A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden Part 21

In ten minutes not one girl was sitting still; and she who could not get a partner, placed her arms a-kimbo, and whirled up and down the deck alone.

A Norwegian gentleman had asked me to dine with him, and as R---- and P---- would not return much before midnight, I did not decline an invitation that was not only hospitable, but would give me an opportunity of seeing more of the habits and character of his countrymen. The dinner was prepared at an early hour, one, or two, o'clock. The style of cookery was the same as in England; except the manner in which the salmon is dressed, for it is cut up into small junks and fried; but the most ordinary, and esteemed way of eating the salmon is to smoke it, which is nothing more or less than an excuse for swallowing the fish raw.

After dinner, the host filled two gla.s.ses of wine, one for himself, and one for me; and sidling close up to my chair, placed himself arm and arm with me. I could not understand his meaning, and watched with no little anxiety the next act of familiarity he would commit. My eyes glanced round the table; but the gravity of every man's face was ecclesiastical in the extreme. Without unlocking his arm from mine, the Norwegian raised his gla.s.s in the air, and motioned with his hand to me to do the same. I did so. He then drank off the wine, and bade me drink in like manner. I did that likewise. I had thus followed my friend's injunctions, and had scarcely, with a smile, replaced on the table the gla.s.s I had drained, when I received a box on the ear. Starting from my chair at the unprovoked a.s.sault, I was about to break the decanter over the Norwegian's head, when a gentleman seized hold of my right hand, and begged me to be pacified, for that it was merely the usage of the country in pledging to the health of a friend. He said my host would be highly gratified by my retaliation.

"We have simply then been drinking each other's health?" I asked.

"No more, sir," my mediator replied.

Ashamed of my hasty and most unmannerly conduct, I gave the amicable cuff, and all was merriment again.

When we rose from table, the whole company commenced shaking hands with each other, and coming up to me, one after the other, each guest took my hand, and

"Tak for maden," he said.

This was another mysterious usage I could not unravel. A few days afterwards, amid the general din of the same ceremony, I asked a young lady, who spoke French, what it all meant; and she then told me it was an ancient habit of returning thanks for a good dinner.

"But I have given them no dinner," I said.

"That is true," replied my fair informant; "but they thank you all the same."

While she spoke, a Norwegian gentleman took possession of her hand, and exclaimed,

"Tak for maden!" while a second did the same with my hand, and repeating similar words, pa.s.sed on all round the table.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] "Ja," p.r.o.nounced "yar," signifies "yes," in the Norwegian language.

CHAPTER XIV.

ANOTHER FIs.h.i.+NG EXCURSION--LANDING A SALMON--THE CARRIOLE--BOATS ROWED BY LADIES--DEPARTURE FROM LARVIG--CHRISTIANSAND HARBOUR--RETURN TO BOOM-- SINCERE WELCOME--ANGLING AT THE FALLS--THE FORSAKEN ANGLER--A MISUNDERSTANDING--RECONCILIATION--ST.

JOHN'S DAY--SIMPLICITY OF MANNERS.

On Tuesday morning, at three, I joined R---- and P----, and took a second trip up the river, to indulge in this pastime of angling.

When we arrived on our fis.h.i.+ng ground, the salmon were seen springing two or three feet out of the water into the air, a sign not always good for the sportsman; for the Norwegians say, that when the fish begin to leap out of the water, they are moving up the river, and disinclined to take food. It was entertaining to observe them, as they leaped in various places, from rock to rock, up the stream of the Foss; and although they would be brought back by the immense volume of water, nothing disheartened, would repeat the leap again and again. Seated in the pram, I watched in the clear stream, the caution with which some of the salmon approached the fly, and after darting away from it, returned and sported round it, as if perfectly aware of the deceitful manner by which the hook was hid; but in a reckless moment, just as the fly was moved along the top of the water, resembling the living insect with such exact.i.tude that I could be deceived, they would make a sullen plunge, and then as if aware of the foolish act they had committed, secure their death by running away with the whole line before they could possibly feel the hook. A slight jerk is given to the tackle, and their doom is sealed.

