Chapter V: Mainly About Saints

Nico did a great deal of work in Dalen, finishing half-completed sketches, and making many figure-drawings. One of the servants was from Saetersdalen; and, to pose for Nico, she dressed herself in her extraordinary costume. In the course of our wanderings we met with travelling natives of Saetersdalen--once, under a lucky star, with a woman taking her little child, a girl of three or four years old, to a hospital in Christiania. Between us we persuaded the child to act as model for an hour or two, so as to give Nico occasion to transfer her decorative charm to his paper. The dress for women and girl children alike is a straight garment of very thick cloth, sustained by embroidered shoulder-straps. It reaches only a little below the knee, and is edged by two or three bands of very thick coloured cloth, which hold out stiffly the rather solid material of which the garment is made. Under this they wear a petticoat made on the same model. A white shirt covers the arms and neck, and a brightly coloured knitted belt girdles the middle--I can scarcely call it the waist--of the wearer. On their hands are black mittens, embroidered in a traditional pattern with brightly coloured wools. The head is covered by a folded handkerchief, and the hair hangs loose or plaited down the back. The legs are encased in thick knitted stockings and sensible low shoes. The men and boys wear trousers that come up to their shoulders, and odd little round hats. The district in which they live we were not able to visit, to my regret. We had left it to the last, intending to take it on our way home, as the country can only be approached from Christianssand, a port touched by the steamers bound from Christiania to Hull; and at the last moment unforeseen circumstances compelled us to make our passage home as speedy as possible. There is a railway which will take the traveller up the valley as far as Byglandsfjord; but to appreciate its many charms it is advisable, and well worth while, to make the journey by road and water. Beyond this station the valley has no connection with other routes, except by rough and sometimes dangerous mountain paths. Accommodation for the tourist is exceedingly rough, and food narrowly limited in quality and variety. On account of these drawbacks, the Saetersdalen district must certainly be, from many points of view, the most interesting part of Norway. There the traveller will find the dresses, the customs, and the dwelling-places in much the same stage as they have been for the last three hundred years, and--what is always a great attraction to me and surely not less so to others--there is the joy of travelling in parts which are as yet almost unknown, and consequently unspoilt by the tourist, who must perforce bring in his wake so many doubtful blessings. For me the people of a country is that country's greatest charm--not the townsfolk or the owners and staffs of the big hotels with their far-spreading influence, but the unspoilt people of the untravelled parts. In the summer months parties of people migrate from the valley and take up their abode in the mountains. Thus the courageous but too confident traveller may find himself unable to obtain even such simple food as bread and milk. It is highly advisable for the explorer to take with him biscuits, canned food, and brandy, and to travel with as small a quantity of baggage as is convenient.

At the head of the valley it is possible to cross the mountains which separate Saetersdalen from Telemarken and to arrive at Dalen, on Lake Bandak. The peasant inhabitants of Saetersdalen are of rather a charming primitiveness, and some of their houses can show wonderful specimens of quaint and grotesque carving. Included in this simplicity, however, is an unpleasant and complete disregard for cleanliness.

The moment came when, much against our inclinations, and especially against Nico's wishes, we were obliged to leave our comfortable quarters at Dalen. For the last time I basked in the warm sunshine which had favoured us during our entire stay; for the last time I retired from the too warm welcome to the shadowy balcony studio belonging to my room, which complaisantly looked north as Nico required. Only this once more should I drop sticks of chocolate on to the golden curls of the little Andrea as she came within range during her eternal roamings over the big farmyard in search of mischief. No fewer than ten cats of variegated colours prowled over this area; they delicately fished and fought for the more toothsome morsels from the barrel outside the kitchen window containing all the refuse of food stuffs, the eventual emptying of which was to the advantage of the pigstye. In the middle of this interesting land was a well. Over it hung, high in the air, an empty bucket suspended by a chain from the lighter end of an immense pole. The pretty cowherd would fill the pail with water to plenish the tubs from which her charges drank. Most evenings, in a spirit of wickedness, the worthy brother of the golden-haired baby would fill the bucket and leave it standing by the well, the weight of the water in it keeping it on the ground. Up would come an unsuspecting cow, which thirstily would drink the contents. Slowly she would lift her head from the now empty pail, which, flying as by magic into the air, would almost invariably give the bewildered creature a smart blow on the head. Of course, it did not hurt the animal; but her expression of startled and grieved surprise was most amusing. It was one of the excitements of my days at Dalen to have mild bets with Nico whether the day's intended victim would be free of the bucket in time.

