Through Scandinavia to Moscow. Edwards William Seymour

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ 11 p. m. we arrived at Kristiania in a pouring rain, and at General C’s recommendation, came to this curious and comfortable hotel. Like many other hotels in Norway, it is kept by women, and seems to be much patronized by substantial Norwegians of the nicer sort. It is on the top floor of a tall building, and you pass up and down in a rapid modern elevator. It is kept as clean as a pin, and the beds we sleep in are the softest, freshest in mattress and linen we have seen this side the sea. We have also passed beyond the latitude of blankets and are come to the zone of eider down. Coverlets, light, buoyant, and delightfully warm now keep us from the cold, and in our narrow bedsteads we sleep the slumber of contented innocence. We have a large well-furnished chamber, all for two kroner per day (fifty-four cents). When we entered the long, light breakfast hall this morning, we saw a single table running the length of the room, a white cloth upon it, and ranged up and down, a multitude of cheeses big and little, cow cheese and goat cheese, and many sorts of cold meat, beef and pork and mutton, and cold fish and salt fish. And there were piles of cold sliced bread and English “biscuits” (crackers). The coffee, or milk if you wish it, is brought in, and in our case so are fresh soft-boiled eggs. A group of evidently English folk near us had a special pot of Dundee marmalade. The Norwegians take simply their coffee or milk, with cheese and cold fish and the cold bread. Our breakfast cost us twenty cents apiece.

      To-day the city is washed delightfully clean, the heavy rain of the night having cleared streets and atmosphere of every particle of dust and grime. We have driven all about in an open victoria. It is a splendid town, containing some two hundred thousand inhabitants. It lies chiefly upon a sloping hillside with a deep harbor at its feet. Like Copenhagen, it is the capital of its country, and the seat of the Norwegian Government, of the Supreme Law Courts, and of the Storthing or National Congress or Parliament. At the end of the wide Karl Johans Gade stands the “Palace of the Swedish King,” a sombre edifice, now rarely occupied. Kristiania is also the literary and art center of the Norse people. Here Ibsen lives, here Bjoernstjoerne Bjoernsen would live, if Swedish intolerance did not drive him into France. The types of men and women we see upon the streets are the finest we have met since coming over sea. Tall and well-built, light-haired and blue-eyed, the men carry themselves with great dignity. The women are, many of them, tall, their backs straight, not the curved English spine and stooping shoulders. All have good chins, alert and initiative. The Norwegians are the pick of the Scandinavian peoples. They are the sons and daughters of the old Viking breeds which led the race. They are to-day giving our northwestern states a population able, fearless and progressive, no finer immigration coming to our shores. Senators and Governors of their stock are already making distinguished mark in American affairs.

      It was not long before we perceived that in Kristiania, as in Copenhagen, we were also very close to the great Republic; except that, perhaps, here we discovered a keener sympathy with American feeling, a closer touch with the American spirit.

      Those Norwegians whom we have met speak good United States, not modern English. You hear none of the English sing-song flutter of the voice, none of its suppression of the full-sounded consonant, but the even, clear, precise accent and intonation of the well-taught American mouth. And our friends tell us that it is much easier for them to learn to speak the American tongue than to master the often extraordinary inflexion of spoken English as pronounced in Britain. I am gaining a great respect for these Scandinavian and Norwegian peoples. They are among the finest of the races of the European world.

      We have driven not merely through the beautiful city and its parks, and beheld the wide view to be had from the tower at its highest point, but we have also visited the ancient Viking ship, many years ago discovered and dug out of the sands along the sea, a measured model of which was so boldly sailed across the Atlantic, and floated on Lake Michigan, at Chicago, in 1892.

      At this time, however, we are but birds of passage in Kristiania. We may not linger to become more intimately acquainted with the noble town; we are arranging for a ten days’ journey by boat and carriage through the fjords and mountain valleys, and region of the mighty snow-fields and glaciers of western Norway. We must now go on, and postpone any intimate knowledge of the city until another day.

      H is quite ready for this trip. She wears a corduroy shirt waist of deep purple shade, and has brought with her one of those short, simply-cut walking-skirts, of heavy cloth. A natty toque sets off her head. She is fitly clad. And my eyes are not the only ones that note this fact, as I observed to-day when, to avoid[Pg 49][Pg 50] a shower, we sought shelter under the pillared portico of the Storthing’s fine edifice in the central square. As we stood there, waiting for the rain to cease, I noticed a small, fair-haired, quietly-dressed woman intently staring at the skirt. Each hem and tuck and fold and crease and gore she studied with the steadfast eye of the connoisseur. And so absorbed did she become that she grew quite oblivious of our knowledge of her interest. Around and around she circled, until at last we left her still taking mental notes. Some other woman in Kristiania, we are quite sure, will soon be wearing a duplicate of this well made costume from New York.

      VI

      A Day Upon the Rand Fjord and Along the Etna Elv – To Frydenlund – Ole Mon Our Driver

Frydenlund, Norge, September 1, 1902.

      We left Kristiania about seven o’clock this morning and drove six kilometers to Grefsen, a suburb where the new railway comes in, which will ultimately connect the capital with Bergen on the west coast. Grefsen is up on the hills back of the city. The cars of the train we traveled in were long like our own and also set on trucks, the compartments being commodious, like the one we rode in from Helsingborg.

      We traversed a country of spruce forests, rapid streams, small lakes and green valleys; with red-roofed farmsteads, cattle, sheep and horses in the meadows, and yellowing fields of oats and rye, just now being reaped; where men were driving the machines and women raking the fallen grain, all a beautiful, fertile, well-populated land with big men, big women, rosy and well set up, usually yellow-haired and blue-eyed.

      About ten o’clock we arrived at Roikenvik, on the Rand Fjord, a sheet of dark blue water about two miles wide and thirty or forty long, with high, fir-clad mountains on either hand; with green slopes dotted with farm buildings, and occasional hamlets where stopped our tiny steamboat, the Oscar II. This fjord is more beautiful than a Scottish loch, for here the mountains are heavily timbered with fir to their very summits, while the hills of Scotland are bare and bleak.

      We sat contentedly upon the upper deck inhaling the keen, fresh air, watching the picturesque panorama and noting the passengers crowded upon the forward deck below. They were chiefly farmers getting on and off, intelligent, self-respecting, well-appearing men, and full of good humor. One old gentleman with snowy whiskers, who resembled an ancient mariner, which I verily believe he was, seemed to hold the center of attention and many and loud were the shouts which his quaint jests brought forth. He evidently delivered a lecture upon my big American valise, pointing to it and explaining its excellent make, and his remarks were apparently to the credit of the owner, and of America whence it came.

      Just before the bell summoned us to dinner in the after cabin, I noticed a skiff rowing toward us, one of the three men in it waving his hat eagerly to our Captain, who immediately stopped the boat until they drew beside us, when two of them, clean-cut, rosy-faced, young six-footers, came up, hand over hand, on a rope which was lowered to them. They were born sailors, like all Norwegians. I snapped my kodak as their skiff drew near us, and the first news the Captain gave them was to apprise them of that fact. They appeared to be greatly flattered by the attention. They laughed and bowed and looked at me as much as to say, “How much we should like a copy of the photograph, if we knew enough English to ask for it,” but they were too diffident to make the suggestion through their Captain friend.

      With the Captain himself, I became well acquainted; an alert man of affairs, who had knocked about the world on Norwegian ships and visited the greater ports of the United States. He gave me an interesting account of Norse feeling at the time of the СКАЧАТЬ