Part 20 (1/2)
On the eastern sh.o.r.e of the lake is a chain of mountains, from two to four thousand feet high; to the south, west, and north rise the green hills on which the farms lie; above these, again, rise other hills, higher and more distant, where in the edges of the snow tracts or buried in fir forests are the saeters, the farmers' summer homes.
As we drove into the village we met the peasants going home from church: the women in short green or black gowns, with gay jackets and white handkerchiefs made into a flying-b.u.t.tress sort of head-dress on their heads; the men with knee-breeches, short vests, and jackets thick trimmed with silver b.u.t.tons. Every man bowed and every woman courtesied as we pa.s.sed. To pa.s.s any human being on the highway without a sign or token of greeting would be considered in Norway the height of ill manners; any child seen to do it would be sharply reproved. Probably few things would astonish the rural Norwegian more than to be told that among the highly civilized it is considered a mark of good breeding, if you chance to meet a fellow-man on the highway, to go by him with no more recognition of his presence than you would give to a tree or a stone wall.
It is an odd thing that a man should be keeping the Vossevangen Hotel to-day who served in America's civil war, was for two years in one of the New York regiments, and saw a good deal of active service. He was called back to Norway by the death of his father, which made it necessary for him to take charge of the family estate in Vossevangen.
He has married a Vossevangen woman, and is likely to end his days there; but he hankers for Chicago, and always will. He keeps a fairly good little hotel, on the sh.o.r.es of the lake, with a row of willow-trees in front; dwarf apple-trees, gooseberry and currant bushes, and thickets of rhubarb in his front yard; roses, too, besides larkspur and phlox; but the rhubarb has the place of honor. The dining-room and the parlor were, like those at Eide, adorned with ivies and flowering plants; oleanders in the windows and potted carnations on the table. In one corner of the dining-room was a large round table covered with old silver for sale: tankards, chains, belts, b.u.t.tons, coins, rings, buckles, brooches, ornaments of all kinds,--hundreds of dollars' worth of things. There they lay, day and night, open to all who came; and they had done this, the landlady said, for years, and not a single article had ever been stolen: from which it is plain that not only is the Norwegian honest himself, there must be a contagion in his honesty, which spreads it to all travellers in his country.
The next morning, early, we set off in a peasant's cart to visit some of the farm-houses.
”Now you shall see,” said Sanna, ”that it was not possible if you had all day to ride in this kind of wagon.”
It did not take long to prove the truth of her remark. A shallow wooden box set on two heavy wheels; a wooden seat raised on two slanting wooden braces, so high that one's feet but just reach the front edge of the box; no dasher, no sides to seat, no anything, apparently, after you are up, except your hard wooden seat and two pounding wheels below,--this is the peasant wagon. The horse, low down between two heavy thills, is without traces, pulls by a breast collar, is guided by rope reins, and keeps his heels half the time under the front edge of the box. The driver stands up in the box behind you, and the rope reins are in your hair, or on your neck, shoulders, ears, as may be. The walloping motion of this kind of box, drawn by a frisky Norwegian horse over rough roads, is droll beyond description. But when it comes to going down hills in it, and down hills so steep that the box appears to be on the point of dumping you between the horse's ears at each wallop, it ceases to be droll, and becomes horrible. Our driver was a splendid specimen of a man,--six feet tall, strong built, and ruddy. When he found that I was an American, he glowed all over, and began to talk rapidly to Sanna. He had six brothers in America.
”They do say that they all have it very good there,” interpreted Sanna; ”and he thinks to go there himself so soon as there is money to take all. It must be that America is the best country in the world, to have it so good there that every man can have it good.”
The roads up the hills were little more than paths. Often for many rods there was no trace of wheels on the stony ledges; again the track disappeared in a bit of soft meadow. As we climbed, the valley below us rounded and hollowed, and the lake grew smaller and smaller to the eye; the surrounding hills opened up, showing countless valleys winding here and there among them. It was a surpa.s.singly beautiful view. Vast tracts of firs, inky black in the distances, emphasized the glittering of the snow fields above them and the sunny green of the nearer foregrounds below.
