Feats on the Fiord

Feats on the Fiord, by Harriet
Martineau

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Title: Feats on the Fiord The third book in "The Playfellow"
Author: Harriet Martineau
Release Date: October 31, 2007 [EBook #23277]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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THE FIORD ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

Feats on the Fiord, by Harriet Martineau.
CHAPTER ONE.
ERLINGSEN'S "AT HOME."

Every one who has looked at the map of Norway must have been struck
with the singular character of its coast. On the map it looks so jagged,
such a strange mixture of land and sea, that it appears as if there must
be a perpetual struggle between the two,--the sea striving to inundate
the land, and the land pushing itself out into the sea, till it ends in their
dividing the region between them. On the spot, however, this coast is
very sublime. The long straggling promontories are mountainous,
towering ridges of rock, springing up in precipices from the water;
while the bays between them, instead of being rounded with shelving
sandy shores, on which the sea tumbles its waves, as in bays of our
coast, are, in fact, long narrow valleys, filled with sea, instead of being
laid out in fields and meadows. The high rocky banks shelter these
deep bays (called fiords) from almost every wind; so that their waters
are usually as still as those of a lake. For days and weeks together, they
reflect each separate tree-top of the pine-forests which clothe the
mountain sides, the mirror being broken only by the leap of some
sportive fish, or the oars of the boatman as he goes to inspect the
sea-fowl from islet to islet of the fiord, or carries out his nets or his rod
to catch the sea-trout or char, or cod, or herrings, which abound, in their
seasons, on the coast of Norway.
It is difficult to say whether these fiords are the most beautiful in
summer or in winter. In summer, they glitter with golden sunshine; and
purple and green shadows from the mountain and forest lie on them;
and these may be more lovely than the faint light of the winter noons of
those latitudes, and the snowy pictures of frozen peaks which then
show themselves on the surface: but before the day is half over, out
come the stars,--the glorious stars which shine like nothing that we
have ever seen. There, the planets cast a faint shadow, as the young
moon does with us: and these planets, and the constellations of the sky,
as they silently glide over from peak to peak of these rocky passes, are
imaged on the waters so clearly that the fisherman, as he unmoors his
boat for his evening task, feels as if he were about to shoot forth his
vessel into another heaven, and to cleave his way among the stars.
Still as everything is to the eye, sometimes for a hundred miles together
along these deep sea-valleys, there is rarely silence. The ear is kept

awake by a thousand voices. In the summer, there are cataracts leaping
from ledge to ledge of the rocks; and there is the bleating of the kids
that browse there, and the flap of the great eagle's wings, as it dashes
abroad from its eyrie, and the cries of whole clouds of sea-birds which
inhabit the islets; and all these sounds are mingled and multiplied by
the strong echoes, till they become a din as loud as that of a city. Even
at night, when the flocks are in the fold, and the birds at roost, and the
echoes themselves seem to be asleep, there is occasionally a sweet
music heard, too soft for even the listening ear to catch by day. Every
breath of summer wind that steals through the pine-forests wakes this
music as it goes. The stiff spiny leaves of the fir and pine vibrate with
the breeze, like the strings of a musical instrument, so that every breath
of the night-wind, in a Norwegian forest, wakens a myriad of tiny harps;
and this gentle and mournful music may be heard in gushes the whole
night through. This music, of course, ceases when each tree becomes
laden with snow; but yet there is sound, in the midst of the longest
winter night. There is the rumble of some avalanche, as, after a drifting
storm, a mass of snow, too heavy to keep its