Gamle Norge: Rambles and Scrambles in Norway

Tyssestrængene Fos.OR comparatively few years has Norway received any attention from the travelling public. The beauty and grandeur of the country and the simple habits of the people were known to but few, and only heard of occasionally from some energetic salmon fisher who preferred outdoor life, good sport, plain food, and vigorous health to the constant whirl of advanced civilisation, busy cities, over-crowded soirées, high-pressure dinners, and the general hurry-skurry of modern life. The words “Gamle Norge,” or old Norway, while exciting the greatest enthusiasm in Norway itself, rejoice the heart not only of many an Englishman who has become practically acquainted with its charms, but of those who, having heard of them, long to go and judge for themselves. Nor is the expression of modern introduction; it was evidently well known in the sixteenth century, as our immortal bard alludes to it in Hamlet.

Forty-five years ago Norway and its salmon fisheries were unknown luxuries. Even as late as 1839 Murray published a post-octavo Handbook for Travellers in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, in the preface to which occur the subjoined passages:—

“The principal object of the following pages is to afford such of my travelling countrymen as are disposed to quit the more beaten paths of Southern Europe, and explore the less known, but equally romantic, regions of the north, some useful information as to time and distance, which at present they can only obtain by time and experience. Beyond Hamburg all is unknown land; no guide-book contains any account of the Baltic steamboats, still less of the means of travelling, either by land or water, in the more distant lands of Norway and Sweden. At the steam-packet offices in London you may learn that an English steamer sails three times a month from Lubec to Stockholm, but no further information can be obtained. “Unless the weather is unusually stormy, and the passage of the vessel has consequently been delayed, the steamer remains in the outer harbour, called Klippen, for four or five hours; enabling the passengers who are going straight to Norway to inspect the city, which is well worth seeing. A miniature steamboat, the smallest I have ever seen, conveys you from the quay, at which the larger vessel remains moored, up the long harbour to the town itself, the journey occupying about half-an-hour. In the afternoon theConstitution continues her voyage, stretching much further out to sea, in crossing the Skager Rack, until, at an early hour the next morning, you reach Frederiksværn, the principal arsenal of Norway, situated at the entrance of the winding fjord of Christiania. From this place a smaller coasting steamboat conveys the passengers to Christiania, touching, in its passage up the Christiania fjord, at the various small towns and villages on either shore.