The first farm which we visited lay about three miles north of the village,--three miles north and up. The buildings were huddled together, some half dozen of them, in a haphazard sort of way, with no attempt at order, no front, no back, and no particular reason for approaching one way rather than another. Walls of hewn logs, black with age; roofs either thatched, or covered with huge slabs of slate, laid on irregularly and moss-grown; rough stones or logs for doorsteps; so little difference between the buildings that one was at a loss to know which were meant for dwellings and which for barns,--a more unsightly spot could hardly be imagined. But the owners had as quick an instinct of hospitality as if they dwelt in a palace. No sooner did Sanna mention that I was from America, and wished to see some of the Norwegian farm-houses, than their faces brightened with welcome and good-will, and they were ready to throw open every room and show me all their simple stores.
”There is not a man in all Vos,” they said, ”who has not a relative in America.” And they asked eager question after question, in insatiable curiosity, about the unknown country whither their friends had gone.
The wives and daughters of the family were all away, up at the saeter with the cows; only the men and the servant maids were left at home to make the hay. Would I not go up to the saeter? The mistress would be distressed that an American lady had visited the farm in her absence. I could easily go to the saeter in a day. It was only five hours on horseback, and about a half-hour's walk, at the last, over a path too rough even for riding. Very warmly the men urged Sanna to induce me to make the trip. They themselves would leave the haying and go with me, if I would only go; and I must never think I had seen Norwegian farming unless I had seen the saeter also, they said.
The maids were at dinner in the kitchen. It was a large room, with walls not more than eight feet high, black with smoke; and in the centre a square stone trough, above which was built a funnel chimney.
In this hollow trough a fire smouldered, and above it hung an enormous black caldron, full of beer, which was being brewed. One of the maids sprang from her dinner, lifted a trap door in the floor, disappeared in the cellar, and presently returned, bringing a curious wooden drinking-vessel shaped like a great bowl, with a prow at each side for handles, and painted in gay colors. This was br.i.m.m.i.n.g full of new beer, just brewed. Sanna whispered to me that it would be bad manners if we did not drink freely of it. It was pa.s.sed in turn to each member of the party. The driver, eying me sharply as I forced down a few mouthfuls of the nauseous drink, said something to Sanna.
”He asks if American ladies do not like beer,” said Sanna. ”He is mortified that you do not drink. It will be best that we drink all we can. It is all what they have. Only I do hope that they give us not brandy.”
There was no window in the kitchen, no ventilation except through the chimney and the door. A bare wooden table, wooden chairs, a few shelves, where were ranged some iron utensils, were all the furniture of the gloomy room. The maids' dinner consisted of a huge plate of fladbrod and jugs of milk; nothing else. They would live on that, Sanna said, for weeks, and work in the hay-fields from sunrise till midnight.
Opposite the kitchen was the living-room,--the same smoky log walls, bare floors, wooden chairs and benches. The expression of poverty was dismal.
”I thought you said these people were well to do!” I exclaimed.
”So they are,” replied Sanna. ”They are very well off; they do not know that it is not comfort to be like this. They shall have money in banks, these people. All the farmers in Vos are rich.”
Above the living-room were two bedrooms and clothes-rooms. Here, in gay painted scarlet boxes and hanging from lines, were the clothes of the family and the bed linen of the house. Mistress and maid alike must keep their clothes in this common room. The trunks were ranged around the sides of the room, each locked with a key big enough to lock prison doors. On one side of one of the rooms were three bunk beds built in under the eaves. These were filled with loose straw, and had only blankets for covers. Into this straw the Norwegian burrows by night, rolled in his blankets. The beds can never be moved, for they are built in with the framework of the house. No wonder that the Norwegian flea has, by generations of such good lodging and food, become a triumphant Bedouin marauder, in comparison with whom the fleas of all other countries are too petty to deserve mention.
The good-natured farmer opened his mother's box as well as his wife's, and with awkward and unaccustomed hands shook out their Sunday costumes for us to see. From another box, filled with soft blankets and linen, he took out a bottle of brandy, and pouring some into a little silver bowl, with the same prow-shaped handles as the wooden one we had seen in the kitchen, pressed us to drink. One drop of it was like liquid fire. He seemed hurt that we refused more, and poured it down his own throat at a gulp, without change of a muscle. Then he hid the brandy bottle again under the blankets, and the little silver cup in the till of his mother's chest, and locked them both up with the huge keys.
Downstairs we found an aged couple, who had come from another of the buildings, hearing of our presence. These were the grandparents. The old woman was eighty-four, and was knitting briskly without gla.s.ses.
