When we left the pasture in the morning, to head into the mountains in a north-easterly direction, Brit threw the broom and the scouring-rush scrub after us, laughing and wishing we should break our necks and legs, and not shoot anything but the crows and buzzards. With this good wish for luck on our hunt, we set off on our way.
It was overcast and cool. The fog still hovered around the mountains; only once in a while did the sun break halfway through, and we could see the impressions of the towering outline of mounds and domes. Soon the pastures were behind us, and the monotone call of the snow bunting blended with the gack-gack of the grouse, down between dwarf birches, juniper bushes and willows. Only after a couple of hours did we reach the domain of lichens; reindeer moss, and gold- and grey beard lichens, and similarly frugal plants covered the slopes, forming a gray-green foreground in front of the dreary moss-covered tundra that spread itself desolately into the distance.
The whistles of golden plovers, the clunk of the crows, and wild screams of the buzzards would occasionally cut through the soughing of the wind and meltwater brooks. But after a little while, these traces of flora and fauna also grew more and more sparse; we would soon be among the endless masses of tors and moraines of the Alpine region, with meltwater rivers criss-crossing the valleys. Here the reindeer seek a healthy and airy sojourn in the summer, a sanctuary from the troublesome botfly. And here they have food in abundance. There are grasses and willows in the small valleys between these huge mounds of rock, there is lichen on the slopes, there is white saxifrage and blue gentian; the glacial buttercup shoots up, often just to the edge of the snow pockets, and on the dry slopes creep silver–white reindeer blooms. On these open plains, the reindeer catch sight of their enemies at a great distance; and the wind that constantly sweeps over them warns them of any danger that may be approaching, long before the sharp eyes of the animals can detect anything.
By dinnertime, we were by Gråhø. The sun had long since dispersed the fog, and a fresh southerly wind swept away the shadow from one bank of cloud after the other, northwards. Tor and Anders turned their red caps inside out, so they showed grey, for now we could expect to get animals in our sights. We turned our binoculars towards all the heights and slopes of few leagues around, but there was nothing to be seen. Tor went quietly in front, his head drooped as he looked down between the rocks; finally he lay down, as long as he was.
“Here are some animal tracks,” he said, showing me the mark in the clover; to my untrained eye, they were almost invisible. “And there is the remains of an eaten reindeer bloom; it’s so fresh that the sap is still seeping out of it. There’s been a hop and a chew here, and it wasn’t long ago either.”
“Look at the dog!” said Anders, who came after us, leading a strong farm dog with a pointed snout and pointed ears, in a harness. “See how he scents the wind. Either there have been animals here, or they are not far away.”
“Yes, reindeer is what he has scented; it’s neither hare nor mountain fox, since he raises his nose so high,” said Tor; he patted the dog, which wagged its tail and dragged at the scent in short, snorting breaths.
“Yes, get him, Bamse! They’re not so close yet, but it can’t be long before we’ll get to see them. I suppose it may be time to eat nons, 1 we’ve gone reasonably far today, and it’s not certain we’ll be able to enjoy any rest, when we get to see the reindeer. There is water here, and it’s good enough,” he added, putting down his knapsack and gun, without waiting for a reply. Anders tied the dog to a stone, lay down on all fours and drank of the cold meltwater that trickled between the rocks. I threw myself down, too. Only Sir John found the stop highly untimely; he complained about enjoying food, rest, tobacco, and everything possible, before he had seen some reindeer. Only after Tor had made him understand that the animals were several English miles away, and that it would, after all, take several hours for us to get close to them, did he relent. He stretched as long as he was on the uneven stones and contented himself with the food that Mari Lårgard had sent with us, with the meltwater, and a dram from the hunting flask.
Just as we had come into the mountains, Tor had grown silent and terse; he paid attention to everything, far and near. But now during our rest he was a different man. He told in short, quick sketches one hunting story he had experienced after another, and showed us the location of more than one hunting boast.
“I was stalking a buck one time,” he told me, “over there by Bleikvang pasture. He came within range, and I shot him so that he fell. But as I came towards him, he jumped in the air, set off, and gone was he! He went in towards Stygghø; I went to look for him, even though it was dark, but I couldn’t find him. I slept that night a little away from Blekvang, and in the morning I swept back to Stygghø, and as I went, I saw a crow, high between the rocks; I thought it might be interesting to see what he might be sitting on. When I came up to him, I saw an antler sticking up in the air. There lay the buck, and I was glad. But while I was skinning it, a small flock of animals came by; there were nine beautiful animals and one golden buck with antlers so big that I never saw the like. I lay down, but was not able to get a good shot at them. Finally, they went by me in a row; then I shot, and the buck went down. When I came closer to him, I thought, ‘I certainly had a time of it, getting hold of you,’ and then I took hold of one of his antlers. But as I was about to put my knife in his neck, he jumped up so we tumbled head over heels down through the scree; the knife went one way, and I and the buck went the other—but I didn’t let go. He began to butt, too, the sorry beast, and strike with his forelegs. But he didn’t have much power, because I managed to keep aside, and had a good hold of the root of his antlers. Once or twice, we tumbled down through the scree, and I took more than one knock. Then he shook and staggered his last. There he lay.
I had no tool other than an awl, and I couldn’t kill him with that. I thought I might beat his skull in with a stone, but I had no conscience for it; so I went up again, found my rifle and loaded it. When I came down again, I put the muzzle to its neck and shot; but he jumped up high once more before he fell. Then I buried them in the scree, the both of them, and laid rocks on top, so the wolverine wouldn’t eat them up; for I couldn’t find my knife to skin or part them. And I was lame and rotten in my carcass for more than eight days after that game.”
