The Ohio Democrat. (Logan, O. [Ohio]) 1886-1906, 1893-12-23
RURAL NORWAY.
Region That Has n Certain American
Anncitrnncn.

In uncommon thing to sec white farm |
houses with red barns and outbuild.
lngs, which Mt n distance look the very +
counterpart of those in America. The I
rescmblancc IS. of course. only super
fical, and is quickly dispclled by a /
nearer view, which discloscs the multi. .
farious buildings that are character
istic o. Norwegian farmstead in their |
peculiar grouping about the spacious |
court. In remote parts of the country
the more ancient farm buildings, dingy |
with age, are often curiously carved,
particularly on the door posts and lin.
tells. This is specially true OF the sta
bur, sort OF glorifed corncrib which
for some reason or other, all over Nor.
way, is the one building of the farm
which has best preserved an antique
appearance.
The farms themselves and farming
methods have but little resemblance to
ours. There are very few large hold
ings, and it is curious to note the divi.
sions and subdivisions of land indi-
Gated by the letteretl posts by the way
side. Much of the titled land has been
fairly wrested from natural conditions
by an energy which it seems might
have been elsewhere better applied.
The bastions along the roadside, ten or
| twelve feet wide at the top. made of all
sorts of stones picked off the land and
piled up to get rid of them. are evidence
in point. Little strips of field high up
on a mountain side, SO inaccessible
that the scanty crop of hay must be
sent down on wires, are frequent
enough, and, Oh the upland meadows
which are too steep for wagon, it is
the common custom to get the hay in
on sledges that are often drawn by
man-power. Farming under such cir
cumstances is necessarily done by
primitive methods, and there is little
modern machinery even where it might
be used. In many places. girls and wo.
men may be seen cutting oats and bar
| ley with a sickle, not seldom in com
paratively large fields.
Some of the farming methods are
| peculiar. One of the first things to at
tract the attention in agricultural Nor
way is the long, upright frames on
which the grass is dried; these make
+, hay field look like parade ground,
with the troops drawn up in ire
proachable line. The plantations of
! gnarled birch trees, whose tender
boughs with the leaves on are cut off
and dried in late summer for winter
| fodder for the sheep, are new element
| in the landscape. Peculiar, too, at
least to the extent that prevails in
! Norway, is the summer saeter life.
Regularly with the coming of St Johns
day, the oath of June, the live stock of
the farms, the cows, sheep, goats and
swine are driven off to the mountain
pastures, where they are kept until
early September, while the home fields
ure inown for their hay. Up at the
saeter the girls who attend the cattle
live in IL very primitive fashion, often
in a house with a single room, which
is dairy and living room combined
The butter and cheese produced are
not infrequently brought down or
their backs, and the few necessaries ol
life are carried up in the same way
The grass of these mountain pastures
especially on the sunny slope of val
ley. is short but astoniskingly abuu
dant, and the cattle thrive. Norway
without the life of the sneter woult
lose some of its most characteristic,
charms of sight and sound. Every on,
who has been through the Norwegian
mountains will call to mind the plain
tive sounds of the cattle horn cchoins
down through the woods from som,
high pasture, and the minor notes O.
tne cattle call: kuss! kuss! lsuss! lsou
hjens!
One other resemblance to rura
America that impresses itself upon the
traveller from these shores is the wa,
in which the farlnsteads are scattered
about the country aud the comparative
absence OF villages. Norway, as 9
whole, is very sparsely inha bited
partly owing to the nature of the
country itself and partly to the drift o7
the population to America. Long
stretches are uninhabited, and thu
roads wind for miles without Interrupt
tion through dense forests of tall, vel
low-trunked pines, and spruces tina,
have their equal for luxuriance ot
growth nowhere else in the world
There is a strange absence of anima
life in these regions. A squirrel occa
sionally runs across the road, but there
are few birds and NJ songsters. Nor
way in this respect is strangely silent
There were slxylarks in the meadow,
in July, but they soon disappeared
and the only birds commonly left, be
sides the sparrows and the familiar
little wagtails, We're the ash-grny
crows and the magpies, who seemed to
have entered upon an alliance ant
We're often seen TO fly and feed to
gether.
In spite of the sparseness of popula
ton and the comparative poverty O.
the country, the roads of Norway ar,
scarcely surpassed by those of any
vast sums have been expended in this
direction with superb result. Yearly
new districts are taken in hand, aut
the old roads are either straightcnet
and leveled, or, in many cases, aban
doned outright Ii is an admirable
country for bicycling; and wheelmeI
and whcelwomen, also, are met every
where. Norway in most respects is no
behind the rest of the world. There
are few railways, to be sure, but sue.
IL recent appliance us the telephone i.
USED all over the country to an eXtent
that is absolutely unknown in America
and charges for it and the telegraph
are astonishingly cheap. In most re
spe cts, although a peasant population
is naturally conservative, ideas of all
kinds penetrate rapidly through Nor.
way, and this we may largely ascribe
to an abundant and wide-awalle jour
naliSm. In the present polltical con.