| Show written for this MB paper WAKEMANS wanderings 0 LONDON oct ig 1893 norway is so cut and haggled by the numerous fjords fiords or sea arms which often penetrate nearly to her eastern boundary that it might perhaps Ier haps be truthfully said her thoroughfares are mainly by water and that her fler many and tremendous stone roads of the mountains and valleys are after all merely feeders to her silent and mighty water ways one could truly see most of norway without ever leaving a steamers deck by keeping to the routes established from cities through the larger fiords fiorda and their almost countless lesser arms and branches and never leaving them on either hand more than a half score miles every principal point ot of scenic interest could be gained and if one should set out upon a land journey from stav anger on the southwestern coast to midway to the islands lands ill if is likely fikely that nearly one half of sA this distance istance of from three to four hun dred miles would still necea necessarily airily be traversed in the countless rowboats row boats roe baade and little steamers of the fiords fiorda these fiords fiorda are therefore almost first n combined attractiveness to the traveler they possess three distinct phases of interest they are the chiel chief national highways the greatest possible diversity in in peasant and village life is found upon their shores and in the adjacent valleys and with few exceptions as with the glacier fields and upper waterfalls crags and dales of the fiercely desolate fields or mountain reaches they certainly provide culminations fulminations and combinations bi ot of the most impressive scenery to be found in norway of late years norway has almost out rivaled switzerland as a resort for indefatigable de lovers ot of the sublime in in natures aspects this is largely because of this very commingling com mingling of the alpine the marine and the human elements in our own amazing yosemite there are immensity sublimity and a silence that is appalling here are all these in in in infinite variety and expression endless sea reach measureless water depths sheer walls wails from 2000 to feet in height beight majestic snow clad peaks twice this altitude tremendous torrents and waterfalls thousands of feet from leap to pool ool glacier fields h hundreds und reds of square miles in area and toning and softening all from an endless panorama of sub limity unbearable that tender threading of human color in never failing sight of of valley or eerie nests of love and effort where hardy honest yeomen dwell the most noted of these norwegian fiords fiorda are the the sogne bogne the Trond bjern and the geiringer Gei ranger from the first three extend more than a score of lesser fiords fiorda most of these are marvels of beauty and grandeur as individual ap types all are mountain walled and nearly landlocked land locked their protection by the outer sk erries and islets and the unceasing tremendous of mountain torrents from the ice fields prevent a tidal rise of their natural surfaces of more than three feet of the four named the geiringer Gei ranger is the narrowest ow the the most beautiful the the most interestingly diversified and the sogne bogne and its divergent arms the longest and most savage and often appalling in its grandeur through its accessibility from bergen the fiord is likely to be the S first norwegian fiord seen by the tourist it is about seventy miles in length two classes of steamers ply upon it as well as upon the other fiords fiorda named the swift capacious and elegant mail ers which touch at lew few landings called stations and the local passenger and freight boat which take no head hea id of time even from its loss the latter should always be chosen they are very com fordable for table scrupulously clean and the incidents of the voyage are more varied and ald charming besides the magnificent scenery of the fiords fiorda is thus more leisurely enjoyed more than a hundred calls for passengers or freight are made on the voyage e to odde at the head of the fiord this h i s brings you in closer contact with the I 1 life along its numberless valley stations and along the fiord this is of much account as the peasantry of the district are perhaps the most characteristic in dress and customs yet rema remaining irling in norway the human in in terest along the is continuous groups of the p peasantry especially where setting out f for or returning from funerals weddings or summertime summer time festivities tivi ties are always as picturesque as may be seen in Brot brattany tany or normandy the men are all clad in dark garments and the women are gay with glint and color the Har dangar female costume in the field often consists of one garment displaying the outlines of the form with considerable freedom though there will always be a bit of color in kerchief ker chiet about the neck or head but when these matrons matrona and lasses bedeck themselves for sad or merry occasions occasions there are certain old and gaudily painted pine chests in every household to be safely drawn upon for requisite finery it is then their black blue or brown woolen skirts reach the plenitude and immeasurable of the newhaven fishwife or the Con knitter on market day their waists and sleeves are snowy white and never were elsewhere seen such vast spotless and flowing aprons as they possess their bright bodices bo dices which are always open for di display play through a square yoke of snowy plaits bits of embroidery and monstrous silver t dro roaches aches are quaintly wrought with silk with beads or with silver and gilt i it while the tremendous white hite cat cai s 1 of af the married women winged and olanna and wide are held in place over light wooden frames the girls often wear only the flaxen headdress which nature gave them braided with bright ribbons although some will be seen with tiny beaded caps perched jauntily upon their heads As the irish country lassies classies often carry their shoes and stockings to the edge of the village on market day and innocently put their pretty feet and legs into them at convenient halting places by the roadside so these thrifty peasant woman make parcels of their most precious garments and finery and complete their amazing toilets near the place of merrymaking or before entering the village church unconscious of observation and innocent of alarm then there are the oncoming and de e barking of passengers pas the curious forms of freight landed and received the continuous crossing and re crossing of the waters raters by peasant parties from valley to valley and hamlot hamlet to hamlet the tourist crowds rushing for inns or engaging car for mountain tours amiable collections ot of aeres drives with their patient ponies and their lumbering carts deans and parsons pardons en route to distant patis parishes hes american and english englis h hunters and fishers with their marvelous outfits and belongings comprising everything save evidences of game taken setting out for the fields or being rowed to more promising fields of sport grave old bonders from upland gaarde silent I 1 important