Now Sir John told some of the best stories he said he had experienced while hunting deer at a relative’s in Scotland. They, every one of them, went a certain way; first, the hunter sends the animal a killing bullet, and then he superfluously plunges his knife into its neck, according to all the rules of the sport.
“Maybe the stag doesn’t need such a strong lethal shot,” said Tor. “You have to break the legs, or hit the heart of a reindeer, before he’ll stay down. There was a shooter in the western mountains, called Gullbrand Glesne. He was married to the grandmother of the boy you saw down in the pasture last night, and he is supposed to have been a good shooter. One autumn he stalked a fine buck; he shot him so that he remained down, and he couldn’t know anything other than that the buck was stone dead. Then he went down and sat himself astride its back, as they often do, to separate the neck bone from the skull. But just as he sat down, the buck jumped up, laid his antlers backwards, and pressed him fast between them, so that he sat as if in an armchair, and then off they went, for the bullet had only raked the buck’s skull, and knocked him out. Such a ride as the one Gullbrand had, has no human ever had. They went through weather and wind, over the worst glaciers and moraines. Straight to the ridge at Besseggen went the buck. But then Gullbrand prayed to our Lord, for he thought he would never see the sun or the moon again. But finally, the reindeer began to swim right across the lake, with the shooter on his back. Meanwhile, Gullbrand had got his knife loose, and as the buck put his feet on land, he plunged the knife into his neck, and dead was he. But Gullbrand Glesne would not have made that journey again, not for all the riches there are.”
“I have heard one such story of a stalker who became a deer-rider in England,” said Sir John with his usual insensitivity for vowel sounds.
“Blicher tells a similar story from Jutland,” I said.2
“But what kind of egg was it you mentioned, Thur; Pesseggen?” he interrupted me.
“Do you mean Besseggen?” asked Tor. “There is a sharp ridge between the lakes Gjende and Bessvatnet; it is so steep it overhangs, and so narrow that when one stands and throws a stone with each hand, then they roll down, each into its own water. Reindeer shooters cross there in good weather; otherwise it is not passable. But there was a stranger from up in Skjåk, called Ola Storbråtå. He went across with an adult reindeer buck on his neck.”
“How high is the mountain above the lakes?” asked Sir John.
“Oh, it’s not quite as high as the Rondes,” said Tor, “but it’s more than seven-hundred ells. I followed a captain there once, a land surveyor who had measured it. Yes, Anders was also there.”
“Yes, he was the best man I have known,” said Anders eagerly. “He was so friendly and easy-going and carefree that there was no moderation to it. And he could tell stories about all sorts of things, and he sang ballads, the like of which I have never heard. But things nearly went badly for him up on the Rondes. We had been on top of the western peak and built a cairn; there he came out on to a cornice which was both steep and as smooth as bare ice, and he fell off, and went down a couple of hundred ells, but when we met him again, he was walking along, laughing, for he had scrubbed off most of his trousers, he said.
“Up there you can go over the edge before you know it”, said Tor, “for travelling about the Rondes and in the Ronde-fields is not easy. The reindeer find it easy enough, but the shooters are left behind, if they don’t suffer worse. There was once a reindeer shooter who should travel across there, but he also came well from it. He walked, following the trail of a flock of reindeer along a snowfield, and didn’t notice anything else; at length he could go no farther forward, nor could he come back, and he saw nothing but his impending death; so he thought, “It may as well be now as later!” He had a dog with him; he shot it first, but when he had shot, and began to reload, a great avalanche loosened, and took him with it, and he slid down with the snow until he stopped somewhere he could go on from. And he didn’t suffer any injury, but lived many years after that.”
“You tell so many stories, Thur, and don’t suffer other men to speak,” said Sir John, who had long been wanting to tell. “I also have some stories to tell, from England. There was an old shooter who came from Scotland, who told me. Once, he said, there were two stalkers in the woods, to shoot deer. They had tartan caps, the both of them, and each thought he had a lovely red deer in front of him. They crawled and they crawled, and they moved quietly forwards, and then they shot at the same time, and then they were both dead.”
“Who could have known about that?” asked Anders.
“One of them lived long enough that he got to tell it to the parson,” replied Sir John.
“But then there was another story that was equally remarkable, of the same man’s telling. There was a stalker hunting a deer, and he saw an ancient man with a tartan cap. He shouted to him, but the man didn’t answer. And when he looked up from his rifle, it was an ancient stag with great branching antlers; but when he would shoot, it was an old man with a tartan cap. He grew so scared, but he shot anyway, and it was an ancient stag with great branching antlers, the like of which hadn’t been shot for hundreds of years.”
We were rested; every trace of weariness was gone, and when we walked across the moraines again, we felt how the potent mountain air made our muscles strong and our gait easy. We had barely gone a thousand paces on the eastern slope of Gråhø before Tor stopped. He shaded his eye, reached for my binoculars and said:
“It is not easy to see the grey animals amidst the granite. There’s a flock: three, four, one fine buck, and one more! Seven, eight, ten, twelve, thirteen!” he counted.
“If there are thirteen, then one is fay,” cried Anders.
“Look at the gray stone moraine that’s covered in snow; there’s something like a tongue of snow; they’ll reach it in a little while. There’s no food to find in the moraines, you know,” said Tor, showing us with his gun where to look.
