Read Ebook: Peeps at Many Lands: Norway by Mockler Ferryman A F Augustus Ferryman Cooper A Heaton Alfred Heaton Illustrator Jungmann Nico Illustrator

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MANNERS AND CUSTOMS

The religion of the country is the Lutheran, almost in its original form, for in some matters the Norwegians are most conservative. Though not, perhaps, what we would consider a religious-minded people, they are naturally good, honest, and kind, and they take their religion on trust. They pay tithes, and give Easter and Christmas offerings to their clergy willingly, since they regard the priest as a superior person, and hold him in high esteem. He is a man, like his fellows, and farms his own land, which appeals to the people in the country parts. Moreover, he is possessed of learning, and away from the towns he is mainly responsible for the national education.

The Norwegian Sabbath begins on Saturday evening and ends at noon on Sunday, after which time the day is spent in simple enjoyment as a true holiday. Then in the evening the boats start for home, and across the still waters one may hear the women singing glees, as often as not to the accompaniment of the fiddle.

A wedding causes quite as much interest and excitement in Norway as it does in England, and in the olden time the festivities lasted for a week or more. Nowadays the merry-making has been somewhat curtailed, but the actual ceremony has lost none of its solemnity and little of its brightness. In the towns civilization has robbed the wedding of its picturesqueness. The men are clothed in their best "blacks," as if going to a funeral, and the ladies wear dresses of Parisian style. But away in the depths of the country one may still see a real Norwegian wedding, with the bride and bridesmaids, if not also most of the guests, dressed in the national costume, and it is a pretty sight.

So they wend their way to the church; and after the service, if the good old customs be kept up, the party proceeds to a green close by and enjoys a boisterous dance until it is time to go on to the wedding supper. Feasting and merry-making then continue for several hours--in fact, the sleepiness of the guests is the only thing that breaks up the entertainment for the night. Next day the festivities are resumed, and are possibly carried on into a third day. The fiddler is always busy, for without him there can be no real fun, the people's love of music being no less than their love of dancing.

The violin is the one instrument which they know and understand, and it has been in use among the Norwegians for hundreds of years. Their most famous violin-player, Ole Bull, who died some few years ago, was looked on as a great composer and musician. But all over the country there are to be found men who can play after a fashion; and a century or so ago, when the people were still very superstitious, they fully believed that anyone who could play at all well had had intercourse with the fairies, who were supposed to be marvellous musicians and acquainted with an immense variety of beautiful tunes.

The food provided at a peasant's wedding feast is, of course, something out of the common, and the guests are supposed to bring a present of something good to eat, such as fresh meat, butter, old cream, cream porridge, or cheese, for the ordinary fare of the country folk is, as we have said, of the plainest.

With regard to the national costume, mentioned above, it is, unfortunately, a fact that it is gradually disappearing. There are parts, however, where there are no railways, no steamboats, and few tourists, and in such places the people still live much as they did a hundred years ago, even the men wearing clothes similar to those worn by their grandfathers and great-grandfathers, and some of these are quaint in the extreme.

Perhaps the quaintest dresses are those of the people of Saetersdal, a district in the South of Norway, between Christiansand and Telemarken; and, when properly turned out, the men are quite as "dressy" as the women. They wear a pair of trousers buttoned with half a dozen silver buttons tight round the ankles, and coming right up to the armpits. Several broad stripes adorn the legs from top to bottom. And the coat takes the form of a curious little cape, richly embroidered with silver, and having sleeves, fastened at the wrists with more silver buttons. Shoes, with buckles, white stockings, and a cut-down tall hat, gaily decorated with ribbons and embroidery, complete the costume. The women wear short skirts--only a little below the knees--of dark blue, with a bright trimming round the bottom; coloured stockings; a bodice laced with silver, and covered with silver brooches and other ornaments; a waistbelt, which is sometimes entirely of metal; a kerchief tied over the head, after the fashion of the bandana of West Indian negresses; and on occasions a shawl of many colours.

A step farther north, in what is called Lower Telemarken, a similar kind of dress still exists, though the man's waistcoat-jacket is of a somewhat different pattern and colour, and the women wear their skirts a trifle longer. On Sundays and great occasions the latter also put on cloth stockings and gloves, embroidered tastefully with trails of flowers.

The men do not dress up to the women. They confine themselves to a rough trouser suit, generally of dark blue, and a black felt hat. Even amongst the older men of the Hardanger one seldom sees the knee-breeches and stockings which used to be worn.

SCHOOL AND PLAY

I am not certain whether Norse boys and girls are very good, or whether they are spoilt. You may travel all day on a steamer with a well-to-do family from the town, or you may live in a farmhouse with a peasant's family for a month, and the chances are that you will never hear the parents say "Don't." One thing I am sure of: the children who live in the country parts do very much as they please; in the summer they go to bed when they feel tired, sometimes not till nearly midnight; and they are not worried about getting their boots and their clothes wet, because no Norwegian troubles his or her head about such matters. Moreover, the life is such a simple one that perhaps there is little opportunity for real naughtiness.

There is a great difficulty about the country schools, because in some districts the farms are miles and miles apart, and it would be quite impossible for the children to walk to school and back in the day. In such districts the Government schoolmasters have to go about from place to place, and teach the children in their own homes. If there should be two or three farms close together, one of the farmers provides a schoolroom in his house, and the schoolmaster lives with him as his guest for a time, and then goes on to another house. But the schoolmasters must give every child twelve weeks' schooling in the year. This does not amount to a great deal--only three months of school in the year!

The wonder is that the children contrive to remember anything that they have learned, with nine long months in which to forget it. Yet they work hard while they are about it; they are inspected every year, and they are required to pass quite difficult examinations at the end. It is expected, however, that before long the twelve weeks' compulsory schooling will be increased to fifteen weeks.

In the towns the children are not forced to attend school for more than the twelve weeks in the year, but there are, of course, numbers of private schools, high schools, etc., to which parents can send their children, on payment, for a superior education. And at such schools the work goes on for a much longer period of the year--in fact, all through the year, except for two months in the summer and a week at Christmas and at Easter.

It is all much the same as our own arrangements in England. There is the Government school, where the education is free, and there are other schools, where a higher education is paid for. But the compulsory schooling does not end with the seven years at the Government schools referred to above, for there are continuation schools, at which the pupils have to put in a further twenty-four weeks.

In Norway there are no large public schools for boarders, so, in spite of their long holidays, the children do not have half the fun that English boys and girls have. There is no cricket, football, hockey, golf, or any game of that sort, and there is not a racquet-, fives-, or tennis-court in the land. How then, you will ask, do they manage to amuse themselves?

It must be remembered that the winter is much longer in Norway than it is with us, and even if the boys wanted to play football they would not be able to do so, as the ground is covered with snow. At that season they have their various winter sports to keep them busy--ski-ing, skating, tobogganing, and the like, and they do not require any other games. In the summer, instead of playing cricket, they go for walking tours into the mountains, or they go fishing in the rivers and lakes, or sometimes shooting.

Though the Norwegians boast that ball games have been played in the country since Saga times, such games are of the most elementary kind, and would be scorned by any English boy. But for all that the Norse boys are every bit as manly as any other boys, because they enjoy many forms of sport which make them so; and they are strong, because they take plenty of exercise, and have physical drill in their schools.

This brings us to other games played by Norwegian children--not the games which are purchased in the shops in Christiania, Bergen, and other towns, but the games which are played without any of the bought things. Of course the girls have dolls and dolls' houses and dolls' tea-parties, like the girls of every land, and there are toys of every description in the shops. The peasant children, however, who live far out in the country, never see a shop, and have to provide themselves with things to play with; but it is wonderful what an amount of amusement they can get out of an old bone, or a block of wood, tied to a yard or two of string.

As a rule their fathers are good hands at carving wood, so toys are easily made for the smaller children, and one finds everywhere such simple toys as wooden dolls, animals, miniature boats, sleighs, and carts.

But the real enjoyment of the Norwegian children--at any rate of the girls--is the outdoor game, played when the weather is fine, both in the town and in the country, wherever there are enough children to make a game. To see a bevy of these quaint little girls throwing heart and soul into their games is delightful, and they have scores and scores of different ones. In most of them dancing and singing play a great part, and the most popular form of game is what is called a "Ring Dance," in which, as the name implies, the players join hands and dance round in a circle.

Many of these ring dances have their counterpart in English games, and the tunes and words sung to them are almost similar. Whether we adopted them from the Norwegians, or they adopted them from us, is a matter which will probably never be decided, but several games of this kind are common to all Europe. "Blind Man's Buff," "Hunt the Slipper," and "Forfeits," for instance, are found nearly everywhere. Here is the Norse version of "Round and round the Mulberry Bush," which in some parts is called "The Washing-Maids' Dance," and in others "Round the Juniper Bush":

"So we go round the juniper bush, the juniper bush, the juniper bush, So we go round the juniper bush early on Monday morning. This is the way we wash our clothes, wash our clothes, wash our clothes, This is the way we wash our clothes early on Monday morning.

