Letters From High Latitudes [94]
and the coast is so wide, in consequence of the network of sunken rocks which stuffs it up, the passage by which a vessel can enter is very narrow, and the only landmark to enable you to find the channel is the head one of the string of outer islets. As this rock is about the size of a dining-table, perfectly flat, and rising only a few feet above the level of the sea, to attempt to make it is like looking for a needle in a bottle of hay. It was already beginning to grow very late and dark by the time we had come up with the spot where it ought to have been, but not a vestige of such a thing had turned up. Should we not sight it in a quarter of an hour, we must go to sea again, and lie to for the night,--a very unpleasant alternative for any one so impatient as I was to reach a port. Just as I was going to give the order, Fitz--who was certainly the Lynceus of the ship's company--espied its black back just peeping up above the tumbling water on our starboard bow. We had hit it off to a yard!
In another half-hour we were stealing down in quiet water towards the entrance of the fiord. All this time not a rag of a pilot had appeared, and it was without any such functionary that the schooner swept up next morning between the wooded, grain-laden slopes of the beautiful loch, to Throndhjem--the capital of the ancient sea-kings of Norway.
LETTER XII.
THRONDHJEM--HARALD HAARFAGER--KING HACON'S LAST BATTLE-- OLAF TRYGGVESSON--THE "LONG SERPENT"--ST. OLAVE--THORMOD THE SCALD--THE JARL OF LADE--THE CATHEDRAL--HARALD HARDRADA--THE BATTLE OF STANFORD BRIDGE--A NORSE BALI --ODIN--AND HIS PALADINS.
Off Munkholm, Aug. 27, 1856.
Throndhjem (pronounced Tronyem) looked very pretty and picturesque, with its red-roofed wooden houses sparkling in the sunshine, its many windows filled with flowers, its bright fiord covered with vessels gaily dressed in flags, in honour of the Crown Prince's first visit to the ancient capital of the Norwegian realm. Tall, pretentious warehouses crowded down to the water's edge, like bullies at a public show elbowing to the foremost rank, orderly streets stretched in quiet rows at right angles with each other, and pretty villas with green cinctures sloped away towards the hills. In the midst rose the king's palace, the largest wooden edifice in Europe, while the old grey cathedral--stately and grand, in spite of the slow destruction of the elements, the mutilations of man's hands, or his yet more degrading rough-cast and stucco reparations--still towered above the perishable wooden buildings at his feet, with the solemn pride which befits the shrine of a royal saint.
I cannot tell you with what eagerness I drank in all the features of this lovely scene; at least, such features as Time can hardly alter--the glancing river, from whence the city's ancient name of Nidaros, or "mouth of the Nid," is derived,--the rocky island of Munkholm, the bluff of Lade,--the land-locked fiord and its pleasant hills, beyond whose grey stony ridges I knew must lie the fatal battle-field of Sticklestad. Every spot to me was full of interest,--but an interest noways connected with the neat green villas, the rectangular streets, and the obtrusive warehouses. These signs of a modern humdrum prosperity seemed to melt away before my eyes as I gazed from the schooner's deck, and the accessories of an elder time came to furnish the landscape,--the clumsy merchantmen lazily swaying with the tide, darkened into armed galleys with their rows of glittering shields,--the snug, bourgeois-looking town shrank into the quaint proportions of the huddled ancient Nidaros,--and the old marauding days, with their shadowy line of grand old pirate kings, rose up with welcome vividness before my mind.
What picture shall I try to conjure from the past, to live in your fancy, as it does in mine?
Let the setting be these very hills,--flooded by this same cold, steely sunshine. In the midst stands a stalwart form, in quaint but regal attire. Hot blood deepens the colour of his sun-bronzed cheek; an iron purpose gleams in his earnest
In another half-hour we were stealing down in quiet water towards the entrance of the fiord. All this time not a rag of a pilot had appeared, and it was without any such functionary that the schooner swept up next morning between the wooded, grain-laden slopes of the beautiful loch, to Throndhjem--the capital of the ancient sea-kings of Norway.
LETTER XII.
THRONDHJEM--HARALD HAARFAGER--KING HACON'S LAST BATTLE-- OLAF TRYGGVESSON--THE "LONG SERPENT"--ST. OLAVE--THORMOD THE SCALD--THE JARL OF LADE--THE CATHEDRAL--HARALD HARDRADA--THE BATTLE OF STANFORD BRIDGE--A NORSE BALI --ODIN--AND HIS PALADINS.
Off Munkholm, Aug. 27, 1856.
Throndhjem (pronounced Tronyem) looked very pretty and picturesque, with its red-roofed wooden houses sparkling in the sunshine, its many windows filled with flowers, its bright fiord covered with vessels gaily dressed in flags, in honour of the Crown Prince's first visit to the ancient capital of the Norwegian realm. Tall, pretentious warehouses crowded down to the water's edge, like bullies at a public show elbowing to the foremost rank, orderly streets stretched in quiet rows at right angles with each other, and pretty villas with green cinctures sloped away towards the hills. In the midst rose the king's palace, the largest wooden edifice in Europe, while the old grey cathedral--stately and grand, in spite of the slow destruction of the elements, the mutilations of man's hands, or his yet more degrading rough-cast and stucco reparations--still towered above the perishable wooden buildings at his feet, with the solemn pride which befits the shrine of a royal saint.
I cannot tell you with what eagerness I drank in all the features of this lovely scene; at least, such features as Time can hardly alter--the glancing river, from whence the city's ancient name of Nidaros, or "mouth of the Nid," is derived,--the rocky island of Munkholm, the bluff of Lade,--the land-locked fiord and its pleasant hills, beyond whose grey stony ridges I knew must lie the fatal battle-field of Sticklestad. Every spot to me was full of interest,--but an interest noways connected with the neat green villas, the rectangular streets, and the obtrusive warehouses. These signs of a modern humdrum prosperity seemed to melt away before my eyes as I gazed from the schooner's deck, and the accessories of an elder time came to furnish the landscape,--the clumsy merchantmen lazily swaying with the tide, darkened into armed galleys with their rows of glittering shields,--the snug, bourgeois-looking town shrank into the quaint proportions of the huddled ancient Nidaros,--and the old marauding days, with their shadowy line of grand old pirate kings, rose up with welcome vividness before my mind.
What picture shall I try to conjure from the past, to live in your fancy, as it does in mine?
Let the setting be these very hills,--flooded by this same cold, steely sunshine. In the midst stands a stalwart form, in quaint but regal attire. Hot blood deepens the colour of his sun-bronzed cheek; an iron purpose gleams in his earnest