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Some who went nine hundred years ago found a land in the far Northwest barred by great icebergs; but once inside the barrier, they saw deep fjords like their own at home, to which the mountains sloped down, covered with a wealth of lovely flowers. On green meadows antlered deer were grazing, the salmon leaped in brawling brooks, and birds called for their mates in the barrens.
The large fjords and lakes have ample steamboat facilities, the coast service between Bergen and Trondhjem being especially good.
The ocean, that had stretched motionless and black against the horizon, was changed by magic into a broken field of glittering ice, interspersed with marvellous silvery fjords. In the far distance the Isle of Shoals loomed up like a group of huge bergs drifting down on us. The Polar Regions in a June thaw! It was exceedingly fine. What did we talk about? We talked about the weather and you!
Then there came a ship across the fjords, the men rowing with all their might. They came up; it was Svan of Hol from Bjarnarfjord with his men, and he at once told Thorgrim not to let himself be robbed. The two men had been great friends, and Svan offered Thorgrim his aid, which the brothers accepted, and they attacked valiantly.
Christopher Schmidt, joined the Princess May to help me find their northern stations among the plethora of islands which fringe the coast in that vicinity. Never in my life had I expected any journey half so wonderful. We travelled through endless calm fjords, runs, tickles, bays, and straits without ever seeing the open sea, and with hardly a ripple on the surface.
As your ship proceeds further north they become more numerous and of larger dimensions, until, as you pass the entrance of some of those great fjords, or inlets, which intersect the Greenland coast-line, they pour out in such numbers that the wary mariner is thankful for the continuous daylight and summer seas that enable him so easily to avoid these floating rocks.
The ubiquitous crow abounds, and fine specimens of the golden eagle, that dignified monarch of the upper regions, may often be seen sailing through the air from cliff to cliff, across the fjords and valleys. At certain seasons of the year this bird proves destructive to domestic fowl and young lambs.
Large black geese, too heavy for lofty flying, rise awkwardly from the waves and skim across the fjords, just clearing the surface of the dark blue waters. Oyster-catchers, as they are familiarly called, decked with scarlet bills and legs, are abundant. Now and then that daring highwayman among birds, the skua, or robber-gull, is seen on the watch for a victim.
In New Hanover, New Cornwall and New Norfolk these rents of a rocky coast are repeated, these geologic phenomena of the fjords that characterize western Patagonia and Norway.
The coast of Norway is bordered by innumerable rocky islands, and also by deep fjords, winding inland from ten to fifty miles each, among masses of rock forming perpendicular walls often towering a thousand feet or more in height.
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