I saw one salmon caught through his own folly; for had he been less violent, he might have gratified his curiosity by tasting the fabricated fly, and could, when he found that it was nothing more than a macaw's feather, have quietly spitten it out; but as soon as the hook lanced his lip, the fish made a leap of several feet above the surface, and on falling into the river again, shot like a silver arrow, towards any weed or rock he saw, sheltering himself behind it, as if he deemed this retreat secure. But when he felt a motive power, over which he had no control, gently drawing him by the head from his old abode, and the consequent slight, shooting pang of the hook, away he flew, right up towards the pram, flapped his tail furiously to the right and left, and then bounced about his native pool, indignant of the vile trick that had been played him. R----, was soon rowed to the bank, and I stood by his side gaff in hand.

"Look out," said R----, in an under tone; and, turning up the sleeve of my coat, I gave the gaff the full length of the handle. The fish, however, saw me move, and like a flash of lightning, clove the water to its lowest depth. The line pa.s.sed with such rapidity between R----'s thumb and forefinger, that it almost cut them off.

The manuvring of ten minutes more brought the salmon within a few feet of the bank, and crawling through the rushes, I remained ready to perform my part of the tragedy. Near and nearer, turned on his back, and panting laboriously, the fish allowed himself to be drawn towards the sh.o.r.e. Lowering the gaff slowly into the stream, till I guessed it was two or three inches below the fish, and then making a sudden lunge, I pierced the soft part of the stomach a little behind the two fore fins, and lifted the salmon from the water.

"You did that devilish well," exclaimed R----, hurrying up to remove the hook. The salmon plunged in every direction violently; and it was with great difficulty I could keep my hold of the gaff.

"Make haste," I said, "or he will be off the gaff; see, how the flesh of the stomach is ripping!"

And so it was. The weight of the salmon was sufficient to tear the tender part of the flesh under the stomach, and the longer I held the fish from the ground to allow R---- to remove the hook, the more probable it appeared, that, the salmon by his furious struggles, would lacerate and divide the flesh, and fall from the gaff.

"Poor wretch!" said R----, as he strove to unfasten the hook from the ligaments of the jaw, "I am keeping him in his pain a long time; but I can't help it."

"I must put him on the ground," I observed, when the fish by its struggles nearly twisted the gaff from my hand.

"No; for heaven's sake, don't!" exclaimed R----. "He'll knock both of us into the water if you do. There," continued R----, holding the hook, at last, in his hand, and cleansing it from slime and gore on the cuff of his coat, "put him down;" and opening a clasp-knife, he ran the blade into the crown of the salmon's head. The creaking sound of the bone as it yielded to the pa.s.sage of the sharp knife, like the cutting of a cork, made my teeth ache. The fish stirred not; but the blood trickled from his mouth in small bubbles, and stretching out all his fins, as a bird would stretch its wings to fly, a spasmodic shudder succeeded, and then the fins gradually relaxed and adhered close to his sides, while the blood still oozed from the mouth and gills, and striking his tail once or twice on the ground, the salmon seemed to fix his round, staring, gla.s.sy eye on me, as if in accusation of the torture I had caused, and gaping, died.

"If I ever gaff another fish, may I be gaffed myself," I said.

"Fish do not feel so acutely as you imagine," replied R----, wiping the penknife on his handkerchief with the coolness of an anatomical operator; "all the quivering you observe is not from actual pain, but merely from muscular action."

"Well, I am not surgeon enough to know that," I answered; "but if you talk for three years, you will never persuade me that a fish does not feel, as well as every other creature, in proportion to its size, the anguish of bodily torture as sensibly as you, or I."

"Never mind arguments," cried R----, "here, let's see what he weighs."

And R---- drew from his coat-pocket, a small balance that he always carried about with him, and hooking the defunct salmon on it, held it up.

"Twenty-two pounds to a fraction," he said; and took a little book from his other pocket, and noted down the weight. Casting up the figures to himself in a sort of whisper common to all calculators, R---- observed aloud, when he had concluded his addition,

"I have killed forty-five pounds myself. That's not so bad, eh? Come on;" and hurrying into his pram, was rowed away.

