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I believe, after the few weeks' experience I had on the road to Trondhjem, I could without difficulty sit upon a monument and smile at grief. Perceiving through the cracks of the door that there was a good fire in the kitchen, and hearing the cheerful voices of the man and his wife, varied by the merry whistle my skydskaarl, I made bold to go in and ask leave to stand by the fire.
Shaking hands with small boys, however, is nothing uncommon in Norway. Every boy on the entire route shook hands with me. Whenever I settled the fare the skydskaarl invariably pulled off his cap, or, if he had none, gave a pull at the most prominent bunch of hair, and holding forth a flipper, more or less like a lump of raw beef, required me, by all the laws of politeness, to give it a shake.
Now, was there ever such a vehicle for a full-grown man to travel in? A little thing, with a body like the end of a canoe, perched up on two long shafts, with a pair of wheels in the rear; no springs, and only a few straps of leather for a harness; a board behind for the skydskaarl, or post-boy, to sit upon; and a horse not bigger than a large mountain goat to drag me over the road!
The skydskaarl leaned over with a general expression of the most profound astonishment and admiration. "See!" cried the old man; "this is the prize every dollar of it. But you must count it I'll help you so!" As there was no getting over the task imposed upon me without hurting his feelings, I had to sit down and help to count the money no very pleasant job for a hungry man.
Soon after leaving Storkterstad, a station about two days' journey from Lillehammer, on the main road to Trondhjem, I passed through a very steep and rugged defile in the mountains, with jagged rocks on the right and the foaming waters of the Logen on the left, where my attention was called by the skydskaarl to a small monument by the roadside hearing an inscription commemorative of the death of Colonel Sinclair.
This remarkable boy sits on a board behind the cariole, and drives it back to the station from which it starts. He is regarded somewhat in the light of a high public functionary by his contemporary ragamuffins, having been promoted from the fields or the barn-yard to the honorable position of skydskaarl.
Securing my cariole horse to a tree by the side of the road, I descended a steep bank under the guidance of my skydskaarl, a bright little fellow about ten years of age, who first called my attention to this remarkable phenomenon. I was soon compelled to follow his example, and crawl over the rocks like a caterpillar to avoid falling into the frightful abyss below.
It moved as I drew near; it thrust a boot out over the tail-board; it shook itself; it emitted a curious sound between a grunt and a yawn; it raised itself up and shook off a portion of the straw; it thrust a red night-cap out of the mass of shapeless rubbish; the night-cap contained a head and a matted shock of hair; there was a withered, old-fashioned little face on the front part of the head, underneath the shock of hair, which opened its mouth and eyes, and gazed at me vacantly; it was an old man or a boy, I could not tell which till it spoke, when I discovered that it was something between the two, and was the skydskaarl or hostler of this remarkable establishment.
At each station the traveler is furnished with a stunted little boy called the skydskaarl, usually clothed in the cast-off rags of his great-grandfather; his head ornamented by a flaming red night-cap, and his feet either bare or the next thing to it; his hair standing out in every direction like a mop dyed in whitewash and yellow ochre, and his face and hands freckled and sunburned, and not very clean, while his manners are any thing but cultivated.
On the road a dog ran out from the bushes and barked at us. The poor little skydskaarl was frantic with terror, and cried so lustily that I had to take him into the cariole, and put him under my legs to keep him from going into fits.
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