The sun went in; the air grew cold; soon darkness was upon us. This was the proudest moment of the day. I lit my fire, invariably with success, with peelings of birch bark that I had sedulously collected during my walks. This last time all my savings went together--how they blazed! Then in came the farmer, our host, with his exceedingly easy bill, including entries for various delightful painted butter-boxes and three immense wooden drinking bowls which I had bought from him. Then followed his worthy wife and his pretty daughter, bearing a tray on which was a bottle of arac punch and four glasses--he wished to drink to us before we went, and so we clinked the small glasses, and in various words of various languages expressed that we were pleased with one another, and almost arranged that the pretty daughter should come with us to learn English and to help my nurse to look after my babies. I have not got little Andrea with me yet; but I expect that by the time this book is published she will be in my house, wearing her pretty national costume, and rejoicing us with her charming little face, which is reproduced on the frontispiece of the book.

Next morning we were obliged to be up by six. An hour beforehand one of the delightful serving-maids lit my fire, and our breakfast, including more arac punch, was brought upstairs. By and by, in the cold grey morning, we boarded the little steamer which was to take us through the series of lakes and canals to Skien, whence it is possible to go by train to Christiania.

It was a wonderful day, albeit very long. These days that one begins at six o'clock seem always of unnatural length--what should be luncheon time in the ordinary way is only breakfast time on these occasions; and, when all the hours are unoccupied, how delightedly one would welcome bedtime in the afternoon! However, before we had time to become very discontented, the sun came out to cheer us up, and then breakfast was announced, and after that we began to shake off our drowsy ill-humours and look about. Our captain was a good-looking man, quite young, and an excellent English scholar. He was a great traveller, and from his talk we gathered that he was not too well pleased to be passing his days on this little lake steamer, going backwards and forwards alternately with another boat; he was rather discontented at this time, quite the close of the season, when the English passengers that his soul loved were few and far between, and his most usual freight a few peasants, changing at every station, and an occasional herd of cattle. He pointed out to us on our right a group of rocks known as "The Monk and Lady." I could fancy I did see a resemblance to two human beings, one kneeling before the other's uplifted hand, apparently asking for a blessing. Had I not known the name given to the group, I might have thought I saw the image of a guilty being receiving corporal chastisement.

At the first station we stopped at, the little boat rolled a good deal, and it was only by clinging to steadfast objects that the passengers preserved their balance. Several young men boarded the boat. Also there joined us two very beautiful women wearing long coats to cover their best costumes, their charming head-dress concealing hair hanging loose down their backs. They were both married women. Two of the young men had pockets full of beautiful yellow apples; they ate them steadily, by the dozen I should say, until the pockets were empty. I coveted the fruit. When I am an early riser, it is astonishing how my most extreme longing is for unattainable apples. At the next station several children came on board with baskets of the fruit for sale. Already my appetite had become fainter; but Nico bought the stock-in-trade of a person of some three or four years, and so much occupied was I in watching the exhibition of the boy's triumph over his less fortunate fellows, that I did not notice the piling up of interest which was going on around me.

Really it was too much for one stoppage! First, the apple-sellers, who left us, however, before we started; next, a man with a foal two or three weeks old; also a herd of about thirty cattle, tied up variously on deck, in close proximity to the passengers; last, but not least, a Saetersdalen woman, in the full glory of her elaborate and brightly coloured costume. Walking in the fields in their own district, the women take off the dark cloth upper frock which this woman wore, and work in a grey underfrock made in exactly the same way. Here was material for heaps of excitement in our simple lives. When we had sampled our apples in the little deck-house which was all the covered accommodation, I left Nico half asleep and went out to look for adventures. The foal, with terrified eyes fixed on the water, was neighing piteously; every now and then a horse would trot to the edge of the water, apparently to neigh comfort to the poor little fellow making his first water journey. Frequently the boat would give an alarming lurch, and the cattle would slip helplessly from one side to the other, stamping and kicking in their efforts to regain a steady footing on the slippery deck. Later, at Nico's suggestion, a board was put up between the pony and the water, and this seemed to quiet the poor beast. At the next station the boat gave a fearful roll, and tipped over to such an extent that the perfectly smooth water of the lake washed one side of the deck. We were all rather frightened for a few seconds. The cattle were in a sprawling, kicking, terrified mass on the side which leaned to the water. The passengers struggled to the opposite side, and held on as best they could. By some means the steamer righted herself, and off we started.

The captain was attentive to us on this trip. I think he was glad to air his English. He pointed out, on our right, another curious formation in the mountains, which he called "St. Olaf's Ship." I daresay in the time of St. Olaf ships were like that: so I will not emphasise my ignorance by criticism.

