Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 27, 2025
I met several shepherds on the way dressed in something like a characteristic costume frieze jackets with brass buttons, black knee-breeches, a red night-cap, and armed with the usual staff or shepherd's crook, represented in pictures, and much discoursed of by poets: "Methinks it were a happy life To be no better than a homely swain;" but not on the Dovre Fjelds of Norway.
In point of scenery there is little difference between them; but as we intended visiting the province of Tellemark, in Southern Norway, we chose the latter. The valley of the Fille Fjeld, which we entered on leaving Lærdalsören, is enclosed by wild, barren mountains, more isolated and irregular in their forms than the Hardanger and Dovre Fjelds.
Then darkness rolls up from the sea in the west and glides down from the fjelds in the east, lays itself to rest upon the black wastes of heather, and spreads an uncanny covering over the troubled Aarre Waters, which groan and sob and sigh among rushes and stones.
On the great mountain plateau of Norway everything gives way to the lichen-like reindeer moss, and the flowers are merely in patches, or growing in masses only in those swampy parts where the moss does not thrive. The fjelds furnish a recreation-ground for the Norwegian townsman. There he can lead the life that he loves best, and one week of the wilds will set him up for the remainder of the year.
If I remember correctly, a fine description is given of this celebrated passage by Mogge, whose graphic sketches of Norwegian scenery I had frequent occasion to admire, during my tour, for their beauty and accuracy. I fully agree with my friend Bayard Taylor, that the traveler can find no better guide to the Fjelds and Fjords of this wild country than "Afraja" and "Life and Love in Norway."
The whole country is a series of rugged mountains, narrow valleys, desolate fjelds, rivers, and fjords.
When college days came, John Hardy, ever intent on fishing, went to Norway in the vacation with the checkered result of getting an occasional salmon, and in the smaller streams on the fjelds a quantity of small trout.
That is no time for the fjelds, and the traveller is better off in a fjordside hotel. Given fine weather, there is no more splendid touring ground than the highlands of Norway, where, at a height of anything up to 4,000 or 5,000 feet above the sea, stretch thousands of square miles of wild and uninhabited moorland, cut up with numerous large lakes, and clothed only with a dwarf vegetation.
She was described as coming to the Sæter farms on the fjelds, after they were vacated by the Norwegian farmers, with a quantity of cattle and milking cans; and I have heard the cattle call sang by Norwegians that they have heard the Huldr sing. I have spoken with people who have seen the Huldr, and described her to me with a vividness as if it were a real personage.
Such parts usually lie off the beaten track, and to reach them means an expedition heavy, uphill walking for two or three days, with the baggage carried on the backs of ponies. If you were going to undertake an expedition to these high fjelds, you would probably make a start from the lowlands by following some well-worn track leading to a sæter.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking