Glimpses of Three Coasts Part 23

A last farewell to you All, my dear friends; May the life's fortune, honor, and glory Be with you wherever you are!

I know you are all standing In deep thoughts When Harald Haarf.a.ger weighs anchor, And I am away from you.

A wreath of memory I will twine or twist round My dear native land, And as a lark happy sing This my well-meaned song.

Oh, that we all may be Wreathed with glory, And in the last carry our wreaths of glory In heaven's hall!

Watching my face keenly, she read my approbation of her simple little song, and nodding her head with satisfaction, said,--

"Oh, sometime you see I ain't quite that foolish I look to! I got big book of all my songs. n.o.body but myself could read dem papers. It is all pulled up, and five six words standing one on top of oder."

II.

Murray's Guide-book, that paradoxical union of the false and the true, says of Christiania, "There is not much of interest in the town, and it may be seen in from four to five hours." The person who made that statement did not have Katrina with him, and perhaps ought therefore to be forgiven. He had not strolled with her through the market square of a morning, and among the old women, squatted low, with half a dozen flat, open baskets of fruit before them: blueberries, currants, raspberries, plums, pears, and all shades, sizes, and flavors of cherries, from the pale and tasteless yellow up to those wine-red and juicy as a grape; the very cherry, it must have been, which made Lucullus think it worth while to carry the tree in triumphal procession into Rome. Queer little wooden boxes set on four low wheels, with a short pole, by which a strong man or woman can draw them, are the distinctive features of out-door trade in the Christiania market-places. A compacter, cheaper device for combining storage, transportation, and exhibition was never hit on. The boxes hold a great deal. They make a good counter; and when there are twenty or thirty of them together, with poles set up at the four corners, a clothes-line fastened from pole to pole and swung full of cheap stuffs of one sort and another, ready-made garments, hats, caps, bonnets, shoes, clothespins, wooden spoons, baskets, and boxes,--the venders sitting behind or among their wares, on firkins bottom side up,--it is a spectacle not to be despised; and when a market-place, filled with such many-colored fluttering merchandise as this, is also flanked by old-clothes stalls which are like nothing except the Ghetto, or Rag Fair in London, it is indeed worth looking at. To have at one's side an alert native, of frugal mind and unsparing tongue, belonging to that cla.s.s of women who can never see a low-priced article offered for sale without, for the moment, contemplating it as a possible purchase, adds incalculably to the interest of a saunter through such a market.

The thrifty Katrina never lost sight of the possibility of lighting upon some bargain of value to her home housekeeping; and our rooms filled up from day to day with her acquisitions. She was absolutely without false pride in the matter of carrying odd burdens. One day she came lugging a big twisted door-mat with, "You see dat? For de door.

In Bergen I give exact double." The climax of her purchases was a fine washboard, which she brought in in her arms, and exclaimed, laughing, "What you tink the porter say to me? He ask if I am going to take in was.h.i.+ng up here. I only give two crowns for dat," she said, eying it with the fondest exultation, and setting it in a conspicuous place, leaning against the side of the room; "it is better as I get for four in Bergen." Good little Katrina! her hands were too white and pretty to be spoiled by hard rubbing on a washboard. They were her one vanity, and it was pardonable.

"Did you ever see hand like mine?" she said one day, spreading her right hand out on the table. "Dere was two English ladies, dey say it ought to be made in warx, and send to see in Crystal Palace. See dem?"

she continued, sticking her left forefinger into the four dimples which marked the spots where knuckles are in ordinary hands; "dem is nice." It was true. The hand was not small, but it was a model: plump, solid, dimples for knuckles, all the fingers straight and shapely; done in "warx," it would have been a beautiful thing, and her pleasure in it was just as guileless as her delight in her washboard.

As she delved deeper in her Frithiof's Saga, she discovered that she had been greatly wrong in her childish impressions of the story. "It was not as I tought," she said: "King Ring did get Ingeborg after; but he had to die, and leaved her."

When we went out to Oscar's Hall, which is a pretty country-seat of the king's, on the beautiful peninsula of Ladegaardsoen, she was far more interested in the sculptured cornice which told the story of Frithiof and Ingeborg, than in any of the more splendid things, or those more suggestive of the life of the king. The rooms are showily decorated: ceilings in white with gold stars, walls panelled with velvet; gay-colored frescos, and throne-like chairs in which "many kings and queens have sat," the old woman who kept the keys said.

Everywhere were the royal s.h.i.+elds with the crown and the lion; at the corners of the doors, at the crossings of ceiling beams, above brackets, looking-gla.s.ses, and on chair-backs.

"I tink the king get tired looking at his crown all de time," remarked Katrina, composedly. "I wonder vere dey could put in one more."

The bronze statues of some of the old kings pleased her better. She studied them carefully: Olaf and Harald Haarf.a.ger, Sverre Sigurdson and Olaf Tryggvesson; they stand leaning upon their spears, as if on guard. The face of Harald looks true to the record of him: a fair-haired, blue-eyed man, who stopped at nothing when he wanted his way, and was just as ready to fall in love with six successive women after he had labored hard twelve years for Gyda, and won her, as before.

"He is de nicest," said Katrina, lingering before his statue, and reaching up and fingering the bronze curiously. "Ain't it wonderful how dey can make such tings!" she added with a deep-drawn sigh. But when I pointed to the cornice, and said, "Katrina, I think that must be the story of the Frithiof's Saga," she bounded, and threw her head back, like a deer snuffing the wind. "Ja, ja," cried the old woman, evidently pleased that I recognized it, and then she began to pour out the tale. Is there a peasant in all Norway that does not know it, I wonder? The first medallion was of the children, Frithiof and Ingeborg, playing together. "Dere," said Katrina, "dat is vat I told you. Two trees growed in one place, nicely in the garden; one growed with de strongth of de oak, dat was Frithiof; and de rose in the green walley, dat was Ingeborg de beauty."

Very closely she scanned the medallions one after the other, criticising their fidelity to the record. When she came to the one where Frithiof is supporting King Ring on his knee, fainting, or sleeping, she exclaimed, "Dere, if he had been dat bad, he could have killed King Ring den, ven he was sleeping; but see, he have thrown his sword away;" and at last, when the sculpture represented King Ring dying, and bequeathing his beautiful queen and her children to Frithiof, she exclaimed, "Dere, dem two boys belongs to King Ring; but now Frithiof gets her. Dat is good, after all dat dem two had gone through with."

King Oscar makes very little use of this pretty country-house. He comes there sometimes once or twice in the course of a summer, for a day, or part of a day, but never to sleep, the old woman said. All the rest of the time it is empty and desolate, with only this one poor old woman to keep it tidy; a good berth for her, but a pity that n.o.body should be taking comfort all summer in the superb outlooks and off-looks from its windows and porch, and in the shady walks along the banks of the fjord. One of the old Norway kings, Hakon, thought the peninsula beautiful enough for a wedding morning gift to his queen; but it seems not to have been held so dear by her as it ought, for she gave it away to the monks who lived on the neighboring island of Hovedoen. Then, in the time of the Reformation, when monks had to scatter and go begging, and monastic properties were lying about loose everywhere, the Norwegian kings picked up Ladegaardsoen again, and it has been a crown property ever since.

One of the most charming of the short drives in what Katrina called "the nearance" of Christiania is to the "Grefsens Bad," a water-cure establishment only two miles away, by road, to the north, but lying so much higher up than the town that it seems to lie in another world,--as in fact it does; for, climbing there, one rises to another and so different air that he becomes another man, being born again through his lungs. It is a good pull up a stony and ill-kept road, to reach the place; but it is more than worth while, for the sake of the clear look-out to sea, over a delicious foreground of vivid green fields and woods.

"This is the place where all the sick peoples in Norway do come when de doctors cannot do nottings more for dem," said Katrina; "den dey comes here. Here came our last king, King Oscar, and den he did die on the dock ven he vas coming away. He had all de climb dis hill vor notting. Ven it is the time, one has to go, no matter how much money dey will pay; dere is One"--here she stopped hesitating for a word--"you know all vat I mean: dere is One what has it all his own way, not de way we wish it shall be." This she said devoutly, and was silent for an unwonted length of time afterwards.