It was a league away. We had to cross a deep valley and go north of the height where the animals were, straight towards Gråhø, if we wanted to come from down wind, and meet the flock above the snowfield. It was a detour of a couple of leagues, across moraines and patches of snow, and in a storm from the south; the trip would have been heavy and exhausting enough under other circumstances, but the lust to hunt throbbed in our limbs, and the yearning to get within range of the flock of animals gave us wings and made our way easy. But when we had stalked to the edge of the snowfield, we found just the traces of the flock.
“Northwards again!” said Tor, and we headed away towards a small ridge, where we would have a clearer view.
“Get down!” said Tor suddenly, throwing himself to the ground. “I see the antler of a buck against the sky, just behind the snowfield. He is not eight hundred paces from us; lie down down flat, and we may be able to shoot at him; crawling here won’t do us any good; there isn’t a stone to hide behind.”
For a long time we didn’t see anything but the antler of the great buck. It turned here and there, as if he were on guard. It didn’t notice us; we were down wind. But suddenly the whole flock jumped on to the side of snowfield that leaned towards us. I fumbled for my gun; but Tor took me calmly by the arm and said: “Steady, now; I will say when!”
They were there, all thirteen; the calves and both bucks chased each others around in reckless play. Soon they were standing on two legs, clashing antlers and striking one another with their forefeet; now they jumped as high as a man, with all four legs in the air at the same time; now they kicked their hind legs lustily so their flanks were high up in the air, and the ice and snow showered down, and flurried and flew about them.
“This was some play,” said Anders, laughing. “They’re playing and jumping so that we can see both the sun and the moon beneath their feet.”
“Then the weather will be bad,” said Tor; “when the reindeer plays, it forewarns bad weather.”
The game continued, growing wilder and wilder; the jumping and the posing grew so bold and odd that we had to laugh aloud. But in the middle of the game one of the bucks came straight towards us at full tilt. The flock came after.
“Take care, now; aim at its chest or shoulder!” whispered Tor, but the cocking of our rifles told him that his first reminder was unnecessary. My hand shook, and my heart raced: in a few seconds the big buck would be within range. But as he approached the edge of the snowfield, a buzzard flew up out of the moraine. For one second, both the buck and the whole flock stood as if nailed to the spot, with the their heads thrown backwards and rattling antlers, staring up at the falcon, which sailed away with a wild screech. In the next second they threw themselves around like a wind, and went as a flock and company along the snowfield, followed by a whistling rifle bullet.
“Oh, that was too far; it was throwing lead into the air,” Tor said.
Sir John had chosen another target; in impotent indignation, he had sent his shot towards the innocent cause of the escape. But the proud bird merely flapped its wings, and sailed calmly over our heads.
“Some hope of hitting that!” laughed Anders.
To get a broader view, we went further on. The flock came into view again on another hill. Tor followed it closely with his eyes. When it disappeared behind the ridge, Anders said:
“That bird is always in the way, here in the mountains. Had he not been, then the flock would have come straight at us.”
“It may well be that we meet the flock yet, before the sun goes down,” Tor said.
We sat down and rested, while Sir John murmured and wondered that the reindeer were startled by so little.
“So little?” said Tor. “It runs if a snow bunting flies chirping between the rocks; and if a mountain hare pops up, then it runs off as if it were a matter of life and death!”
Sir John guessed a thousand times where the reindeer might be now, occasionally spicing his speech with an outburst of bitterness, directed at the interfering birds. Then he went to entertain himself with Tor, who a few years before had brought a relative of his on a couple of unfortunate reindeer hunts up here, a certain Bilton, author of a big book on hunting and fishing in Norway.3 In that context he told of a strange accident he’d had, the only time he had been within range of a flock of reindeer. It was up on of the mountains of Bergen. He and a couple of other Englishmen shot, the animals were frightened and ran across the new ice on a water. Sir John and his comrades pursued them until the ice broke. And the shooters who were with them risked their lives, dragging them ashore. While Sir John told in his kauderwelsch, and ended with a pious exposition on the Catholic atmosphere that had gripped him when he was in the mountains during the evening, I sat, lost in the mighty landscape before us.
The mighty massif of the Rondes lay as a great semicircle to the south; in the thin, transparent air, it looked as if it were barely a league away. In the midst of the half ring stands a solitary peak, the Trollronde.4 A cloud stood before the sun, casting a shadow across the mighty group, but the tops and the edges were sharply drawn against the clear blue sky in the south-east. It was the inside of the ring that faced us. The Trollronde, in the middle, obscured the view of some of the south-eastern Rondes. The tors we saw in the east were deeply ridged, and consisted of bright stone moraines. The southerly and westerly were all covered in great snowfields from top to bottom.
The mountain plateau stretched towards the west and north: brownish, gray–green, endless and miserable. The monotony was only interrupted by the shadows of drifting clouds and fogs rising from the wild valleys which followed the course of the river. In the sky, furthest out, from Snøhetta in the north to the abundance of the Lom- and Vågå mountains in the west, the thermals gave the mountains, their ridges, peaks and edges, fantastic dimensions. Through this quivering, transparent heat, the rays of the sun spread across the snow- and ice fields of the western mountains; wine-red clouds with golden rims hovered above them, and a blushing golden luster beamed back across the whole northwestern sky.
But it was time to come away. We still had a long and tiring walk to the cabin at Uløy, a shooting-cabin at the foot of the western Ronde; we would lie there that night, and Hans would meet us there with the pack horse. Sir John asked which direction the cabin lay in, and Tor pointed to the base of the nearest tor—roughly the same direction the flock of reindeer had taken. We walked across mountain slopes and snowfields, over heights and valleys, one scree down and the other up. The dog often strained at its harness, nosing the wind, and Tor and Anders occasionally exchanged some words between themselves, which suggested that we were still on track. We got new courage and felt no more weariness. The wind had fallen off, and the last rays of the sun lay across rocks and snowfields.