I did not remain much longer on the bank of the river, and desiring a change, I walked towards the road that ran parallel with the stream. A Norwegian peasant, driving a carriole soon overtook me, and asking him in the most grammatical and simple manner I could, if he were returning to Larvig, he made me a long speech in reply; but beseeching him in my second address to give me a monosyllabic answer, either affirmatively or negatively, as I was a foreigner, the man bowed his head till his chin came in contact with the bone of his chest, and said,

"Ja!"

I then asked him if he were as desirous of letting his carriole, as I was of hiring it; and he again said,

"Ja!"

I tendered several small silver coins, amounting to an ort, a piece of Norwegian money equivalent in value to eight-pence sterling, and begged the peasant to tell me if the offer were sufficiently generous. He counted the coins in the palm of my hand. When he had done so, he smiled, and said,

"Ja, tak;" and shaking hands with me, he gave me the rope reins.

The carriole is an elegant, comfortable, but most unsociable vehicle; for it is as unfit to hold two persons, as an ordinary arm-chair. To sit properly in a carriole, you should be rather round-shouldered, as its shape is not unlike half a walnut, scooped out. The post-boy sits behind, or stands up, as a groom does in England; but his position must be uncomfortable in the extreme, as the carriole has no springs, and bounds and jumps heavily over ruts and pebbles, causing him to fidget at intervals, and make an exclamation of discomfort most irregularly. The shafts and wheels are slight, and the body painted uniformly of a chocolate colour. The foot-board is not larger than a tea-tray, about six inches square, and in order to reach it, the legs are so extended as to bring the tip of the toes and the apex of the knees on the same plane. Nor does the driver look down on his horse, as he would in England; but the eye has a level view along the back of the animal, and his neck, or wooden collar obstructs any further perspective.

I could not make the man, or skydsgut, as he is called, who accompanied me, understand ten consecutive words I spoke; but asking a mult.i.tude of questions, I thought I must have collected a mult.i.tude of information.

Disliking the dulness of my companion, I drove at a swift pace, but the skydsgut did not seem to like it, and several times I could guess from his manner, that he was expostulating with me. The Norwegians love their horses with the strong, feminine devotion of Arabs, and it is not an uncommon sight to see the skydsgut, if he be a boy, burst into a pa.s.sionate fit of tears should you lash his horse twice in a mile. He will strive to tell his grief, but if the language of his sorrow be not understood, he will cover his face with his hands, and weep aloud by the road side. The Norwegians have given Englishmen the credit of being impatient travellers, and from their desire to pa.s.s over the greatest quant.i.ty of ground in the smallest quant.i.ty of time, they are said to use the whip more frequently than is necessary. I do not know that this is an incorrect opinion. As one man has peculiarities that another man has not, so one nation may be noted for eccentricities, of which another nation is devoid; and, for my own part, I am inclined to think, that, however superciliously Englishmen may regard the usages and habits of foreigners, there are no people who give strangers a truer idea of maniacs than Englishmen themselves.

R---- and P----, returned in the evening with a boat full of salmon, and one fine fish, weighing nearly thirty-two pounds, was smoked and prepared to be sent as a present to England. I pa.s.sed the whole of the subsequent day at Larvig, and the Consul begged, that as I was alone, I would dine with him. I accepted his invitation. After dinner, in the cool of the afternoon, his daughters, two very lady-like and pretty girls, requested me to join an excursion they were about to make across the fiord, to the opposite sh.o.r.e. These ladies would insist upon rowing the boat the whole distance, upwards of two miles, themselves. I objected for a time; but when they told me it was the custom of the country, and, that the art of sculling was as much an accomplishment as the softer allurements of the harp, or guitar, I felt more reconciled, and fully appreciated an honour that could never be offered to me again.

At half-past ten o'clock, shortly after we had returned from our trip, and while I was standing on a high rock, from which an extensive view of the fiord could be seen, and talking to the Consul and several ladies, a gun was fired from the yacht.

"His Lords.h.i.+p is returned," said the Consul to me, "and I think that is for you."

"If it be so, they will fire again," I replied. The echo of the cable, as the men began to heave it, left the Consul's conjecture no longer chimerical; and after a little while, the flash and report of another gun leaped one after the other, from crag to crag, through the dusk of evening, and whirling above our heads, bounded over the summit of the mountain.