Midnight Sunbeams; or, Bits of Travel Through the Land of the Norseman by Edwin Coolidge Kimball

Author:Edwin Coolidge Kimball [Kimball, Edwin Coolidge]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783337541071
Google: XNySuAEACAAJ
Publisher: hansebooks
Published: 2018-06-16T00:38:38+00:00

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A MOUNTAIN WALK.

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CHAPTER IX.

A MOUNTAIN WALK.

Steamboat Service—A Night in a Mountain Sæter—Primitive Accommodations—A Talkative Farmer—Riding Horseback under Difficulties—An Exhausting Tramp and a Trial of Patience—Up the Geiranger Fjord to Merok—Approach to Hellesylt.

The steamboat service in Norway is excellent. The larger steamers run along the coast, and up the principal fjords, carrying the mails and freight, and are fitted with comfortable passenger accommodations.

The captain, mates, and purser all speak English, and often the stewards and others employed about the steamer understand English; we found them social and obliging, always ready to answer questions and impart information, and the captains were especially agreeable and well informed. These steamers run at frequent and regular intervals, and it is the boast of the Norwegians that their steamers deliver their mails with as much regularity, and as little interruption, as the railway mail service in other countries.

Upon the numerous narrow fjords penetrating far inland is a service of smaller steamers, mostly running during the summer months, occasionally taking extra routes for tourists. They run at stated but not frequent intervals, and in planning a trip through Norway it is necessary to give considerable study to the “Norges Communicationer,” a publication giving the time tables and routes of all steamers and the few railways in the country; and happy is the man who can arrange his journey so as not to lose a few days while waiting, at a little out-of-the-way place, for a steamer.

I had planned a three weeks’ trip, in which everything followed along serenely, provided I could walk across the country in one day between Vik on the Indfjord, and Sylte on the Norddalsfjord, a distance of twenty miles on the map; whereas, if I went by steamer down the Romsdalsfjord and drove across country, I must wait for two days for a steamer up the fjord, and my whole future journey would be disarranged; therefore I decided, if possible, to walk across to Sylte and there take the steamer. On inquiring I was told it was a pleasant walk through mountain valleys, easily accomplished in six hours; but I concluded afterwards that my informers knew no more about it than do you, gentle reader.

The innkeeper’s son at Veblungsnaes, a bright lad who was studying English, who had ordered a nice dinner for me, also engaged two boatmen. There is a fixed tariff for boatmen at so much per kilomètre, according to the number of rowers. Two hardy farmers rowed me down the fjord, keeping close to the rocky cliffs, over whose sides flowed numerous cascades; then we turned up the contracted Indfjord, with farm houses nestled amid green fields at the base of the rugged mountains, and arrived at a cluster of houses called Vik. For the row of an hour and a half the boatmen were perfectly satisfied with sixty-five cents, which included a fee to each of them besides the fixed tariff, and they were to return at their own expense. They both gave me a

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