[FROM A CORRESPONDENT.]

(Second Notice. )
Norway is a large country, and the maps of it published
in England will, I fear, scarcely enable your readers to
follow my route. The Norwgian maps are costly
(Wali,gorski's costs 95., Munch's 365.), and none but
Norsk travellers will be likely to possess them. However,
I will endeavour, by avoiding too great minuteness, to
render the rest of my journey intelligible.
The reader who looks at any map of Norway will see
that the whole of the west is indented by fjords. It
is these which form the most characteristic feature of
Norsk scenery and Norsk travel. They give beauty to the
first ; they give variety to the second. To-day you travel
over a highland surrounded by snow mountains ; to-
morrow you are in a steamboat on the level of the sea.
Our route lay from Hellesylt to Faleidet. That is, we went
south from the Storfjord to the Nordfjord. And a
beautiful drive it was. For some miles you ascend
through a country ever growing wilder and more
desolate, until you reach a point whence the
streams flow in both directions, and you know
that your highest level is attained. Far above this,
especially on the right, are snow-clad mountains, one
especially is almost as sharp a pinnacle as the Matterhorn.
It has been ascended by Mr. Temple. Descending, you
pass through a scene of exquisite fertility, where the
dark firs and the white-barked birch fringe the borders of
a most charming lake, Horningdal's Vand. Then a steep
ascent through woods, and then a very rapid descent to
Faleidet. Here is a very charmingly situated inn, but the
bill is less satisfactory than the view, and I
would advise travellers wishing to explore the
Opstruen Vand, as we did, or the Brixdal glaciers,
to go on to Taaning. At this point of our journey
the fine weather suddenly broke up, and we had to
encounter days of wet and storm, fortunately few in
number, but somewhat inconvenient, not to say exciting.
For instance, crossing to Udvig—a distance of seven
English miles—took us little less than three hours.
So fiercely blew the wind, that at one time we actually
went hjsckwards, in spite of all the efforts of our
rowers. Safely landed, we had to make the ascent
of the steepest road in Norway. There is nothing
lil:e it, even in Devonshire. The horses would
pull for three minutes, and then stop for five. As
we neared the top, the country became desolate to the last
degree. We noticed huge posts along the roadside, land-
marks to shew the path when buried by the winter snow.
On the south side of the hill the view was very grand, and
more thoroughly Alpine than anything we had seen in
Norway. Glaciers lay on our left, and beyond them moun-
tains of every shape—one a perfect cone, one a huge table,
with sides frightfully precipitous. Far below us a
roaring stream ran through the narrow valley, and
all around us were clouds and tempest, with the
sun shining through rifts, and producing very fine effects.
Arrived at Reed on the Bredheim Vand, we had to take
to boat again. But this was easier said than done. The
boatmen absolutely refused to go, so tempestuous was
the weather. This was not pleasant news. The station
at Reed is a cottage of the humblest kind, and to pass the
night there was scarcely what one would choose. But there
was no alternative. W e asked for bread, there was none ; for
butter, there was none ; for milk, there was none ; for meat,
there was none. Sowe made a meal off potatoes and coarse
bacon, and went to our bed of hay covered with a sheet.
Up at four in the morning, we found a sunrise drenched
with rain. But the wind had subsided, and eight oars took
us with great difficulty across the lake in three hours. We
passed station after station, all worse than the one we had
left ; and we made our first mealthat day atsix p.m., after
fourteen hours of travel in torrents of rain. The next
day was somewhat better; the showers still soaked you
through and through, but they were intermittent, and
allowed you time to dry. We reached the Sogne
Fjord at Vadheim. The steamer did not arrive till
near midnight. Every berth was taken, and we had to
sit up all night. We were well repaid the next morning.
The fjord scenery as we approached Bergen was extraor-
dinary. Every few minutes we found ourselves in a lake,
not larger than is to be found in many an English
park, with no outlet that we could see. Then, as we were
wondering how we were to get out, some narrow strait
would reveal itself, and we would thread it, passing and
almost touching the rocks on either side. And all this
while we were within a few miles of the North Sea,
though, so far as we could tell, we were in the centre of
Europe. The pilot knew better, and many a narrow
escape he has had by reason of the fierce currents which
rush through these straits, and which no fewer than three
times had carried the steamer in which we were backward
upon a rock.

