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Updated: June 27, 2025
Town-dwellers in all Norway number no more than the inhabitants of Manchester, and though force of circumstance necessitates their living in the towns, their thoughts are ever of the country of the fjeld, the fjord, the forest, the mountain lake, or the salmon river.
As I approached the neighborhood of Djerkin on the Dovre Fjeld, famous as a central station for hunting expeditions, I met several English sportsmen armed with rifles, double-barreled guns, pistols, and other deadly weapons, on their way to the defiles of the adjacent mountains in search of the black bears which are said to infest that region.
It is twenty-four miles from the village and eighteen across the fjeld. Have I said that I was too near men? Heaven help me, for some days in succession I have been taking strolls in the forest, saying good morning and pretending I was in human company.
Perhaps if your voice is strong, the sound will carry for a quarter of a mile but then you feel a sting as though after a slap. If only you had kept your regal silence! One day the postman who crosses the fjeld once a month came on me just as I had shouted. "What?" he called from the wood. "Careful below!" I called back to save my face. "I've put out a trap."
There were many of us at table now, and the talk was lively. When Schoolmaster Staur was asked if he wanted more soup, he replied: "No, thank you; I require no more!" and then rolled his eyes at us to show that this was the correct thing to say. Between meals we made up small parties, going this way and that on the sides of the fjeld and in the woods.
No doubt it was all from the general stores, with the exception of a heap of broken crisp-bread, which might have been stolen elsewhere. "So you've got crisp-bread after all," I said. "If you knew anything about it, you wouldn't talk like that," the man replied. "When I'm crossing the fjeld on foot, walking and walking, don't I need food to put in my belly? It's blasphemy to listen to you!"
Nor was the solitary angler of the Dovre Fjeld a man likely to be lifted from the earth by any thing so fragile as the beauties of nature. His weight sixteen stone at least would be much more likely to sink him into it.
Then Josephine said: "I've got to go across the fjeld anyhow wait a minute!" She was gone for a moment, then returned, loaded the bags and knapsacks on her little back, and trotted off. The others followed. I caught up with Josephine and took her burden from her. But I would not allow her to turn back, for this little tour away from the house would do her good.
Our road led over hills covered with forests of fir and pine, whence we looked into a broad valley clothed with the same dark garment of forest, to which the dazzling white snows of the fjeld in the background made a striking contrast. We here left the waters of the Driv and struck upon those of the Orkla, which flow into Drontheim Fjord.
The desolate hills of Qvalö surmounted by the pointed peak of the Tjuve Fjeld, or "Thief Mountain," so called because it steals so much of the winter sunshine, announced our approach to Hammerfest, and towards nine o'clock in the evening we were at anchor in the little harbour.
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