"So we go round the juniper bush, the juniper bush, the juniper bush, So we go round the juniper bush early on Tuesday morning. This is the way we ring out our clothes, ring out our clothes, ring out our clothes, This is the way we ring out our clothes early on Tuesday morning."

The washing operations proceed through the next three days of the week, with a verse to each day. Thus on Wednesday they hang up the clothes, on Thursday they mangle them, and on Friday iron them. Then on Saturday they scrub the floor, and on Sunday go to church.

With each verse the children dance hand in hand round the imaginary juniper bush, singing lustily, and illustrating the different actions of the washing operations. Finally, two and two and arm in arm, they promenade round, as if going to church, and generally prolong the walk while they sing the last verse a second time.

When the counting begins the players let go hands, and, clapping to the tune, spin round separately until the word "five" is reached, when they should be in position ready to join hands again and continue to gallop round in the original circle.

The aim of the game is to keep things going until the verse has been sung three times, but, of course, the players often become giddy and lose their places.

There is not space to describe more of these ring dances here, but there are many of them, and a great many which our English children would do well to adopt.

Our good old street game of "Hop-scotch" you may see played almost anywhere in Norway under the somewhat curious name of "Hop-in-Paradise," while in some parts "Cat's Cradle," though a milder form of amusement, is quite popular, and a large variety of figures is known.

Then the girls are very fond of dressing up as brides, with crowns and all, and having a mock wedding, with its accompanying procession and dancing. Above all things they love dancing, and their fathers and grandfathers play the fiddle for them for many an hour of a winter's evening, while the mothers sing nursery rhymes to the smaller children. And, as with the games, these jingles are more or less the same as our own. They have "This is the house that Jack built," with the malt, and the rat, and everything, only that they prefer the name Jacob to Jack. They have "Fly away, Peter, fly away, Paul"; and the baby on his mother's knee has the joy of being shaken about to "This is the way the farmer rides, bumpety-bumpety-bump."

SOME FAIRY TALES

Norwegian children are just as fond of fairy stories as are any other children, and they are lucky in having a great number, for that famous story-teller, Hans Christian Andersen, was a Dane, and as the Danish language is very like the Norwegian, his stories were probably known in Norway long before they were known in England. But the Norwegians have plenty of other stories of their own, and they love to sit by the fire of burning logs or round the stove in the long winter evenings and listen to them. Of course, they know all about people like Cinderella and Jack the Giant-Killer, but their favourite hero is called by the name of Ashpot, who is sometimes a kind of boy Cinderella and sometimes a Jack the Giant-Killer.

The following are two stories which the little yellow-haired Norse children gloat over:

Once upon a time there was a man who had been out cutting wood, and when he came home he found that he had left his coat behind, so he told his little daughter to go and fetch it. The child started off, but before she reached the wood darkness came on, and suddenly a great big hill-giant swooped down upon her.

So the giant agreed, and the next night, when she went to fetch the bread, he came and carried her off. As soon as it was found that she was missing, her father sent her eldest brother to look for her, but he came back without finding her. The second brother was also sent, but with no better result. At last the father turned to his youngest son, who was the drudge of the house, and said: "Now, Ashpot, you go and see if you can find your sister."

So away went Ashpot, and no sooner had he reached the wood than he met a bear.

"Friend bear," said Ashpot, "will you help me?"

"Willingly," answered the bear. "Get up on my back."

And Ashpot mounted the bear's back and rode off. Presently they met a wolf.

"Friend wolf," said Ashpot, "will you do some work for me ?"

"Willingly," answered the wolf.

"Then jump up behind," said Ashpot, and the three went on deeper into the wood.

They next met a fox, and then a hare, both of whom were enlisted into Ashpot's service, and, mounted on the back of the bear, were swiftly carried off to the giant's abode.

"Good-day, Mr. Giant!" said they.

"Scratch my back!" roared the giant, who lay stretched in front of the fire warming himself.

The hare immediately climbed up and began to scratch as desired; but the giant knocked him over, and down he fell on to the hearth-stone, breaking off his fore-legs, since which time all hares have had short fore-legs.

The fox next clambered up to scratch the giant's back, but he was served like the hare. Then the wolf's turn came, but the giant said that he was no better at scratching than the others.

"All right," answered Bruin; "I know all about scratching," and he forthwith dug his claws into the giant's back and ripped it into a thousand pieces.

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