By a field immediately above us, I saw caught sight of a pair of antlers that came up from a depression.
“Get down!” whispered Tor, at the same time.
We made a plan in a hurry: I would shoot the buck to the left, Sir John the one to the right. Tor followed us with the dog and would loose it immediately if an animal was wounded. We crawled forwards between the rocks on our hands and knees, until we could see the buck in the little depression where the flock stood. They were the same thirteen animals we had seen on the ice. The buck on the left stood in a good position; there were two animals in a row with him, one before and one behind; just above stood a calf. The range was long, but not too far, and it was difficult to move farther forward without being seen. I warned Sir John, put the gun to my eye, and was about to fire, when he got up boldly, crying aloud: “Don’t shoot, for God’s sake, it’s far too far!”
“It’s not too far!” Tor whispered impatiently.
Sir John now thought that he should take the initiative, but in a confusion that was not the best testimony to his deer-hunting experiences in Scotland, he wanted first to run some paces forward; with that, he stumbled into the dog’s lead, fell over, and tore the dog loose, which at full tilt set off up through the scree. I sent my bullet after the fleeing animal, but to no avail. But during the man’s fall, Tor had snatched up his rifle, and thrown it to his cheek. It went off, and one of the bucks set off, with a mighty leap into the midst of the flock, and went head over heels into the snow. He got up again on to its forelegs, but immediately fell with a deep gasp. Anders and I began a jubilant hunting call—accompanied by some English noises, which the knight of pathetic figure made, about his knees and “the stupid reindeer he’d never get to shoot.”
We hurried to the snowfield, where the dog was on guard, licking the blood of the proud animal that was lying, still gasping for air. Tor ended its death struggle by plunging his knife into its neck, and when we had looked at it from all angles, he began to flay it. Anders helped, to speed things up. We took the skin, the antlers, and the legs with us; the rest was buried in the scree, to be fetched the following day; we tipped a castle of great stones over it, to keep it from the wolverine.
When we were about to go on our way, Sir John began again to guess where the reindeer could be; he asked Tor where he thought they had gone, and whether it mightn’t be possible to meet them, for he would still like to to shoot “a deer.”
“Yes,” said Tor seriously, “I shall tell you; we could happen upon them if we went across Bråkdalshø; I think we would probably meet them at the Rondhalsen; they won’t come down in any other place, judging by the direction they took. But before we get there, it’ll be black night, and it’s no joke to find your way there in the bright day; at night you’d break off both hands and feet.”
Sir John had no mind for such a trip in the the dark night; he held his neck and limbs too dear. So we went down on another side of Bråkdalshø, through a valley of lush grass and rich flowers, and then walked for a while on a firm grass floor along the Vesle-Ula, one of the rivers that comes down from the Rondes. The twilight came on, and the Evening Star came out. Soon the grass floor ended, and it led out into a scree of loose stones that occasionally slid out into the river beneath our feet, and sometimes we went with them.
These detours out into the cold river water caused Sir John to lighten his heart with many English expletives, which I could not begin to make sense of in Norwegian.
“You may think it is bad here now, you,” said Anders, “but you should have been with us last year after Michaelmas. Then Tor shot a buck, and we went and looked for it between the mounds here until it began to snow and flurry so that we couldn’t see our hand before us. Finally we came down into the valley by the river here and fell into a hole every other step we took. As we walked and waded in the snow and the darkness, we went out into the river or in a hole in the scree so that we hit our guns on the rocks.”
Sir John grew very tired and impatient. Every moment he asked how far it was to “the damned shooter’s cabin”, and to begin with, received the same answer: it was “a good league”. After a while, it was reduced to “a little bit;” but it never seemed to end. Finally, after a small turn up from the river, we caught the smell of it in our nostrils. Our night quarters could not be far away. But still we had to cross a hillside, go along a low ridge, and across a marsh; then we came on to the firm grass floor
“Here is the Uløy cabin,” said Tor.
I couldn’t see anything other than some heaps of rock, and a continuation of the rock wall. But down in the wall opened a small door or a hole, and a strong light shone out; shadows passed in front of the light, and a couple of people came out.
“There are probably more shooters here,” said Anders. “Good evening, Per, now you’ll meet some strangers! It’s Per Fuggelskjelle, one of those who built the cabin, to stay in during the winter, when he stays here for the grouse,” he added for us. “And here’s Hans, too. Good evening! Did you get here in time with the pack horse?”
“I came while it was light, I did, fellow, and I have decorated the cottage and put new moss in the beds; Per Fuggelskjelle came a while ago. I think you must’ve shot a buck; I see Tor is carrying a pair of antlers.”
“God damn these people and their cabins!” from Sir John. “There may be room for two here, but we are six. I remember Bilton talks about such a damned hole in his book about Norway.”
I humbled myself and crawled in. The door was certainly low, but it was better inside than out in the cold, dark night. There was a fire in the pit. It looked very warm and doll’s house-like inside.
I sat myself on the bunk; it was disturbingly close to the hearth and took up the entire length of the wall opposite the door. It was filled with reindeer moss and lichen, and Hans had provided it with a bed sheet—an unheard of luxury in the Uløy cabin—and with our capes. There was not much woodwork in the cabin; only the door was joined; the rest was largely nature’s own work. The cabin actually lies in a cleft: the right wall, where the fireplace stands, is the naked mountain wall itself; the other two are made of large slabs that reach from floor to ceiling; the low roof is also made of slabs.
