The Argosy — page 391: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

372 About Norway. At length we reached our highest point and began to descend. Tremendous and dangerous as seemed the climbing, the downward process was far worse. Every now and then the horse himself would stand still, and Jens had to rouse his drooping courage by a call: once or twice he even had to come back and lead him forward. So we went on, until we reached’ once more an open level plain, through which ran a noisy shallow stream—water pursues us every- where in Norway—the shallower the noisier, according to the fashion of this world and the custom of the people init. Here was green grass and soft turf; and the horse and its rider, now on excellent terms with each other, made up for lost time, passed Jens and A. with a bound, and went flying off on the wings of the wind. Before the pedestrians had traversed that long bit of plain, we had scoured it half-a-dozen times. Then a short ascent, and we reached the small farm of Gjelde, and were half way to Vetti. Here we dismounted, and found ourselves in a mountain hut or cottage, the interior so dark that we could scarcely distinguish the long deal table at one end, a rough chair or bench here and there, and a bed in a kind of recess. A woman, the sole occupant, ap- peared glad to see anyone coming up from the world, though that world might be no larger or more important than Aardal. Opposite this hut was another, where sat a woman and a girl near a braize fire, in a chimney almost as big as the hut itself. —The woman was rolling out some oat-cake dough into the thickness of a sixpence, large and round, about two feet in diameter. When rolled it seemed tough and hard, more like paper than anything else ‘This, with acrobatic dexterity and the aid of a long thin stick, she tossed upon a large flat piece of iron, a sort of frying-pan without sides, and placed it upon the embers. When baked it was tossed again on to a pile lying beside her. This was called “ flad-brod,” and flat it certainly was in every sense of the word: tasteless, and containing, one supposed, a small amount of nourishment. But the Norwegians seem able to keep life in the body with what would be gradual starvation to other people. No doubt their free healthy life, which calls for the smallest possible wear and tear of the nervous system, counts for a great deal in the matter. For, with it all, they are hardy and contented. The old woman sitting near her braize fire, baking her bread, was a veritable picture: a strange picture of life, full of rough power; a certain silent eloquence that carried its lesson, if one chose to see the application. She looked at us in a kindly manner, and nodded, but never moved from her position or ceased from her work. The hardest part of the road yet lay before us, and began with the very beginning. As we left the cottage, down in the fields of this little farm we saw two men ploughing in an original manner. Their arms were thrown round each other’s necks, and thus, naturally yoked together, they dragged the plough behind them, and the work was done. Gomicdooks.com