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Norwegian Life

AN ACCOUNT OF PAST AND CONTEMPORARY CONDITIONS AND PROGRESS IN NORWAY
AND SWEDEN

Edited and Arranged by

ETHLYN T. CLOUGH




PREFACE


An excursion into Norwegian life has for the student all the charm of
the traveler's real journey through the pleasant valleys of the Norse
lands. Much of this charm is explained by the tenacity of the people
to the homely virtues of honesty and thrift, to their customs which
testify to their home-loving character, and to their quaint costumes.
It is a genuine delight to study and visit these lands, because they
are the least, perhaps in Europe, affected by the leveling hand of
cosmopolitan ideas. Go where you will,--to England, about Germany,
down into Italy,--everywhere, the same monotonous sameness is growing
more oppressive every year. But in Norway and Sweden there is still an
originality, a type, if you please, that has resisted the growth of
an artificial life, and gives to students a charm which is even more
alluring than modern cities with their treasures and associations.

The student takes up Norwegian life as one of the subjects which has
been comparatively little explored, and is, therefore replete with
freshness and delight. This little book can not by any means more
than lift the curtain to view the fields of historical and literary
interest and the wondrous life lived in the deep fiords of Viking
land. But its brief pages will have, at least, the merit of giving
information on a subject about which only too little has been written.
Taken in all, there are scarcely half a dozen recent books circulating
in American literary channels on these interesting lands, and for one
reason or another, most of these are unsuited for club people. There
is an urgent call for a comprehensive book which will waste no time
in non-essentials,--a book that can be read in a few sittings and yet
will give a glimpse over this quaint and wondrously interesting corner
of Europe. This book has been prepared, as have all the predecessors
in this series, by the help of many who have written most delightfully
of striking things in Norwegian life. One has specialized in one
thing, while another has been allured by another subject. Accordingly,
"Norwegian Life" is the product of many, each inspired with feeling
and admiration for the one or two subjects on which he has written
better than on any others. Liberty has been taken to make a few
verbal changes in order to give to the story the unity and smoothness
desired, and a key-letter at the end of each chapter refers the reader
to a page at the close where due credits are given.

J.M. HALL.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER I PREHISTORIC AND EARLY HISTORIC TIMES

CHAPTER II NORWAY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

CHAPTER III SWEDEN IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

CHAPTER IV THE RELIGION OF THE NORTHMEN

CHAPTER V THE LITERATURE OF NORWAY

CHAPTER VI THE LITERATURE OF SWEDEN

CHAPTER VII GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS OF NORWAY AND SWEDEN

CHAPTER VIII THE ARMY AND NAVY

CHAPTER IX PUBLIC EDUCATION

CHAPTER X HAAKON VII, NEW KING OF NORWAY

CHAPTER XI THE ROYAL FAMILY OF SWEDEN

CHAPTER XII CHARITABLE AND BENEVOLENT INSTITUTIONS

CHAPTER XIII MATERIAL CONDITIONS

CHAPTER XIV HIGHWAYS, RAILWAYS, AND WATERWAYS

CHAPTER XV THE PEOPLE: THEIR MANNERS AND CUSTOMS

CHAPTER XVI HEALTH, EXERCISE, AND AMUSEMENTS

CHAPTER XVII THE NEWSPAPERS OF NORWAY AND SWEDEN

CHAPTER XVIII NORWEGIAN FOLK SONGS

CHAPTER XIX WOMEN OF NORWAY AND SWEDEN




NORWEGIAN LIFE




CHAPTER I

PREHISTORIC AND EARLY HISTORIC TIMES


A glance at the map will show that the Scandinavian Peninsula, that
immense stretch of land running from the Arctic Ocean to the North
Sea, and from the Baltic to the Atlantic, covering an area of nearly
three hundred thousand square miles, is, next to Russia, the largest
territorial division of Europe. Surrounded by sea on all sides but
one, which gives it an unparalleled seaboard of over two thousand
miles, it hangs on the continent by its frontier line with Russia in
Lapland. Down the middle of this seabound continent, dividing it into
two nearly equal parts, runs a chain of mountains not inappropriately
called Koelen, or Keel. The name suggests the image which the aspect of
the land calls to mind, that of a huge ship floating keel upwards on
the face of the ocean. This keel forms the frontier line between the
kingdoms of Norway and Sweden: Sweden to the east, sloping gently from
the hills to the Baltic, Norway to the west, running more abruptly
down from their watershed to the Atlantic.