St. Olaf's name is found all over the country. It is well known that he is Norway's greatest saint: but I daresay his history is not such common property. Therefore I tell it as our captain on the steamer told it to me. Here I may say that there is surely no country in the world where the average inhabitant has such an exceedingly great knowledge of histories, national or general.

Olaf Haraldssen was a descendant of Harald Haarfajer, or "The Fair," who was the first king to rule the whole of Norway. Harald Haarfajer flourished in the ninth century, and was one of the first of the heroic Vikings sung of in sagas. After Harald the Fair, the most splendid king was Olaf Trygvasen, who with his many followers harried us to such an extent that the English sovereign was obliged to sue for peace. He endeavoured to implant Christianity among his subjects by sword and fire, and, after making a heroic defence and losing nearly all his men, fell mortally wounded during a battle against the Swedish and Danish kings. Norway was now in the hands of the two conquering kings; but they gave up their shares to a powerful Norwegian earl, who had given them his aid against King Olaf Trygvasen. The earl agreed to hold these lands as their vassal. In this capacity he was obliged to leave his country when the Danish king called upon him to join in an invasion of England. He never returned from this expedition. In 1015 Olaf Haraldssen, another worthy descendant of Harald the Fair, returning from a pirating raid, seized the opportunity of assuming the leadership of the country, determined to carry out the intention of his noble ancestor, Olaf Trygvasen. With the help of various petty kings from the north, he overthrew the dominion of the earls and their overlords, the Danish and Swedish kings. He made Trondhjem his capital, and there he received homage from the lesser chieftains as king of Norway. In his turn he enforced Christianity; but on account of the extreme severity of his policy he alienated many of his people, who sought the aid of the Danish king against him. Defeated, Olaf fled to Russia. After gathering his forces together he endeavoured to win back his kingdom, but was again beaten. He was killed at the battle of Stiklestad in 1030. His body was taken to a place called Nidaros, and buried on the banks of a river. A year later his corpse was exhumed, and it was found that there was no trace of corruption--the face was just as in life, and the hair and nails had grown. This, and certain miracles wrought through his intercession, caused him to be proclaimed a saint. His body was encased in silver and placed in Trondhjem Cathedral, where it received great veneration until the time of the Reformation.

The history of Norway, with its continual relations and dissensions with Sweden and Denmark, is intensely interesting; but there are such splendid books on the subject that it would be ridiculous for me to attempt to introduce more than these few words into a book which professes to give merely the superficial impressions of a traveller--exceedingly interested, it is true, but--having almost everything to learn about her subject.

Rather regretfully, we came back from the eleventh century, for the captain was obliged to superintend the disembarkation of the cows. We were rather glad to get rid of them; and they, poor things, were, I am sure, heartily pleased that their startling journey was over, and that they found themselves safely on dry land, with plenty of space to roam in. The pony we kept with us for a while, attempting to persuade it to drink milk, which, however, it refused to consider.

The luncheon was pork and stewed rhubarb, served in a very small and stuffy dining cabin. Nico and I refused it, and regaled ourselves on a tin of Brand. Soon we entered the wonderful canal that joins the Bandak Lake to the Nordsjo Lake, which is connected by another canal with the head of the Skien Fjord, thus opening up an inland waterway from the sea at Skien right into the heart of the mountains at Dalen, the extreme end of Lake Bandak. Lake Bandak is a hundred and eighty-seven feet higher than Lake Nordsjo, with which it is connected: this immense difference is overcome by no fewer than fourteen locks, the average rise in each lock being something over thirteen feet. All the locks are blasted out of solid rock and faced with grey granite. When we reached the end of this stupendous triumph of engineering, the effect as we looked back was overwhelming. The chief difficulty in construction was a fall of eighty feet, called the Vrangfos. No bottom could be found to the gorge, and a massive bridge of granite was constructed between the two rocky sides, on which foundation a dam was built. Five of the fourteen locks are at the Vrangfos, which rages alongside in impotent fury. This immense work cost the country three million kroner.