Bergen is a most picturesque town. But it is always
raining there, and the climate is very relaxing. Though
considerably to the north of Christiania, the winter is far
less severe in the old capital than in the new. The Gulf
Stream runs up the west side of Norway, and so, while
Christiania Fjord is a sheet of solid ice, even among the
Loffoden Isles the sea will remain unfrozen. Bergen
is surrounded by hills about two thousand feet
high, whence there is a glorious view of the fjord,
with a glimpse of the open sea. There are not many lions,
fortunately. The museum is worth seeing for the sake of
its stuffed animals. The Art Union, both here and at
Christiania, is very poor. Art does not flourish in Norway,
and Tidemand, who should be the pride of the country,
finds so little patronage that he lives in Dusseldorf. Ole
Bull, the violinist, resides near Bergen, and had just come
home from a tour in the United States, which, I am
glad to • say, has brought him a handsome income.
Bergen, usually a quiet and orderly place, was
the scene of a very serious disturbance a day or two
after we left it. There was a popular riot, so formidable
that the military had to be called out, and blood was shed.
The cause of the disturbance was—potatoes. The price
of this, the almost only vegetable in Norway, has been so
high this summer, owing, I presume, to the drought, that
the Bergen gamins thought that by rising they would
make it fall. It was necessary to get this idea out of
their heads by the logic of the bayonet—a mode of argu-
ment very rarely resorted to in peaceful, order•loving

Norway.
Two days in Bergen passed somewhat heavily away,
amid rain out of doors and fleas within. Then we gladly
turned our backs upon both, and set our faces towards the
Hardanger, prince of all the fjords. Words fail me to
describe the beauty of this district. It was not only all
beautiful, but beautiful in such a variety of ways. At one
time you would be in a vast lake, with snow-clad moun-
tains seen far off in the horizon ; at another, you would be
steaming through a defile of rocks, sometimes utterly
barren, sometimes clothed with fir and birch. Narrower and
narrower grows the fjord as you reach the upper end of it.
At Odde you are surrounded by some of the highest
mountains in Norway. To the west is the famous Folge-
Fond, an enormous ice-field, twenty by fifty English
miles. We made the ascent, and found it a very stiff climb
indeed. There is an hour and a half's ascent over the
snow, and-as the mountain here is like the roof of a house,
the difficulty may be imagined. In our case it was in-
creased by a thunderstorm which had taken place during
the previous night. The rain had fallen on the
snow and frozen hard. Ludicrous, and even painful,
were our efforts to obtain a hold on a slope so steep, that
we had to walk on the sides of our feet. Coming down
was rapid work. We " glissaded " and descended in
about ten minutes ground that had taken us an hour to
ascend. lam bound to say that this expedition scarcely
repaid us. The view is extensive (we saw a mountain
eighty-five miles off), but too barren to be beautiful, too
monotonous to be grand. Far better worth under-
taking is the Skjwggedal Foss, the great waterfall
of Norway, of which " Murray " apparently is totally
ignorant. There is some scrambling here, and though
we were warned by a member of the Alpine Club that it
was inaccessible for ladies, my wife found it an easy ascent,
and compared with the Folge-Fond mere child's play. The
fall is very grand. You approach it by a lake which
takes an hour to pull up. All around you are cruel preci-
pices, ink black, and from the top of these descends this
awful torrent, drowning all other sounds by its terrific
roar. From its foot rises a great cloud, seemingly of steam
from some huge boiler. For yards and yards around
the mist and spray soak the soil and you too,
if you venture near. Then, having made its
headlong descent, the torrent rushes, a foaming cataract,
into the lake. A few days later we had a climb to the
Wring Foss, another of the chief falls of Norway. This is
really finer than the other; but you cannot see it so well.
You have to look down, and as jutting rocks interpose
and partly intercept the view, even when, as we did, you
crawl on bands and knees to the edge of the precipice,
you do not take in the full grandeur of this magnificent
fall, where the river takes 800 feet at one leap. To these
expeditions there was a comic side. For about a fort-
night we were travelling with a Prussian general,
who commanded the engineers at Sadowa, and had
three sons officers in that battle. Our hero amused us
infinitely by going about the country in full uniform, to
the great amazement of the Norsk peasants. I think
they believed that he was commissioned to inspect the
country previous to its invasion. The national honour
made the General think it incumbent upon him to take
the lead in mountaineering. Unfortunately, the
hero of Sadowa was by no means surefooted,
and every few minutes there would be a sudden
halt along the line, and the signal would be
passed, "The General is down again." Somewhere about
the twelfth fall one of the heels of his boots came off, and
a little later the other heel followed suit. The falls now
became fast and furious, but still the General led the van,
and at each backsliding would exclaim " Ach, Wunder-
EclIn!" as though he wer: sitting down to admire the
s,;',2,try. The intfwe vanity of tho man prevented Win
trout ban 44aloik...DuilLwbuinawbitilhis6