Polar bears are sometimes found upon floating ice-cakes a hundred miles from land, having been caught during some sudden break up of the vast ice-fields of arctic seas, and every year a dozen or more come drifting down to the northern shores of Iceland, where, ravenous after their long voyage, they fall furiously upon the herds. Their life on shore, however, is very brief, as the inhabitants rise in arms and speedily dispatch them.
On one of the _fjords_, or bays, which so deeply indent the coast of Norway lived two lads, sons of well-to-do farmers, who, besides their fields of rye and wheat, their _marks_, or pasture fields, and their _säters_, or hay-making fields, farther away, had also an interest in the fisheries for which Norway is so famous. The salmon, the herring, and the cod are all caught in great numbers; so also is the shark, and used for its oil, which passes for cod-liver oil.
The fathers of Lars and Klaus were, however, peasants. They worked on their farms, and above their green pastures rose lofty mountains clad in fir-trees, dusky pines, mottled beeches, and silver birches. Klaus and Lars explored together the recesses of these mountains; together they hunted for bears; together they sailed over the blue waters of the _fjord_, in and out of the swift currents, and on and up into the streams fed by the great ice _fjelds_. They were always together. If any one wanted Klaus, he asked where Lars had gone; and if one had seen Lars, he knew Klaus would soon follow. It was their delight to see which could excel the other in the management of their fishing _jagts_, those square-sailed slow craft, and for days they would cruise about the haunts of the eider-duck--not to kill it, for that is forbidden, the bird being too valuable, but to filch from the sides of its nest the lovely down which the birds pluck from their own breasts.
They went to school, too, in the winter, and both were confirmed by the village pastor as soon as they had been well prepared for that solemn rite, which is of so much social as well as religious importance in their country.
In the short hot summer they helped the fishermen split the cod and spread them on the rocks to dry, or they made lemming traps and sought to see how many of the hated vermin they could capture.