After the strenuous walk through the scree beneath the dark shadow of the western Ronde in the cool evening, it was good to find shelter in this warm, clean and pleasant retreat. Eventually Sir John also bent his head beneath the door frame. But when he was inside and standing at his full height—he was three well-measured ells—he banged his forehead against one of the beams in the sloping roof, which left a sooty mark on his face. He grew fierce, but should have realized that the cabin is built just to sit or lie in.
For Per Fuggelskjelle, the builder himself, it was certainly high enough beneath the roof, for he was neither heavy nor long. Now he sat in the corner between the door wall and Anders and Tor, who have sat themselves on the long bench, the only seat in the cabin. There is little space, for the whole bench from the bunk to the door wall is only built for two people, or in height two-and-a-half. He was a real mountain shooter, this Per. There is a certain look in his playful gray–green eyes, which one would almost think should shine in the dark. As he sits there with a broad, deep-red cap forward over his high, bowed forehead and his strong, straight nose, and with the lower part of his face half hidden in a hairy animal-skin tunic, he looks good. With one foot, Per supports himself against the edge of the chimney, so the light from the fire falls upon his mountain shoe, on the thick, broad sole of one layer of bark and two layers of leather, with seam upon seam across the entire surface, and all seam heads were at least a quarter inch square. On his legs he has gray wadmel trousers that had been covered in leather where they were most worn.
Sir John had settled down beside me on the bunk, half-sitting and half-lying. He was deciphering all the crow’s feet, cattle brands, and names that the horse fetchers and shooters had scratched into the slab above the bunk. Finally, he also found “Bilton Esq.,” and alongside this famous man’s name, he satisfied himself by writing his own in his lapidary script.
Hans sat on the doorstep with one leg inside and the other outside. Anders had made a roasting spit from some willow, and the two helped each other to turn a juicy piece of reindeer buck over the heat.
While we made and ate our food, not a lot was said; we were too tired and needed to get something in us first. But when the refreshing coffee had been drunk, and the tobacco smoke lay over the small room, the conversation rose. We talked for a while about the wildlife and hunting in the mountains; but little by little we moved over to caves and enchantments. I did my best to get them to tell, and after much encoragement, Anders began on a story:
“There was a man in the Dovre forest called Ola Storbekken. He was a beast of a fellow, so big and strong and indifferent. In the winter he did nothing but travel from market to market and brawl and quarrel. He went from the market in Krestjan [Kristiania] to Branes and Kongsberg, and then to Grundset; and wherever he was, he brawled and wrangled, and wherever he brawled, he won. In the summer he went to a cattle market in Valdres and down in the fjords, and there he drank and he brawled with both the fellows from the fjord and from Hallingdal and from Valdres in the mountain lay-overs in the summer; and he won there, too, but sometimes they managed to scratch him a bit with their knives, those fellows.
“But then there was once, during the mowing; he had come to Bekke and had gone to take a nap in the cool shade. Then he was taken into the rock. It happened such that a man with a pair of gilded buck’s horns came to him and butted Ola. But Ola struck the fellow, so that he went round and round. The fellow got up and began to butt again, and at length he grabbed Storbekken like a mitten and struck him dwn beneath him, and then the both of them went straight down into the ground. It was so fine, where they came to, with silver and finery so that Ola didn’t think it could be any finer at the king’s. They offered him both brandy and wine, and Ola Bekken drank with them as a fellow, but food would he not have; he thought it horrible. Just like that, he came in again, he with the gilded buck’s horns, and before he knew it, he gave Ola a slap; but Ola struck him as before, and then they brawled and wrangled through every room, and around all the walls. Ola said it went on all night, but then the battle had been going on for more than fourteen days, and they had rung for him, three Thursday nights with the church bells. On the third Thursday evening, they treated him badly, for then they would butt him off Heimfjell. When the church bells stopped ringing, he sat in a hulder-cleft with his head outside; if a man had not passed by at the same time, and made them ring again, then the rock would have closed around him, and he might have been there still.
“But when Ola came out, he was beaten so badly that there was no moderation. He had one lump bigger than the next on his head, and his whole body was both blue and yellow, and so mad was he, that he got up, went on his way, and wanted to enter the mountain and fight with the one with the gilded buck’s horns, for he wanted to break them off the skull of the jutul.”
“My father knew Storbekke well,” said Hans, “and he told many stories about him; never had he seen a healthier fellow in a brawl, he said; but his uncle, from Heidal, was said to be even more talented, as I heard. Can’t you, Anders, tell about the womenfolk who came to him one night while he was in the mountains for the grouse?”
“Ola Hella, you mean?” asked Anders. “Yes, yes, I’ll tell you. Ola was supposed to be a good grouse shooter. So there was one winter that he was in the Heidal mountains, grouse hunting. At night he slept at a pasture, but even though he was an old man, he thought many-a-time that it was uncanny to lie there alone in the long winter night. One night he had stoked the fire, eaten supper, and lain down to sleep. But during the night he woke up. The fire had gone out in the grate, and he clearly perceived a woman lying on each side of him on the bench.
“‘Well, then!’ he thought to himself, ‘Now I’m not lying alone. But what devilry is this?’
