Seraphita | Page 3

outer world, either by land where the roads are
impassable, or by sea where none but tiny boats can thread their way
through the maritime defiles that guard the entrance to the bay, hinder
these people from growing rich by the sale of their timber. It would
cost enormous sums to either blast a channel out to sea or construct a
way to the interior. The roads from Christiana to Trondhjem all turn
toward the Strom-fiord, and cross the Sieg by a bridge some score of
miles above its fall into the bay. The country to the north, between
Jarvis and Trondhjem, is covered with impenetrable forests, while to
the south the Falberg is nearly as much separated from Christiana by
inaccessible precipices. The village of Jarvis might perhaps have
communicated with the interior of Norway and Sweden by the river
Sieg; but to do this and to be thus brought into contact with civilization,
the Strom-fiord needed the presence of a man of genius. Such a man
did actually appear there,--a poet, a Swede of great religious fervor,
who died admiring, even reverencing this region as one of the noblest
works of the Creator.
Minds endowed by study with an inward sight, and whose quick
perceptions bring before the soul, as though painted on a canvas, the
contrasting scenery of this universe, will now apprehend the general
features of the Strom-fiord. They alone, perhaps, can thread their way
through the tortuous channels of the reef, or flee with the battling
waves to the everlasting rebuff of the Falberg whose white peaks
mingle with the vaporous clouds of the pearl-gray sky, or watch with
delight the curving sheet of waters, or hear the rushing of the Sieg as it
hangs for an instant in long fillets and then falls over a picturesque
abatis of noble trees toppled confusedly together, sometimes upright,
sometimes half-sunken beneath the rocks. It may be that such minds
alone can dwell upon the smiling scenes nestling among the lower hills
of Jarvis; where the luscious Northern vegetables spring up in families,

in myriads, where the white birches bend, graceful as maidens, where
colonnades of beeches rear their boles mossy with the growth of
centuries, where shades of green contrast, and white clouds float amid
the blackness of the distant pines, and tracts of many-tinted crimson
and purple shrubs are shaded endlessly; in short, where blend all colors,
all perfumes of a flora whose wonders are still ignored. Widen the
boundaries of this limited ampitheatre, spring upward to the clouds,
lose yourself among the rocks where the seals are lying and even then
your thought cannot compass the wealth of beauty nor the poetry of this
Norwegian coast. Can your thought be as vast as the ocean that bounds
it? as weird as the fantastic forms drawn by these forests, these clouds,
these shadows, these changeful lights?
Do you see above the meadows on that lowest slope which undulates
around the higher hills of Jarvis two or three hundred houses roofed
with "noever," a sort of thatch made of birch-bark,--frail houses, long
and low, looking like silk-worms on a mulberry-leaf tossed hither by
the winds? Above these humble, peaceful dwellings stands the church,
built with a simplicity in keeping with the poverty of the villagers. A
graveyard surrounds the chancel, and a little farther on you see the
parsonage. Higher up, on a projection of the mountain is a
dwelling-house, the only one of stone; for which reason the inhabitants
of the village call it "the Swedish Castle." In fact, a wealthy Swede
settled in Jarvis about thirty years before this history begins, and did his
best to ameliorate its condition. This little house, certainly not a castle,
built with the intention of leading the inhabitants to build others like it,
was noticeable for its solidity and for the wall that inclosed it, a rare
thing in Norway where, notwithstanding the abundance of stone, wood
alone is used for all fences, even those of fields. This Swedish house,
thus protected against the climate, stood on rising ground in the centre
of an immense courtyard. The windows were sheltered by those
projecting pent-house roofs supported by squared trunks of trees which
give so patriarchal an air to Northern dwellings. From beneath them the
eye could see the savage nudity of the Falberg, or compare the
infinitude of the open sea with the tiny drop of water in the foaming
fiord; the ear could hear the flowing of the Sieg, whose white sheet far
away looked motionless as it fell into its granite cup edged for miles

around with glaciers,--in short, from this vantage ground the whole
landscape whereon our simple yet superhuman drama was about to be
enacted could be seen and noted.
The winter of 1799-1800 was one of