She took us into the storerooms, where were bins of flour and grain; hams of beef and pork hanging up; wooden utensils of all sorts, curiously carved and stained wooden spoons, among other things,--a cask full of them, put away to be used ”when they had a merry-making.”
Here also were stacks of fladbrod. This is the staple of the Norwegian's living; it is a coa.r.s.e bread made of dark flour, in cakes as thin as a wafer and as big round as a barrel. This is baked once a year, in the spring, is piled up in stacks in the storerooms, and keeps good till the spring baking comes round again. It is very sweet and nutritious: one might easily fare worse than to have to make a meal of it with milk. On one of the storeroom shelves I spied an old wooden drinking-bowl, set away with dried peas in it. It had been broken, and riveted together in the bottom, but would no longer hold water, so had been degraded to this use. It had once been gayly painted, and had a motto in old Norwegian around the edge: ”Drink in good-will, and give thanks to G.o.d.” I coveted the thing, and offered to buy it. It was a study to see the old people consult with each other if they should let it go. It seemed that when they first went to housekeeping it had been given to them by the woman's mother, and was an old bowl even then. It was certainly over a hundred years old, and how much more there was no knowing. After long discussion they decided to sell it to me for four kroner (about one dollar), which the son thought (Sanna said) was a shameful price to ask for an old broken bowl. But he stood by in filial submission, and made no loud objection to the barter. The old woman also showed us a fine blanket, which had been spun and woven by her mother a hundred years ago. It was as gay of color and fantastic of design as if it had been made in Algiers.
This too she was willing to sell for an absurdly small price, but it was too heavy to bring away. At weddings and other festivities these gay blankets are hung on the walls; and it is the custom for neighbors to lend all they can on such occasions.
The next farm we visited belonged to the richest people in Vos. It lay a half-mile still higher up, and the road leading to it seemed perilously steep. The higher we went, the greater the profusion of flowers: the stony way led us through tracts of bloom, in blue and gold; tall spikes of mullein in clumps like hollyhocks, and ”shepherd's bells” in great purple patches.
The buildings of this farm were cl.u.s.tered around a sort of court-yard enclosure, roughly flagged by slate. Most of the roofs were also slated; one or two were thatched, and these thatched roofs were the only thing that redeemed the gloom of the spot, the sods on these being bright with pansies and gra.s.ses and waving raspberry bushes.
Here also we found the men of the family alone at home, the women being gone on their summering at the saeter. The youngest son showed us freely from room to room, and displayed with some pride the trunks full of blankets and linen, and the rows of women's dresses hanging in the chambers. On two sides of one large room these were hung thick one above another, no variety in them, and no finery; merely a succession of strong, serviceable petticoats, of black, green, or gray woollen.
The gay jackets and stomachers were packed away in trunks; huge fur-lined coats, made of the same shape for men and for women, hung in the storeroom. Some of the trunks were red, painted in gay colors; some were of polished cedar, finished with fine bra.s.s mountings. As soon as a Norwegian girl approaches womanhood, one of these trunks is given her, set in its place in the clothes-room, and her acc.u.mulations begin. Clothes, bedding, and silver ornaments seem to be the only things for which the Norwegian peasant spends his money. In neither of these houses was there an article of superfluous furniture, not even of ordinary comfort. In both were the same bunk beds, built in under the eaves; the same loose, tossed straw, with blankets for covering; and only the coa.r.s.est wooden chairs and benches for seats. The young man opened his mother's trunk, and took from one corner a beautiful little silver beaker, with curling, prow-shaped handles. In this the old lady had packed away her silver brooches, b.u.t.tons, and studs for the summer. Side by side with them, thrown in loosely among her white head-dresses and blouses, were half a dozen small twisted rolls of white bread. Sanna explained this by saying that the Norwegians never have this bread except at their most important festivals; it is considered a great luxury, and these had no doubt been put away as a future treat, as we should put away a bit of wedding-cake to keep.
Very irreverently the son tipped out all his mother's ornaments into the bottom of the trunk, and proceeded to fill the little beaker with fiery brandy from a bottle which had been hid in another corner. From lip to lip it was pa.s.sed, returning to him wellnigh untasted; but he poured the whole down at a draught, smacked his lips, and tossed the cup back into the trunk, dripping with the brandy. Very much that good old Norwegian dame, when she comes down in the autumn, will wonder, I fancy, what has happened to her nicely packed trunk of underclothes, dry bread, and old silver.