On issuing from my dormitory, I found the weather was frightful. A deluge of rain, and wind, and thick mist filled the space between earth and sky. To attempt the passage of the Fjeld was not to be thought of, as there is no road whatever. Departure, therefore, being out of the question, I made up my mind to another day’s sojourn at the cottage, which was the most comfortless, dirty spot I ever met with in Thelemarken; and that is saying a good deal. During the day, most of the natives--Ole, my guide, among the rest--were away at the châlet. Besides myself, there were only two other persons left at home; and these, as my journey is at a stand-still, I may as well describe.
A tall, old man, his height bowed by the weight of more than eighty years, sat in a kubbe-stol--a high backed chair, made out of a solid trunk of tree, peculiar to Thelemarken--warming his knees at the fire in the corner, and mumbling to himself. Presently he lay down on a bench, and snored. Before long up he got, and spooned up a quantity of cold porridge; and then, turning his bleared eyes at me, as I sat finishing a sketch of the interior of the dwelling, including himself, croaked out,--
“Er du Embedsman?” (Art thou a Government servant?)
And then he commenced warming his knees and mumbling, and then snored as before, extended on the bench; and before long, rose and spooned up porridge. These were his daily and hourly avocations. His name was a grand one--Herrbjörn Hermanson--but the owner of it was disgusting. No wonder; he never washes at all, so that the appearance of his countenance may be conceived. When he departs this life he will undergo ablution.
_Apropos_ of this, in the absence of a better occupation, I gave a classic turn to the affair, and in my thoughts altered a line of Juvenal:--
Pars bona _Norwegiæ_ est, si verum admittimus, in qua Nemo sumit _aquam_ nisi mortuus.
That I don’t think is a libel. Indeed, with “the wretchlessness of most unclean living”--this application of the words of the Seventeenth Article is not mine, but a late geological Dean of Westminster’s, in his sermon on the cholera--the inhabitants of this country generally have a very practical acquaintance.
The other person who kept at home all day, was a young fellow of thirty, with swarthy face and gleaming eyes. His dark, shaggy head of hair was surmounted by a cap like that worn by the Finns, with a bunch of wild flowers stuck in a red band that encircled it. His dress was a short jacket, skin knee-breeches, and jack-boots. His time was occupied between smearing the boots with reindeer fat, sharpening a knife of formidable dimensions, and casting small bullets; while ever and anon he would repair to a small looking-glass of three inches square, hung against the wall, and contemplate a very forbidding, peculiar set of features therein. There was something uncanny about the look of the fellow which I did not much relish. Presently he takes my pipe from the table, and coolly commences smoking it. Subsequently I find that Joh is not as other men are, and only half in possession of his senses.