Days of the Discoverers | Page 4

all it had to do with the experience of many of the children the
saeter might really have been Asgard, the Norse paradise. The youngest
had never before been outside the narrow valley where they were born.
Ellida and Margit, Didrik and little Peder, could not be convinced that
they were anywhere but in Asgard the Blest.
Norway had long since become Christian, but the old faith was not
forgotten. The legends, songs and customs of the people were full of it.
In the sagas Asgard was described as being on a mountain at the top of
the world. Around the base of this mountain lay Midgard, the abode of
mankind. Beyond the great seas, in Utgard, the giants lived. Hel was
the under-world, the home of evil ghosts and spirits. Tales were told in
the long winter evenings, of Baldur the god of spring, Loki the crafty,
Odin the old one-eyed beggar in a hooded cloak, with his two ravens
and his two tame wolves, Freya the lovely lady of flowers, Elle-folk
dancing in the moonlight, and little rascally Trolls.
The songs and legends repeated by the old people or chanted by
minstrels or skalds were more than idle stories--they were the history of
a race. Children heard over and over again the family records telling in
rude rhyme the story of centuries. In distant Iceland, Greenland, the
Shetlands, the Faroes or the Orkneys, a Norseman could tell exactly
what might be his udall right, or right of inheritance, in the land of his
fathers.
On Nils and Thorolf, Anders, Olof, Nikolina, Karen and Lovisa, who
were all over ten years old, rested great responsibility. Mother Elle
always managed to solve her own problems and expected them to
attend to theirs without constant direction from her. She told them what
there was to be done and left them to attend to it.

All were hardy, active youngsters who took to fending for themselves
as naturally as a day-old chick takes to scratching. In ordinary seasons
the work at the saeter was heavy, for the maidens must not only follow
the herds over miles of pasture land, but make butter and cheese for the
winter from their milking. The few cows that were here now could be
tethered near by; the milk, when the children had had all they wanted,
was mostly used in soups, pudding or gröt (porridge). A net or weir
stretched across the outlet of the lake would fill with fish overnight.
The streams were full of trout. Mother Elle knew how to make
fish-hooks of bone, bows and arrows, ropes, and baskets of bark, how
to weave osiers, how to cure bruises and cuts, how to trap the wild
hares, grouse and plover and cook them over an open fire. The children
found plover's eggs and the eggs of other wild fowl. They raised pulse,
leeks, onions and turnips in a little garden patch. They gathered
strawberries, cranberries, crowberries, wild currants, black and red, the
cloudberry and the delicious arctic raspberry which tastes of pineapple.
Some stores of salt and grain were already at the saeter and the
grain-fields had been sowed, before the pestilence appeared in the
valley.
In the long summer days of these northern mountains, one has the
feeling that they will never end, that life must go on in an infinite
succession of still, sunshiny, fragrant hours, filled with the songs of
birds, the chirr of insects and the distant lowing of cattle. There is time
for everything. At night comes dreamless slumber, and the morning is
like a birth into new life.
There was a great deal of singing and story-telling at odd times. A
group of children making mats or baskets, gathering pease or going
after berries would beg Nils or Nikolina to tell a story, or Karen would
lead them in some old song with a familiar refrain. But some of the
songs the Wind-wife crooned to the baby were not like any the children
had heard. They were not even in Norwegian.
Thorolf was a silent lad, who would rather listen than talk, and hated
asking questions. But one day, when he and Nikolina were hunting
wild raspberries, he asked her if she thought Mother Elle meant to stay

in the mountains through the winter. Nikolina did not know.
"'Tis well to be wise but not too wise, 'Tis well that to-morrow is hid
from our eyes, For in forward-looking forebodings rise,"
she added quaintly. "I have heard her say that it is colder in Greenland
than it is here."
"Has she been in Greenland?"
"Her father and mother were on the way there when she was little, and
the ship was wrecked somewhere on the coast. The Skroelings found
her and took her to live in their country. That