wise but rotund from good digestion and calm and benign from measureless content making you feel that there is so something methin substantial about norway aside from ter her crags and ice lumber owners from the cities visiting the mills and seeking and sorting their logs engineering parties at work upon the endless task of bringing the valleys and fiords fiorda nearer together geologists and naturalists natura lists innumerable with impoverished stores of specimens but so enthusiastically asti cally exuding with theories and conjectures jec tures about the glacier age and the moraines mo raines that no peace shall come until their discoveries disco veils in book form finally to drift the terminal moraines mo raines of literature the great libraries cob webbed shelves and everywhere the frenzia amateur photographer pale with energy and loss of sleep and the lean lank lone lorn cyclist bent with rheumatism humped from bronchitis and in his scant attire as incongruous a spectacle as a ballet dancer dropped among himalayan heights through the entire length of the fiord and its lesser jesser outre reaching outreaching out aching upper fiords fiorda here are the most extraordinary variety of scenery possible to find in an equal distance every station has its glen or chasm or wider dal each of these pours its river or tumultuous torrent into the fiord where the mountains widen out into amphitheatres there are the circling vales fringed at the he top by a horizon line of polished or jagged rock with a lesser circle of savage debris below then a feathery rim of pine below this the emerald ot of the farms with their clusters of softened gray old ld structures and then the foaming river shoot shooting ng irom from the depths of the vale with t the e whitish yellow line of the mountain road beside it and following all its tortuous windings and finally the hamlet brown and gray at the very edge of the blue waters of the fiord such valley scenes give a sky as blue as italis suggestions of inaccessible and frozen heights the misty pearline tints that lay in tuscan vales like the rime of ripened grape a soft and lang arous luxuriance such as half shrouds and half reveals th the e valleys of cuba and all the mellow quaintness of I 1 hamlets at one glance where the station cluster of mossy structures sets at the mouth of shadowy gorge there are cliffs not hundreds but thousands of feet above a glitter of foam like a cameo setting to the black background and now and then far up the purpling gorge a shaft of glittering light as it the focused beauty of some half hid upland dale shot for an instant between weird cloud deachin reaching walls now for miles mites we sail bet between w een preci apices from to feet in height the silence here is painful from water to sky there is neither branch of tree nor blade of grass not even wild fowl scream and circle here and we are told the water beneath is deep deeper far than the noisy set sea outside the skerries sherries sk erries as the crags are lofty above suddenly we turn and face a vale of almost tropical beauty scarcely is this contemplated before our course carries our sig sight h t to a shore of crags with a valley I 1 line I 1 ne above beyond this a leathery feathery line of forest then ar an edge of rock touched by the bright sunlight ht into ana masses of burnished bronze and far and high beyond is a glittering line of quivering sapphire blue where the trackless ice ice fields of the Folge fond seem throbbing and pulsing their yet fadeless fires in the ghostly upper light and so on and on to odde the tongue of land where you seem to have come to the edge of chaos world and where the brown hamlet low lying and backed by gorge and crag and foss and height looks lazily out from its slumberous inns and shops back alo along n the blue way you came upon one 0 of the finest blended scenes of wave and mount and sky to be found in all our good old globe what is true of this grandest of all Nor ways fiords fiorda is bruein particular or in in more intense and impressive type of of geiringer Gei ranger of sogne bogne and of all the lesser fiords fiorda shows vaster perspectives and drier drearier reaches of sight but still possesses its measure of the wondrous versatility of while it seldom provides the tender valley ger is a maze of lovely vales and glens of cataracts above the clouds of precipices dins cliffs and towering crags of hamlets up on mountains with mountains above these and of waterfalls highest slen derest fiercest and endmost most filmy in all the world and so great in number that they are still and uncounted the sogne bogne fiord cannot but be regarded as the most stupendous and often appalling continuous spectacle so far accessible to the traveler in in any part of the habitable globe it is practically a sea waterway water way of more than one hundred miles in length and with branches and ramifications ot of twice that distance split through almost solid mountain walls from to feet in height its waters are the deepest of all the nor begian fiords fiorda while the shores afford infrequent anchorage if by any means the water bed of the sogne bogne fiord could become dry city tourists could in many places look upon almost perpendicular rocks frond from to feet above their heads few valleys open upon the sogne bogne but tremendous chasms are constantly appearing the peasantry here huddle in almost e places long distances apart and moved t to and fro between their tiny hamlets in boats built with rude sleeping accomma lations dat ions at various places you will see bits of shelving rock to which their boats are tied at night ni ht near these are tiny caves or rock ensures fissures used as huts buts and as kitchens in these trips of overnight duration I 1 the scenery grows more grand and imposing as you proceed up the fiord reaching perhaps its most sombre sublimity in the baero fiord one of its branches another arm is the fjaer land fiord near which are the vastest snow caves and ice fields of norway and the romantic village of Bal holmen scene of Frit hols saga where birch trees covered the mountain tops on the sunny hill slopes ripened the golden barley and rye waved taller than giants and from its extreme eastern branch anch the ardala fiord the third great waterfall of western norway the mighty fos fos Ls is reached while through every opening to the north are seen the gigantic masses of the Josted als glacier the largest in europe and covering an area of five hundred square miles in the amazing multiplicity of these scenes of beauty and grandeur there is one bone thi that will remain fadeless in the travelers memory it is that one when in the dar kless night of these northern 10 latitudes as your steamer creeps along down there in the almost blackened and abys smal silence between these parted mountain walls you look through their rifts drifts towards heaven and knowing the night time hour are given an indefinable hint in the s splendor lendor of the light still lingering lingerin g tent tenderly erly upon mighty mountain peaks of that promised region of endless morning lands EDGAR L WAKEMAN |
