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PART II

NORDLAND AND NORDLANDERS

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NORDLAND AND NORDLANDERS

In so far as a man like myself, who lives in such a sad reality, dare
talk of illusions--how great, and what a number of illusions I have had
shattered, during the two or three years since I left my home in
Nordland, and became a student; how grey and colourless is the world
down here, how small and mean, compared with what I had imagined it as
regards both men and conditions of life!

This afternoon, I was out fishing in the fjord with some friends; of
course they all enjoyed themselves--and I pretended that I did. No, I
did not enjoy myself! We sat in a flat-bottomed, broad, ugly boat, that
they called a "pram," a contrivance resembling a washtub, and fished the
whole afternoon in muddy water a few feet deep, with a fine line,
catching altogether seven whiting--and then rowed quite satisfied to
land! I felt nearly sick; for the whole of life down here seems to me
like this pram, without a keel, by which to shape a course, without a
sail, which one cannot even fancy could be properly set in such a boat,
without rough weather, which it could not stand, and like this muddy,
grey, waveless sea outside the town, with only a few small whiting in
it. Life here has nothing else to offer than such small whiting.

While the others talked, I sat and thought of a fishing expedition when
_she_ was with me, out among the Vaette Rocks at home, in our little
six-oared boat--what a different kind of day, what a different kind of
boat, what a different experience! Yes, how unromantic, poor and grey,
life is down here among the rich, loamy, corn-producing hills, or on the
fjord of the capital, sooty with steamboat smoke, or even in the town
itself, compared with that at home! But if I uttered this aloud, how
these superior people would open their eyes!

They talk here of fishing, and are pleased with a few poor cod and
whiting. A Nordlander understands by fishing a haul of a thousand fish;
he thinks of the millions of Lofoten and Finmark, and of an overwhelming
variety of species, of whales, spouting through the sounds, and driving
great shoals of fish before them, as well as of the very smallest
creatures of the deep. The only fish that I know down here worth
noticing--and I always look at them whenever I come across them--are the
gold and silver fish,