As we were driving down the steepest part of the hill, a man came running after us, calling so loudly to us to stop that we were alarmed, thinking something must be wrong with our carriage or in the road. Not at all. He was a roadside merchant; not precisely a pedler, since he never went out of his own town, but a kind of aristocratic vender in a small circuit, it seemed; we saw him afterwards in other suburbs, bearing with him the same mysterious basket, and I very much fear, poor fellow, the same still more mysterious articles in it. Not even on Norwegian country-roads, I think, could there be found many souls so dead to all sense of beauty as to buy the hideous and costly combinations which he insisted upon laying in my lap: a sofa-cus.h.i.+on, square, thick, and hard, of wine-colored velvet, with a sprawling tree and bird laid upon it in an applique pattern cut out of black and white velvet; a long and narrow strip of the same velvet, with the same black and white velvet foliage and poultry, was trimmed at the ends with heavy fringe, and intended for a sideboard or a bureau; a large square tablecloth to match completed the list of his extraordinary wares. It was so odd a wayside incident that it seemed to loom quite out of its normal proportions as a mere effort at traffic. He insisted on spreading the articles in my lap. He could not be persuaded to take them away. The driver turning round on his seat, and Katrina leaning over from hers, both rapt in admiration of the monstrosities, were stolidly oblivious of my indifference. The things seemed to grow bigger and bigger each moment, and more and more hideous, and it was at last only by a sudden effort of sternness, as if shaking off a spell, that I succeeded in compelling the man to lift them from my knees and fold them away in his basket. As soon as he had gone, I was seized with misgivings that I had been ungracious; and these misgivings were much heightened by Katrina's soliloquizing as follows:--

"He! I tink he never take dem tings away. His wife are sick; dat is de reason he is on de road instead of her. He was sure you would buy dem."

I hope they are sold. I wish I could know.

The suburbs of Christiania which lie along the road to the Grefsens Bad are ugly, dusty, and unpleasing. "I tink we go some oder way dan way we came," said Katrina. "Dere must be better way." So saying, she stopped the driver abruptly, and after some vigorous conversation he took another road.

"He ask more money to go by St. John's Hill, but I tell him you not pay any more. I can see it is not farther; I ask him if he tink I got eyes in de head," she said scornfully, waving her fat fingers towards the city which lay close at hand.

"Ah, dat is great day," she continued, "St. John's Day. Keep you dat in America? Here it is fires all round, from one hill to one hill. Dat is from de old time. I tink it is from Catolics. Dey did do so much for dem old saints, you see. I tink dat is it; but I tink dey do not just know in Norway to-day what for dey do it. It has been old custom from parents to parents."

Then I told her about Balder and his death, and asked her if she had never seen the country people put a boat on the top of their bonfire on St. John's Eve.

"Yes, I did see dat, once, in Stavanger," she replied, "but it was old boat; no use any more. I tink dat be to save wood. It are cheapest wood dey have, old boat. Dat were not to give to any G.o.d."

"No, you are mistaken, Katrina," I said. "They have done that for hundreds of years in Norway. It is to remind them of Balder's great s.h.i.+p, the Hringhorn, and to commemorate his death."

"May be," she said curtly, "but I don't tink. I only see dat once; and all my life I see de fires, all round Bergen, and everywhere, and dere was no boat on dem. I don't tink."

We drove into the city through one of the smaller fruit markets, where, late as it was, the old women still lingered with their baskets of cherries, pears, and currants. They were not losing time, for they were all knitting, fast as their fingers could fly; such a thing as a Norwegian wasting time is not to be seen, I verily believe, from the North Cape to the Skager Rack, and one would think that they knit stockings enough for the whole continent of Europe; old men, old women, little girls, and even little boys, all knitting, knitting, morning, noon, and night, by roadsides, on door-sills, in market-places; wherever they sit down, or stand, to rest, they knit.

As our carriage stopped, down went the stockings, b.a.l.l.s rolling, yarn tangling, on the sidewalk, and up jumped the old women, all crowding round me, smiling, each holding out a specimen of her fruit for me to taste. "Eat, lady, eat. It is good." "Eat and you will buy." "No such cherries as these in Christiania." "Taste of my plums." A chorus of imploring voices and rattling hail of _sks_. Hurried and confused talk in the Norwegian tongue as spoken by uneducated people is a bewildering racket; it hardly sounds like human voices. If the smiles did not redeem it, it would be something insupportable; but the smiles do redeem it, transfigure it, lift it up to the level of superior harmonies. Such graciousness of eye and of smiling lips triumphs over all possible discord of sound, even over the Norwegian battery of consonants.

Katrina fired back to them all. I fear she reproved them; for they subsided suddenly into silence, and left the outstretched withered palms holding the fruit to speak for themselves.