At the end of this canal is a rather pleasant little station, Ulefos, on the Nordsjo Lake; but we were in a hurry to get to Christiania and civilisation. We did not get off the boat, but continued on our way to Skien. We were still chatting with the captain. On our left in the rocks, he pointed out to us a yawning gap, ten or twelve feet high. That cavern, he told us, was used as a chapel, and dedicated to Saint Michael. He also told us that it was the tomb of the last Catholic priest in Norway just after the Reformation. The King of Denmark, who at that time was also King of Norway, had decreed that the Catholic religion should cease to be in both Norway and Denmark. In Norway the people were all the more against the fulfilment of this decree as they recognised that the Danish king wished to enrich himself at the expense of the Catholic Church. Cunning as well as force, therefore, was necessary to establish the Lutheran religion in the country of St. Olaf. The Catholic priests were banished, and their places were taken by foreign preachers, who, to deceive the people, kept up for a long time the external appearances of Catholicism. Several years after these primary steps had been taken, a Danish soldier named Porl, cruel and fanatical, was appointed preacher to the church of Solum; the little rock chapel of St. Michael having been destroyed, the parish of which it was the centre had been united to that of Solum. Soon Porl discovered that his parishioners still went in great numbers to pray in the grotto, and sometimes at night a mysterious light was seen among the rocks. One autumn evening, returning from Holden in a boat rowed by three young watermen, Porl beheld them suddenly cease their rowing, and, throwing themselves on their knees in the boat, cross themselves. This act of devotion was performed exactly opposite St. Michael's Chapel, from which the mysterious light reflected itself in the lake.

Furious, Porl ordered them to row him to the foot of the hilly path which led to the chapel; but here he met with determined opposition. They would rather die than obey his wish. He was therefore obliged to return to Solum, promising himself a speedy solution of the mystery. In such a matter he could not trust his parishioners, devoted as they were to the old religion: so he took into his service two men from Skien, and ordered them to keep watch from afar on the grotto of St. Michael. One night, the eve of St. Michael's feast, they rushed to him, breathlessly, to announce that they had seen the mysterious light issuing from the cave. There was no doubt about it. He could see it with his own eyes. He took a sword from the wall to arm himself against the unknown enemy, and his two spies rowed him to the grotto. As they got nearer the light became of more importance. His men took him to the foot of the steep narrow path; but neither threats nor hope of reward could persuade them, fearing the supernatural, to accompany him. Filled with anger, he made his way alone; but at the moment when he had all but reached the opening to the chapel the light went out, and there he was between heaven and earth in the pitch darkness, afraid to take either one step back or one step forward. Gathering all his courage, he went forward, and managed to feel his way into the cave. God alone knew what awaited him there, and on His name he called. At the sound, at the far end of the cave a big stone was moved, and the darkness was flooded with light. Porl could scarcely believe his eyes when he saw before him an altar, and on the altar a crucifix surrounded by innumerable candles. From this sanctuary a venerable old man, wearing sacerdotal vestments, as if about to say Mass, advanced towards him.

"You come in the name of God?" said he. "Come, then, in peace."

But the preacher, brandishing his sword, fell on the old priest, crying in anger, "I was right, then! I guessed that there was still an accursed Papist in my parish!"

"You were indeed right," said the old man. "It is he you are now assaulting."

"It is not you that I quarrel with," said the Lutheran, "but the error of your ways, and the black artifices you employ to turn the heads of my parishioners."

"Your parishioners?" repeated the old priest with dignity. "Do you know who I am? I am Sylvester, the legitimate pastor of those poor souls whom you call your parishioners, and the last Catholic priest left in this unhappy country. With cunning and force you have made war on the religion which has made Norway what it is. You have robbed her people of their faith; you have sacked our churches and banished our priests. Far from my flock, I have eaten my bread in tears and exile for long years; I have wept and prayed; almost have I died of grief at leaving my poor children deserted. But I could not die away from them. In spite of a thousand dangers, I returned and buried myself here in the ruins of my dear church. Only the inhabitants of one farm know of my return, and from them I receive the bread on which I live and the straw which is my couch. As for my 'artifices'--alas! I am old and incapable of doing anything for my children, who still love and reverence the Church of their fathers. All I can do for them is to pray and to celebrate Mass for them on the great feasts under cover of the charitable darkness. These are my ruses, these my terrible mysteries. Now that I have told you them, raise your sword against the last of God's anointed priests living in my unhappy land. Strike--for I wish to die here."

The _ci-devant_ Danish soldier was touched.

"No," he said. "God forbid that I should raise my hand against an old man. Live, and die when God shall call you, in this spot. Adieu, and may God enlighten you at your last hour."

"Amen," said the old man. "Both you and I have great need of the light."

Porl left. From that day he ceased to persecute his flock, who held still to their Catholic practices. A few more times the mysterious light shone from St. Michael's grotto, and the belated wayfarer who saw it piously crossed himself. But when Christmas came the cave remained in darkness. The last Catholic priest had died. The initiated farm people had made a tomb for their beloved pastor in the depths of his chapel; and there his body lies to this day, waiting for the resurrection.

The simple facts of the above narrative were given me by our captain; but for the complete and detailed history I am indebted to no less a person than the present Catholic Bishop of Norway--Monseigneur Fallize.

ARTS AND CRAFTS