“He touched one with his hand; she was furry, and when he withdrew his hand sharply, there was hearty sniggering and laughing from the loft. Then he touched the other, and she was furry, too. But now he grabbed for his rifle, which he had hanging over the bed, for he knew well there were mound-folk. But it wouldn’t give a spark or fire, and no matter how he clicked, it wouldn’t fire the shot. So he began to recite Our Father, and when he came to ‘but deliver us from evil,’ there was such a bustle and noise in the cabin that he thought the roof would fall into the parlour, and they rolled out from him on both sides; she who lay innermost rolled right through the wall, he said.”
Anders couldn’t come upon any more that he thought it was worth talking about. I asked Per Fuggelskjelle, therefore, to tell us something. Earlier in the evening he had, in a lively and peculiar way, told a couple of hunting stories; he spoke very quickly, occasionally stuttering and stammering a little, and then his speech flowed more quickly again. His mimicry was lively, and his intonation closely followed the contents of the story.
“Yes, I can certainly tell you some bits,” he replied and let his head fall to one side a little, and squinted with his eyes. “I could tell stories that old folk believe in, and that they say have taken place in olden times; but I suppose you believe it’s all just lies, and so I will tell you a legend that we don’t believe, either.”
“There was a shooter in Kvam in the olden days,” he began, “and he was called Per Gynt. He was always in the mountains, and there he shot both bear and moose—for in those days there was more forest on the mountains, and there dwelt such creatures. So there was once late in the autumn, long since they had left the pasture for the year, that Per should go into the mountains. All the folk had gone home from the mountains, except for three milkmaids. When he came up towards Høvringen—for he was to stay a night there, at the pasture—it was so dark that he could not see his hand in before him, and the dog began to bark greatly so that it was quite uncanny. Just like that, he bumped against something, and when he touched it, it was both cold and slippery and big. He didn’t think he had come off the road, either, so he couldn’t know what it was, but it was unpleasant.
“‘Who is this?’ said Per, for he felt it was moving.
“‘Oh, it’s the Bend,’ it replied.
“But Per Gynt none the wiser, you see; but he walked along with it for a bit, ‘for there is a place I want to get to,’ he thought. Just like that, he bumped against something again, and when he touched it, it was both big and cold and slippery.
“‘Who is this?’ said Per Gynt.
“‘Oh, it’s the Bend,’ it replied.
“‘Yes, whether you’re straight or bent, you must let me forth,’ said Per, for he realized he was going around in a ring and that the Bend had ringed itself around around the pasture. With that, the Bend moved itself a little, just enough that Per was able to get to the pasture. When he came in, it was no lighter inside than out, and he went and fumbled around the walls, and should put his gun down, and lay down his knapsack; but just as he went felt his way forward, he felt it cold and big and slipery again.
“‘Who is this?’ said Per Gynt.
“‘Oh, it’s the Bend,’ it replied.
“And wherever he felt, and wherever he started to go, he felt the ring of the Bend. ‘It is probably no good to stay here,’ thought Per Gynt, ‘since this Bend is both inside and outside; but I shall certainly set this splitting wedge to right!’ So he took his gun and went out again, and felt his way forward until he found its head.
“‘What are you?’ said Per.
“‘Oh, I am the great Bend in Etndal,’ said the great troll. So Per Gynt moved quickly and shot three shots into its head.
“‘Shoot once more!’ said the Bend.
“But Per knew better, for had he shot once more, then it would have returned to him. So they took hold, both Per and the dogs, and pulled out the great troll out, so that they could properly get into the pasture. Meanwhile there was cackling and laughter, all around from the mounds:
“‘Per Gynt pulled a lot, but the dogs pulled more,’ it said.
“In the morning he should go out hunting the animals. When he came into the mountains, he saw a girl, calling the herds across Tverrhø. But when he got up there, the girl was gone, and the herds too, and he saw nothing but a great flock of bears.
“‘Well, I have never seen bears in a flock before,’ thought Per to himself; but when he got closer, they were gone, all of them except one.
“Then there came a cry from a mound there:
“‘Mind your barrow5
Per Gynt is out
with his tail!’
“‘Oh, it’ll be unfortunate for Per, but not for my barrow, for he has not washed himself today,’ it said from the mound.
“Per washed his hands in the water he had, and shot the bear. Then there was cackling and laughter, all around from the mound.
“‘You should have minded your barrow!’ it shouted.
“‘I didn’t remember he had a washing cup between his feet,’ replied the other.
“Per flayed the bear and buried the carcass in the scree, but he took the skull and skin with him.
“On his way home he met a mountain fox.
“‘See my lamb, how fat it goes,’ it said from a mound.
“‘See Per’s tail, how high it stands,’ said it in another mound, when Per lifted his rifle to his eye and shot it.
“He flayed it and took it with him, and when he came to the pasture, he put its head outside, with a gaping mouth. Then he made up the fire and put a soup cauldron on it. But it smoked so unreasonably much that he found it difficult to keep his eyes open, and he therefore went to open a smokehole that was there. Just like that came a troll and stuck in through the hole its nose so long that it reached the chimney.
“‘Here you shall see my nosehorn!’ it said.
“‘Here you shall feel the soup corn!’ said Per Gynt, and ladled the whole soup cauldron over its nose.
“The troll ran off, and carried on; but around in all the mounds there was cackling and laughter, and it shouted:
“‘Gyri Soup-snout, Gyri Soup-snout!’
“Now it was quiet for a while; but it wasn’t long before there was some clamour and noise outside. Per looked out, and there he saw a cart with bears before; they piled up the big troll and went into the mountains with him.