"I only tell dem you cannot buy all de market out. You can say vat you like," she said.

Pears and cherries, and plums too, because the old plum-woman looked poorer than the rest, I bought; and as we drove away the chorus followed us again with good wishes. "Dey are like crazy old vomans,"

remarked Katrina; "I never heard such noise of old vomans to once time before." A few minutes after we reached the house she disappeared suddenly, and presently returned with a little cantaloupe melon in her hands. Standing before me, with a curious and hesitating look on her face, she said, "Is dis vat you like?"

"Oh, yes," I exclaimed, grateful for the sight. "I was longing for one yesterday. Where did you get it?"

"I not get it. I borrow it for you to see. I tell the man I bring it back," she replied, still with the same curious expressions of doubt flitting over her queer little face.

"Why, whose melon is it?" I exclaimed. "What did you bring it for if it were not for sale?"

"Oh, it is for selled, if you like to buy," she said, still with the hesitant expression.

"Of course I like to buy it," I said impatiently. "How much does it cost?"

"Dat is it," replied Katrina, sententiously. "It is too dear to buy, I tell the man; but he said I should bring it to you, to see. I tink you vill not buy it;" still with the quizzical look on her face.

Quite out of patience, I cried, "But why don't you tell me the price of it? I should like it very much. It can't be so very dear."

"Dat it can," answered Katrina, chuckling, at last letting out her suppressed laugh. "He ask six kroner for dat ting; and I tink you not buy it at such price, so I bring to make you laugh."

One dollar and sixty-two cents for a tiny cantaloupe! Katrina had her reward. "Oh, but I am dat glad ven I make you laugh," she said roguishly, picking up her melon, as I cried out with surprise and amus.e.m.e.nt,--

"I should think not. I never heard of such a price for a melon."

"So I tink," said Katrina. "I ask de man who buy dem melons, and he say plenty peoples; but I tink it is all shtories." And she ran downstairs laughing so that I heard her, all the way, two flights down to the door.

High up on the dark wooded mountain wall which lies to the north and northwest of Christiania is a spot of light color. In the early morning it is vivid green; sometimes at sunset it catches a tint of gold; but neither at morn nor at night can it ever be overlooked. It is a perpetual lure to the eye, and stimulus to the imagination. What eyry is it that has cleared for itself this loop-hole in the solid mountain-forest? Is it a clearing, or only a bit of varied wooding of a contrasting color to the rest? For several days I looked at it before I asked; and I had grown so impressed by its mystery and charm, that when I found it was a house, the summer home of a rich Christiania family, and one of the places always shown to travellers, I felt more than half-way minded not to go near it,--to keep it still nothing more than a far-away, changing, luring oasis of sunny gold or wistful green on the mountain-side. Had it been called by any other name, my instinct to leave it unknown might have triumphed; but the words "Frogner Saeter" were almost as great a lure to the imagination as the green oasis itself. The saeter, high up on some mountain-side, is the fulfilling of the Norwegian out-door life, the key-note of the Norwegian summer. The gentle kine know it as well as their mistresses who go thither with them. Three months in the upper air, in the spicy and fragrant woods,--no matter if it be solitary and if the work be hard, the saeter life must be the best the Norwegians know,--must elevate and develop them, and strengthen them for their long, sunless winters. I had looked up from the Vossevangen Valley, from Ringeriket, and from the Hardanger country to many such gleaming points of lighter green, tossed up as it were on the billowy forests. They were beyond the reach of any methods of ascent at my command; unwillingly I had accepted again and again the wisdom of the farm people, who said "the road up to the saeter was too hard for those who were not used to it."

Reluctantly I had put the saeter out of my hopes, as a thing to be known only by imagination and other people's descriptions. Therefore the name of the Frogner Saeter was a lure not to be resisted; a saeter to which one might drive in a comfortable carriage over a good road could not be the ideal saeter of the wild country life, but still it was called "saeter;" we would go, and we would take a day for the going and coming.

"Dat will be bestest," said Katrina. "I tink you like dat high place better as Christiania."

On the way we called at the office of a h.o.m.oeopathic physician, whose name had been given to me by a Bergen friend. He spoke no English, and for the first time Katrina's failed. I saw at once that she did not convey my meanings to him, nor his to me, with accuracy.

She was out of her depth. Her mortification was droll; it reached the climax when it came to the word "dynamic." Poor little child! How should she have known that!