Norway (in the old Norse language _Noregr_, or _Nord-vegr, i.e_., the
North Way), according to archaeological explorations, appears to have
been inhabited long before historical time. The antiquarians maintain
that three populations have inhabited the North: a Mongolian race and
a Celtic race, types of which are to be found in the Finns and the
Laplanders in the far North, and, finally, a Caucasian race, which
immigrated from the South and drove out the Celtic and Laplandic
races, and from which the present inhabitants are descended. The
Norwegians, or Northmen (Norsemen), belong to a North-Germanic branch
of the Indo-European race; their nearest kindred are the Swedes, the
Danes, and the Goths. The original home of the race is supposed to
have been the mountain region of Balkh, in Western Asia, whence from
time to time families and tribes migrated in different directions. It
is not known when the ancestors of the Scandinavian peoples left
the original home in Asia; but it is probable that their earliest
settlements in Norway were made in the second century before the
Christian era.

The Scandinavian peoples, although comprising the oldest and most
unmixed race in Europe, did not realize until very late the value of
writing chronicles or reviews of historic events. Thus the names of
heroes and kings of the remotest past are helplessly forgotten, save
as they come to us in legend and folk-song, much of which we must
conclude is imaginary, beautiful as it is. But Mother Earth has
revealed to us, at the spade of the archaeologist, trustworthy
and irrefutable accounts of the age and the various degrees of
civilization of the race which inhabited the Scandinavian Peninsula in
prehistoric times. Splendid specimens now extant in numerous museums
prove that Scandinavia, like most other countries, has had a Stone
Age, a Bronze Age, and an Iron Age, and that each of these periods
reached a much higher development than in other countries.

The Scandinavian countries are for the first time mentioned by the
historians of antiquity in an account of a journey which Pyteas from
Massilia (the present Marseille) made throughout Northern Europe,
about 300 B.C. He visited Britain, and there heard of a great country,
Thule, situated six days' journey to the north, and verging on the
Arctic Sea. The inhabitants in Thule were an agricultural people who
gathered their harvest into big houses for threshing, on account of
the very few sunny days and the plentiful rain in their regions. From
corn and honey they prepared a beverage (probably mead).

Pliny the Elder, who himself visited the shores of the Baltic in the
first century after Christ, is the first to mention plainly the name
of Scandinavia. He says that he has received advices of immense
islands "recently discovered from Germany." The most famous of these
islands was Scandinavia, of as yet unexplored size; the known parts
were inhabited by a people called _hilleviones_, who gave it the name
of another world. He mentions Scandia, Nerigon, the largest of them
all, and Thule. Scandia and Scandinavia are only different forms of
the same name, denoting the southernmost part of the peninsula, and
still preserved in the name of the province of Scania in Sweden.
Nerigon stands for Norway, the northern part of which is mentioned as
an island by the name of Thule. The classical writers were ignorant
of the fact that Scandinavia was one great peninsula, because the
northern parts were as yet uninhabited and their physical connection
with Finland and Russia unknown. That the Romans were later acquainted
with the Scandinavian countries is evidenced from the fact that great
numbers of Roman coins have been found in excavating, also vessels of
bronze and glass, weapons, etc., as well as works of art, all turned
out of the workshops in Rome or its provinces. There, no doubt,
existed a regular traffic over the Baltic, through Germany, between
the Scandinavian countries and the Roman