“Just like that, a bucket of water came down the chimney and quenched the fire, so that Per was sitting there in the dark. Then it began to chuckle and cackle in all the corners, and then it said:
“‘Now things will go no better with Per than with the Vala milkmaids.’
“So Per made up the fire again, took his dog, locked up the pasture, and lay out northwards to the pasture at Vala, where the three milkmaids were staying. When he had gone a way north, it was burning so there, as if the Vala pasture was aflame. At the same time, he met a pack of wolves, and some of these he shot and some he beat to death. When he came to the Vala pasture, it was as dark as pitch, and there was no fire; but there were four stranger fellows inside, who carried on with the milkmaids, and they were four mound trolls, and they were called Gust Været, Trond Valfjell, Tjøstol Åbakkae and Rolv Eldførpunge. Gust Været stood outside the door, to keep watch, while the others were with the milkmaids and courted them. Per shot at him, but missed, and so Gust Været fled. When Per came in, they were carrying on terribly with the milkmaids, and two of the girls were scared out of their wits, and prayed God to help them; but the third, called Mad-Kari, was not afraid; well could they come, she said; she would like to see what such fellows were good for. But when the trolls realized that Per had come in, they began to carry on, and told Eldførpunge to stoke the fire. At the same time, he set his dogs on Tjøstol, and they pulled him on his head into the firepit, so the ash and embers surrounded him.
“‘Did you see my serpents, Per?’ said Trond Valfjell—that was what he called his wolves.
“‘Now you shall go the same way as your serpents,” said Per, and shot him. Then he beat Åbakke to death with his rifle butt, but Eldførpunge had gone up through the chimney. When Per had done this, he took the milkmaids to the village, for they dared not stay there any longer.
“But as time drew on towards Christmas time, Per Gynt was out again. He had heard of a farm at Dovre which was so full of trolls every Christmas Eve that the people fled to other farms. He wanted to go there, for he had a mind for enchantment. He dressed himself poorly, and then he took with him a tame white bear, and an awl, and pitch, and a bristle brush. When he got there, he went into the cabin and asked to be allowed to stay.
“‘God help us,’ said the man, ‘we cannot let you stay; we are leaving the farm ourselves, for every Christmas Eve it gets so full of trolls here.’
“But Per Gynt said he would be able to cleanse the house of trolls, and so he was allowed to stay, and got a sow skin, too.
“Then the bear lay behind the stove, and Per took out the pitch, awl and bristle brush, and sat himself down to make a huge shoe from the whole sow skin. He used a strong rope for laces, so that he could tighten the shoe. He also readied a pair of poles.
“Just like that they came, with fiddle and fiddler, and some danced and some ate of the Christmas food that was on the table; some of them roasted flesh, and some of them roasted frogs and toads and much else that was disgusting—they brought this Christmas fare with them. Then some saw the shoe that Per had made. That, they said, was for a big foot; then they should try it, and when they had all got up into the one foot, Per pulled the rope, and set in one of the poles, and twisted until they were stuck in the shoe all together. But then the bear stuck its nose out, and nosed the roasting.
“‘Does the white pussy cat want a sausage?’ said one of the trolls, and threw a hot roasted frog into its mouth.
“‘Scratch and strike, bear!’ said Per Gynt. Then the bear grew so angry and wild that he got up and struck and scratched all of them together, and Per Gynt struck the company with the other pole, as if he would beat their skulls in—he had split the pole into four so they couldn’t count the strikes.
“Then the trolls fled, and Per stayed there and lived well on the Christmas fare the whole holiday.
“They didn’t hear of the trolls for many years. But the man had a grey-dun mare, and Per advised him to let it foal, so the foal could frolic around between the mounds there.
“Then it was at Christmas time many years later—the man was in the forest, chopping wood for the holiday; then a troll came out and called to him:
“‘Do you still have your big white pussycat?’
“‘Yes, he lies behind the stove,’ said the man, ‘and now he has seven kittens, much bigger and angrier than he is himself.’
“‘Then we shall never again come to you!’ called the troll.”
“This Per Gynt was one of a kind,” said Anders. “He was quite an adventure merchant and legend-smith, and you would have liked to meet him. He was always telling how he had been in all the stories folk said had happened in the olden days.”
“It may be true, what you say there,” said Per Fuggelskjell. “My grandmother, she had known him, and she mimicked him more than once. But you, Tor, can’t you tell of the great shooter at Vågå who is called Jens Klomsrud? I heard there is a lot to be told of. He was related to you somehow, I think.”
“Yes,” said Tor, “but the kinship was not close, for he was married to an aunt of our great-grandfather’s. He lived in Klomsrud in Vågå itself, and lived for good and well over a hundred years ago; my grandfather still remembers him well, and said he was a good and worthy fellow. Klomsrud farm lies in the hills in Vågå, and it’s not far from there to the pastures in Veiding and Sterring. Jens Klomsrud went shooting up there in the mountains nearly the whole winter, and put out grouse traps and kept reindeer pits. One day he had been flying about the whole mountain but hadn’t got a grouse. In the twilight, he turned to visiting snares and reindeer pits, and evening fell before he came down again to Sterring, where he should stay the night; and then it burned so that it shone out through all the joints in the walls. And Jens was glad, for folk had come and made up the fire. But when he came in to the pasture, at once it went pitch dark, and when he arrived, there was a lock on the door. Jens didn’t think much about it; he was used to both this and that; he built the fire and settled for the evening. But in the night, when he had eaten and lain down to sleep, fourteen green-clad maidens came in; they were so very beautiful that he had never seen such beautiful women, and they all had yellow, flowing hair. One had a langeleik dulcimer; she began to play it, and the others began to dance around in a ring; there lay a fatwood root, so Jens could well see everything they did. But as they were dancing, they grasped after him and pulled the long hair he had on his legs.
