bays of our coast, are, in fact, loug, narrow valleys, filled with sea, instead of being laid out in fields and meadows. 3. The high rocky banks shelter these deep bays-called flords-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 pineforests 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. 4. 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. 5. 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. 6. 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 the 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. 7. 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. 8. The stiff leaves of the fir and pine vibrate with the breeze like the strings of a musical instrument, so that every breath of the nightwind in a Norwegian forest wakens a myriad of tiny harps; and this gentle and mournful U music may be heard in gushes the whole night through. 9. 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 place, slides and tumbles from the mountain-peak. 10. There is also, now and then, a 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. 11. 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. |