Feats on the Fiord | Page 2

loud crack of the ice in the nearest glacier; and, as many declare, there is a crackling to be heard by those who listen when the northern lights are shooting and blazing across the sky. Nor is this all. Wherever there is a nook between the rocks on the shore, where a man may build a house, and clear a field or two;--wherever there is a platform beside the cataract where the sawyer may plant his mill, and make a path from it to join some great road, there is a human habitation, and the sounds that belong to it. Thence, in winter nights, come music and laughter, and the tread of dancers, and the hum of many voices. The Norwegians are a social and hospitable people; and they hold their gay meetings, in defiance of their arctic climate, through every season of the year.
On a January night, a hundred years ago, there was great merriment in the house of a farmer who had fixed his abode within the arctic circle, in Nordland, not far from the foot of Sulitelma, the highest mountain in Norway. This dwelling, with its few fields about it, was in a recess between the rocks, on the shore of the fiord, about five miles from Saltdalen, and two miles from the junction of the Salten's Elv (river) with the fiord. It was but little that Erlingsen's fields would produce, though they were sheltered from the coldest winds, and the summer sunshine was reflected from the rocks, so as to make this little farm much more productive than any near which were in a more exposed situation. A patch of rye was grown, and some beans and oats; and there was a strip of pasture, and a garden in which might be seen turnips, radishes, potatoes, lettuce and herbs, and even some fruits,--a few raspberries, and a great many cherries. There were three or four horses on the farm, five cows, and a small flock of goats. In summer, the cattle and flock were driven up the mountain, to feed on the pastures there; and during the seven months of winter, they were housed and fed on the hay grown at home, and that which was brought from the mountain, and on a food which appears strange enough to us, but of which cows in Norway are extremely fond:--fish-heads boiled into a thick soup with horse-dung. At one extremity of the little beach of white sand which extended before the farmer's door was his boat-house; and on his boat he and his family depended, no less than his cows, for a principal part of their winter subsistence. Except a kid or a calf now and then, no meat was killed on the farm. Cod in winter, herrings in spring, trout and salmon in summer, and salted fish in winter, always abounded. Reindeer meat was regularly purchased from the Lapps who travelled round among the settlements for orders, or drove their fattened herds from farm to farm. Besides this, there was the resource of game. Erlingsen and his housemen brought home from their sporting rambles, sometimes a young bear, sometimes wild ducks, or the noble cock-of-the-woods, as big as a turkey, or a string of snipes, or golden plovers, or ptarmigan. The eggs of sea-birds might be found in every crevice of the islets in the fiord, in the right season; and they are excellent food. Once a year, too, Erlingsen wrapped himself in furs, and drove himself in his sledge, followed by one of his housemen on another and a larger, to the great winter fair at Tronyem, where the Lapps repaired to sell their frozen reindeer meat, their skins, a few articles of manufacture, and where travelling Russian merchants came with the productions of other climates, and found eager customers in the inhabitants who thronged to this fair to make their purchases. Here, in exchange for the salt-fish, feathers, and eider-down which had been prepared by the industry of his family, Erlingsen obtained flax and wool wherewith to make clothing for the household, and those luxuries which no Norwegian thinks of going without,--corn-brandy, coffee, tobacco, sugar, and spices. Large mould candles were also sold so cheap by the Russians that it was worth while to bring them home for the use of the whole family,--even to burn in the stables and stalls, as the supply of bears' fat was precarious, and the pine-tree was too precious, so far north, to be split up into torches, while it even fell so short occasionally as to compel the family to burn peat, which they did not like nearly so well as pine-logs. It was Madame Erlingsen's business to calculate how much of all these foreign articles would be required for the use of her household for a