“‘Do you like the plucking, Jens Hairy-legs?’ they said.
“Jens answered nothing; he just drew up his feet as best he could; but that didn’t help much, for the maidens were so mad and lusty that they pulled and tore at him, and called him Jens Hairy-legs, Jens Thunder-mountain, Jens Peel-mountain. But then Jens grew angry; he took his rifle, scolded them firmly, and said that if they didn’t leave immediately, he would do with them what they least wanted. Then the maidens fled, and what there was left of the night, Jens slept in peace. At first light, Jens went into the mountains, but as he passed Løvåberg above Sterring, it shouted to him:
“‘Jens Hairy-legs, you’ll get no grouse today! There will be only empty cries and peels in the mountains.’
“Jens thought both this and that. But he still went; and when he came into the mountains, there were a lot of grouse there. He shot and shot until he had neither bullets nor gunpowder, but he didn’t get a feather, and when he went home, flocks of grouse lighted right before his feet. He had never know such bad hunting, and so he thought it must have been the enchantments of the mound-folk.
“On the third day, he went out to the grouse snares and reindeer pits, and wanted to clear them, but there was neither grouse nor reindeer in them. Most of the snares had been pulled up and pulled apart; but he saw no sign of either folk or animals.
“There were a great many birds and reindeer in the mountains, and he began to shoot, but it was futile. He came home early to Sterring and thought about sweeping off to Klomsrud the same evening, but he had a lot of stavewood for snowshoes that he wanted to chop up and take home with him on the ski sled. And when he was finished, it was so late that he decided to stay there that night, too.
“A while after he had gone to bed, he woke up and was nearly smothered by smoke, because a large flagstone had been placed over the smokehole. Jens took his gun with him outdoors and cocked the hammer, but the powder would not catch, even though the flint and steel gave a spark. But just like that, it called from Løvåberg:
“‘Will you use your thunder pipe against the maidens, now, Jens Empty-bang?’
“‘What have I done, since I cannot be left in peace?’ Jens Klomsrud asked.
“‘You have brought your thunder over the roof of Kjersti Langeleik and Sigrid Sidserk and their twelve sisters, and you’ve frightened the houseless with your thunder pipe,’ it replied from the Løvå mountain.
“‘What should I give as penance?’ asked Jens. But he didn’t receive an answer.
“So he went up on to the roof and tipped down the slab with a pole, so the smoke went up, and then he slept calmly and was disturbed no more that night.
“When he had been at home in Klomsrud a little while, he went up to Sterring, to shoot, and the first morning he came across a big reindeer buck in Klumphole. He shot ten shots at him, but he didn’t hit him. Then he heard it calling from the Løvå mountain:
“‘Tomorrow you can shoot, Jens Empty-thunder. Now you have paid penance.’
“Jens left the buck and didn’t think of shooting any more that day, but went home to the pasture. In the morning he shot so much that he almost couldn’t carry all the birds, and when he was on his way home at noon, he met the reindeer buck in Klumphole. This time he fell at the first shot; and there was no one who could remember that such a large reindeer buck had been shot at Vågå; the antlers were so big that there were none like them, and they sit above the stabbur door at Klomsrud, like a great crown, to this day.”
Now it could be time to take a nap. Sir John and I shared the bunk, Tor and Anders crept under it, Hans lay on the floor, and Per Fuggelskjell lay on the bench. I slept safely and calmly for a while; but during the night four trolls came from Høvring, with a big reindeer buck on their long noses, and they dropped it on its head down through the chimney in the Uløy cabin. It was so stiflingly hot that it was unbearable. Storbekke and Per Gynt were at the trolls inside the cabin, while Jens Klomsrud and Sir John stood on the roof and gave the buck shot upon shot down through the chimney; finally, they pulled it up by its hind legs, but it jumped just as well, and was gone over the Ronde ridge.
I felt a cool draught, breathed more freely, and woke up. Per Fuggelskjell, who had curled up to get a place on the bench, agreed with Hans that it was good to stretch his legs a bit; to make room for this, he had opened the door and stuck his feet out.
“Goodness, it would be good to cook coffee on the fire, boy,” he whispered to Hans.
Anders joined them, and in my half-slumber I heard them fiddling with the coffee kettle for quite a while, chatting about cattle trade and the slaughter, about Nordfjord horses and reindeer bucks, until I, after a while, fell asleep. I woke at the first grey light. It had rained and thundered the whole night; when we came out, the fog covered the foot of Trollronde, but it was clear in the heights, and the top sailed above the sea of fog in full, sparkling sunlight. A bath in the river, and a good breakfast of trout and reindeer steak—then we went in the fresh morning between the Rondes, while Hans and Per Fuggelskjell took the road northwards, as Tor had directed them, to fetch the reindeer buck we had shot.
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A meal taken in the early afternoon. ↩
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“Røverstuen” (“The Robbers’ Cabin,” 1827) by the Danish parson Steen Steensen Blicher (1782–1848). ↩
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William Bilton. Two Summers in Norway. 2 vols. London: Saunders & Otley, 1840. Asbjørnsen’s account appears to have borrowed liberally from Bilton, even down to the details of tying the dog to a rock, and storing dead reindeer beneath the rocks in the moraines. ↩
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Generally known these days as Trolltinden. ↩
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Castrated boar. ↩
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