Show Z PV r RN 7 V W inflated ri moby dicks in tow prepared by the national society Wais washington hington D CL a UYI did norway make a counter W wuyu claim with denmark over a segment of the east coast of greenland a land once inhabited by eskimos but now barren and ice fee choked most ot of the year perhaps the norwegians Norwegia ns seek to extend their fisheries for a large part of 0 Nor ways population lives on tho generosity of king neptune only a little more than 3 per cent of norway Is under cultivation the country lacks lacki the chief prerequisite of modern industrialism the juxtaposition ot of iron and coal the corwe glans gians striving to the utmost cannot eke out a living from the soil they import much food nor can they depend as does england upon the exchange of the products of their factories for the products of other peoples farms even the skies frown fown often upon norway the west coast for a good part of the year Is shrouded by a pall of mist fog and drizzle with days of rain out of the year the annual rainfall at bergen Is more than six feet the country Is traversed by a great dorsal plateau standing stark and high above sea level in these rocky sterile soils useful plant life will not take root A great wall of mountains bains known as the keel defines the swedish frontier southernmost norway is in the same latitude as northern labrador with northernmost norway lying tar far within the arctic circle norway Is hardly more than a fringe or shelf washed by the arctic and the north atlantic atlanta antl oceans and deeply indented by salt water inland canals known as fjords for the most part agriculture Is limited to nooks and corners little farms cling to the 06 base of mountains like shipwrecked sailors to a life raft sixty per cent of Nor ways farms are less than five acres 98 per cent are less than 25 acres norway seems to be one of natures climatic mistakes too much daylight in summer too little in winter too much worthless water here too much sterile mountain there but what the country may lack in quality la is more than offset by the quality of the people who inhabit it norwegians Norwegia ns are h happler happier ap than the common run of mortals they are essentially open alt air country people knowing nothing of the misery and abject poverty of city slums and tenements they have learned to live comfortably with themselves having a 11 wealth of inner resources on which to tc draw they go down to the sea in ships and see the earth and the full ness thereof before them lies the panorama of mountains glaciers cloud racks mals floating through the lofty denies deales of their fjords they know the world too from the inside of books they are a bookish people prizing education illiterates are about as plentiful in norway as horned toads on boston common when it comes to exchange of intelligence norway tins has more telephones than spain or poland with eions from seven to ten times as great its face and character each country like each human be tag ing on this planet has a face and character of its own chile another elongated mountainous coast country fronting the western sea in a considerable area of its homeland Is parched find and rai rainless while norway Is drenched with moisture greece lind and italy suf fer from too much sun while norway enough to go around greece albania portugal esthonia Esth onla and nor way are the only Hur european countries which grow glow no sugar beets too much sun in the mediterranean countries too little in norway contrast the loiterers loiter ers basking in the winters sunshine on the steps of the piazza dl di spagna rome nome with the tha norwegians Norwegia ns clada clad in furs and oilskins oil oll skins adventuring over cold gray fog covered waters italy and norway from early antiquity bred a race of sea rovers adventurers ad discoverers norway and greece looking seaward present the appearance appe alance of once lands that have been shot to pieces by titanic subterranean their deeply indented coasts are fringed and tass eleu with island groups the alie sea la Is sown thick with fragments hive celestial star dust in the milky way the islands of greece furnish goats currants and material tor for poetic rhapsodizing the norwegian coast Is an exaggerated sou southe theril rii alaskan coast skip peris pera navigate big ships through norwegian fjords just as a they jo through the ui deep cut alaspaa inner canals i the fjords whether the result of glacial erosion or faulting of the earths crust are of awesome beauty and of considerable human utility saved by gulf stream the warm atlantic drift from the gulf stream supplies norway with both climate and fish but tor for this beneficence of nature norway would be a bleak and inhospitable waste and most of the norwegians Norwegia ns would be compelled to emigrate or starve fish following family tradition crowd into the shoal waters of the north sea to teed feed and breed been doing it for thousands of years and probably keep on just so long as this poor earths pale history runs they return like the swallows in the spring roughly speaking norway has three strings to its fishing bow cod what whala and herring but the herring la Is king herring because of their abundance give rise to the greatest of the worlds fisheries they are as gregarious as the starlings which cluster by night tn in the tops of trees on pennsylvania avenue washington they run in immense schools with some of their life cycle still shrouded in obscurity although it la Is probably as well known as that of any other important fish norwegian herring fisheries were famous before william the conqueror the norwegian fish catch runs to about one and three quarter billion pounds of which approximately one billion pounds are contributed by the herring tribe the live herring is something of a traveler but the dead herring goes farther what one may call a pickled herring raw cucumber sour cream belt includes a better part of eastern germany poland the three baltic states finland and russia the norwegian cod unlike the herring travels southward rather than eastward cured codfish enjoys the entree to all classes of society in southern europe particularly in the catholic countries where meatless days are prescribed some years ago when norway was trying out prohibition a serious effort was made to exclude the importation of the more heady spanish and portuguese wines the iber tans ians naturally resented the affront to their delicious wines and threatened reprisals reprisal upon the norwegian codfish the antl anti codfish campaign was too much for the norwegians Norwegia ns they capitulated by throwing open their doors to mediterranean wines development of fisheries norwegian fisheries have developed from small beginnings when little wooden boats put out a mile or two from the shore scrabbling for a meager catch of 0 herring burring now great steel power boats make cal catches cites of barrels of fish in a day once estimated by the pound the catch Is now estimated by the ton norway has tome come largely to control the worlds whaling industry once a great american business with yankee ships sailing from new england ports about the turn of the century it looked as if the whaling business the world over was doomed to 16 early extinction De defenseless monsters the poor whales do not get an even break I 1 nature ironically doonis dooms them by causing them to signal their own destruction it if whales were vere equipped to remain beneath the surface even as long as the modern submarine they would be more than a match tor for the energetic corwe glans gians with their big steel ships and long range harpoon guns Nor ways annual production of whale oil rose rosa from pounds in IDOO 1000 to pounds in 1927 the horweg norwegian glan annual herring catch would load a solid train of steel gondola cars cara reaching from new york to philadelphia or if converted to norwegian cars a solid train miles long it would require at least double these train lengths to handle the annual catch of whales the norwegians Norwegia ns are the northernmost and the southernmost workers of the world their operations cover a wider range than the flight of the arctic tern annually corwe gians work la in antarctic seas close up to the great lee ice barrier just as many work in the arctic seas on the outskirts of the polar cap Nor ways climatic eccentricities bear an intimate relation to norwegian agriculture ri in norway farming within the arctic circle is by no means a desperate enget enterprise prise As the snows retire vegetation Is quickened by long days of sunlight even dairy farming prospers within the arctic circle de d spite the tha accepted notion that only reindeer thrive in these thesa latitudes latitude |