horses, and a houseful of people who have more food than work. Food, furniture, and clothing being all home-made, the difference in these matters between the family and the servants is very small; but there is a perfect distinction kept up. The servants invariably eat, sleep, and sit apart from the family, and have generally a distinct building adjoining to the family house. There is a third class, the connecting link between this class of small proprietors and the wandering Laplanders, whose lot is not so fortunate. They possess land also, and have houses, which, although small, are comfortable, with floors of wood and glass windows; but their situation is on the verge of the Fjelde, or in the glens which run into it, far above the level of the land which produces corn, and outside of the districts occupied by the other small proprietors. Their employments are consequently different. These Fjelde bonder live by the produce of cattle, by felling timber in those situations in which they have the advantage of a mountain-stream near the forest for floating the trees to a saw-mill; and, as a secondary object, by the sale of game, carried in a frozen state in winter to the low-country markets. Snow remains late in spring on their territory, and night frosts set in early in August; so that in the higher tracts on the borders of dense forests and of marshes, where these Scandinavian backwoodsmen have their land, the corn is generally frozen before the ear is filled. The bark of the pine, mixed and ground up with their ill-ripened oats, is their common bread; and the trout of the Fjelde lakes, dried and salted for winter use, forms no inconsiderable part of their provision. They live a harder and more laborious life, have a stronger frame of body, and more active character, than the inhabitants of the agricultural country. Winter is no time of rest and enjoyment for them. While the snow prevents the agricultural bonder from doing any outdoor work, they must drive home in sledges the hay cut and stacked during the summer in distant bogs and grass valleys in the Fjelde, inaccessible for horses until the snow has levelled all obstructions. It is only at this season too, that the trunks of trees felled in the depths of the forests can be dragged over the fallen timber and blocks of stone which cover the earth, to the side of the stream which is to float them on a thaw to the lower country. This class of the peasantry includes not merely the outside settlers on the verge of the Fjelde, and in the heads of the valleys of which the lower levels are cultivated, but also the inhabitants of extensive districts and amts, whose condition is more or less influenced by these circumstances. They are the most rough, but most interesting of the inhabitants of Norway. They retain the dress, manners, character, and athletic forms which we imagine as belonging to men in ancient times. Each district and valley has some peculiarity of costume, pronunciation, and even character; and intermarriages of the isolated group of inhabitants with those in the next valley, or in the lower grounds, are rare. There are said to be families in these remote glens which can trace their descent from the days of Harold Haarfagre.* It is not exactly necessary to believe that this peasant nobility have any real records of a lineage surpassing that of the most ancient nobility in Britain or France, and with the preservation of which neither privilege nor consideration in society was ever connected in Norway; but one may believe that lands in these remote glens seldom change possessors by purchase and sale, and may have descended very generally to the posterity of those who possessed the same acres in the earliest times, especially as internal wars and confiscations in the middle ages never extended to the possessions of the great mass of these humble udallers. One may believe that as the descendants of Rolf Ganger, the great proge * Gjæsling is the name of a bonder family living on their estate, called Sandbu, in the parish of Vaage in Gulbrandsdal, who have parchments, says the antiquary Gerard Schoning, proving that in the year 1336 the family was possessing and living on this estate: also in Loom parish, Hrolf Blakar of Blakar preserves a headpiece or helmet complete with an opening only for the eyes, and parts of a coat of mail, a long sword, and other articles of his ancestors; and a writing of King Hakon Magnussen the younger, who lodged a night in Blakar Gaard in the fourteenth year of his reign, anno 1364. These would be very ancient families in Britain. Are there many holding documents and family estates for so long a period? Of the authenticity of the documents of these bonder there can be no question. Schoning had them before him, and he was an antiquary of great learning and character. See Gerhard Schoning's Reise, Aaret, 1775; Budstikken, 1821. Nos. 91 and 92. nitor of William the Conqueror, may be traced to many of the thrones of Europe, those of Rolf's kinsmen who settled in Iceland, while his more ambitious relative steered to the south, may now exist as peaceful Icelandic peasants* in the original domiciles of their forefathers; more happy, Deppin supposes, during the thousand years which have elapsed since their ancestors parted on the shores of Norway, than their distant relatives on their thrones . It is at least pleasing to the imagination to see among this class of ancient proprietors the forms of countenance and figures to which we are accustomed, without perhaps having any distinct meaning, to attach the word noble. t. *Rolf Ganger is supposed to have resided in the island, on the coast of Sundmar, called Vigeræ, before his expedition to Normandy. Where wood is the building material, remains of ancient dwellings can scarcely exist; but a dry rock or excavation for holding ships remains, and is said to be that which Rolf used in fitting out his expedition. These docks or excavations for receiving vessels are called nousts in the ancient Norwegian language, a word still retained in Orkney and Zetland. Some antiquarians are fond of deriving this word noust from the Greek naosterion. † Roguvald, Earl of North and South More, had two surviving sons: Rolf Ganger, who conquered Normandy, and was ancestor of our Norman line of kings; and Thore the Silent, who on his father's death was created Earl of More, and married King Harald Haarfagre's daughter Aulof. Jorund, a son of this marriage, and consequently nephew of Rolf Ganger, the great progenitor of so many crowned heads, went to Iceland, took a piece of land in the northern division of the island, between the lake Udarvatn and the river Mogilsbek, and lived in a farm which he called Grund. His son Mar settled in a farm called Marstad. A bastard son of Earl Rognvald, Hrollaug, also settled on a farm now called Felzhverfi. The royal families of Europe have more cousins than they are aware of. CHAPTER X. FROM LAPLANDERS. OPHTHALMIA. REINDEER. LAPLAND GIRL-SLIGHTED BY THE NORWEGIANS-CONDITION.- HAMMER. November. A Lapland beauty, and really a pretty girl, came into our kitchen to-day on her way from the Fjelde. She was dressed very smartly, in a cap of blue and red cloth edged with a gold cord, a red woollen wrapper round her neck, a reindeer skin like a waggoner's frock reaching down to her knees, and a worsted sash as a girdle. She wore stockings or pantaloons of skin; shoes of the same, with the under leather or sole coming round the foot, and neatly sewed to the upper; and she had a green worsted plaid, which she wore over one shoulder like a Highlander. She was quite a theatrical figure, and very brisk and smart in her movements. She was not one of the Fjelde |