The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1899-02-19
WINTER IN NoRwAY's CAPITAL.
Cold But EndurabIe-The Simple Life
of the Remote Little City.


Christiania Letter in New York Evening
Post.
winter in Norway Br-rr! No, thank
you. Do you think Z m Nansen or a wall
rus?" said the woman who might have
come too. And so she went her foolish way
to hibernate in a Florentine palace"
whose tomb-llke chambers now chill her
soul, whose icy floors frost-nip her toes,
and whose bleak and draughty passages
are explicitly demonstrating via double
bronchitis, that comfort is less an affair
Of climate than Of common sense and pre-
caution.
AS matter of fact. the Christianian win
ter presents no terrors to any fairly nor
NAL physique. The cold, when it comes.
comes to stay. At no time very severe, it
INDUCES in few vagaries, and sets at the
beginning an equable standard to which
humanity may adapt its habits without
fear of interruption. Clothing that suits
to-day, suits as we'll tomorrow, next
week, next month, until April or May. No
sudden thaw tempts you to Urifie with your
thin overcoat or to leave your customary
furs behind when you start for your
noontide drive. The beating of your house
depends upon the Judgment of no ill-bal-
anced furnace sfdVe but it maintained by
unvarying means at pitch as changeless.
And above all, every building is put to-
gether with Special view to warmth and
tightness. The other day l saw, in one
of the suburbs, pretty little wooden villa
entirely sheathed, on its windward side,
in neatly applied tar paper. The effect
was naive, but the principle involved is
that which makes the season actually
more comfortable in Christania than in
London.
Remarkably few foreigners, however,
really know Anything about the Norway
of the Norwegians. Summer tourists,
swarming like summer fiies over the face
of the land carry away certain geograph-
ical impressions, but for the same reasons
that would hold good IN any other country,
they see nothing of the peoples life, or
lack the key to the understanding of such
odds and ends as chance may expose to
their vision Herein behold, incidentally,
the chief reason why Ibsen's social
dramas" to a Norseman thoroughly expli-
cable even when not sympathetic ring
false and strained on foreign ears. Intel
ligent. criticism of these essentially ma
tlonal productions is, in some aspects,
quite impossible without acquaintance with
the peculiar social conditions from which
they spring.
ANY open minded foreigner must,
think, find a special pleasure in sharing
the winter life of this remote little capt.
tai Its two strongest allurements, per-
haps. are its intense localism and its
keen intellectual vitality. Norway is un>
compromisingly non-cosmopolitan. If she
progresses, she progresses Norskly, not in
the wake of strangers and philistines; and
she feels, meantime, but the mi.dest curl
osity as to what strangers and philistines
maybe thinking of her. So intense a self
satisfaction must have bred colossal dull
ness but for the heaven of the following
graces: Society is small and centered in
the capital; the standard of general in
tellectuai development is high; the upper
stratum of the intellectual commonalty
contains many men and women of re-
markable attainments; and soaring over
all are few true geniuses, like Born
son. whose electric flashes now and again
project enlivening thrills through the en-
tire body social, setting hot young blood
afiame and starting phlegmatic old heads
into healthful action. Nothing stagnant
can count on peace and safety. Some
adventurous Pegasus is forever charging,
in his thoroughly Norsk way, al some
hoary condition or prejudice, and dynamic
ideas spring up. like mushrooms, in the
night, to be brought in with the news
papers at breakfast, and there wrestled
over with eingle-hearted intensity.
The credit of the almighty dollar stands
at nought, or is recognized, rather, only
ia the circle of the prosperous trades fam
flies Money bears no relation whatever
to social standing and the richest man
in the town openly rates as the chief priv
ilege of his wealth the ability that it
gives him to make his house a center of
learning and TO entertain certain rusty,
dusty, university professors, whose year
ly incomes would hardly keep his horses
for month. AS would be supposed, this
ignoring of financial circumstances acts
Immediately on the mental life of the city
Because of IL, society in general gets the
worth of every man or woman's brains
and talents. Nothing is sacrificed TO ex-
ternals Hospitality flourishes untrammel-
ed by ambition of display, and such noble
liberty of plain living prevails as would,
perhaps, be hard to parallel, now that our
American Cambridge of fifty years ago has
faded into memory.
Well indeed, il is for those smaller purse
that the liberty of plain living does exist
that the spirit of hospitality does outrank
the nesh-pots of Egypt; for the true Norsk
table, when expanded TO its preferred di-
mansions. is one TO stagger the resources
Of ordinary mortals. ! recently went to a
ny no means unusual sort of dinner party,
given by wealthy political man, where