United States or Bolivia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
After all, it is not strange that one prefers nerve and energy, even when they are dashed with a flavour of vice, to the negative virtues of a character too weak and insipid to be tempted. Our inn, in this little Norrland village, was about as comfortable and as elegant as three-fourths of the hotels in Stockholm.
Beyond the bay, the hills of Norrland ceased, sinking into those broad monotonous undulations which extend nearly all the way to Stockholm. Gardens with thriving fruit-trees now began to be more frequent, giving evidence of a climate where man has a right to live. I doubt whether it was ever meant that the human race should settle in any zone so frigid that fruit cannot ripen.
Once, at Skansen, the boy had sat under the steps at Bollnäs cottage and had overheard Clement Larsson and the old Laplander talk about Norrland. Both agreed that it was the most beautiful part of Sweden. Clement thought that the southern part was the best, while the Laplander favoured the northern part. As they argued, it became plain that Clement had never been farther north than Härnösand.
We were thoroughly exhausted with our five days' battle against the dreadful cold, when at last a row of lights gleamed across the river, and we drove up to the inn. The landlord met us with just the same words as on the first visit, and, strange enough, put us into the same room, where the same old Norrland merchant was again quartered in the same stage of tipsiness.
The people dance round the fires and leap over or through them. In parts of Norrland on St. John's Eve the bonfires are lit at the cross-roads.
This was our first country meal in Norrland, of whose fare the Stockholmers have a horror, yet that stately capital never furnished a better. If you think the bill of fare too heavy and solid, take a drive of fifteen miles in the regions of Zero, and then let your delicate stomach decide.
The scenery was strikingly like that on the lake of Zug, in Switzerland, and we missed the only green turf, which this year's rainless spring had left brown and withered. In all Sweden we had seen no such landscapes, not even in Norrland. There, however, the people carried off the palm.
I chewed the straw bread vigorously for an hour, and succeeded in swallowing enough to fill my stomach, though not enough to satisfy my hunger. The younger children occupied themselves in peeling off the soft inner bark of the fir, which they ate ravenously. They were handsome, fair-skinned youngsters, but not so rosy and beautiful as those of the Norrland Swedes.
In a short time they were in Norrland, and now it mattered not how much the Sun cried and coaxed the apple tree stopped, the cherry tree stopped, the rye blade stopped! The boy turned to them and asked: "Why don't you come along? Why do you desert the Sun?" "We dare not! We're afraid of the Ice Witch, who lives in Lapland," they answered.
Norrland, in spite of its long winter, has a bracing, healthy climate, and had it not been for letters from home, facilities for studying Swedish, occasional recreation and the other attractions of a capital, I should have preferred waiting in some of those wild valleys for the spring to open.
Word Of The Day