1936 On the Continent

perhaps the most famous in all Norway, the richest in history, the most dogged in the survival of its peasant heritage. Its ancient farms stand as firmly to-day as they did centuries back, when men first axed their massive timbers from the living forest.
    The town of Lillehammer forms the gateway to the Gudbrandsdal, and the railway traverses the valley for its whole length, until the ascent of the Dovrefjell mountains begins. Beyond the Dovrefjell lies Trondheim, the cathedral city that was the ancient capital of Norway.
    The Laagen river runs from end to end of the valley, and from the green, foaming water the forests rise steeply to the upper heights. The subsidiary valleys that branch out of the Gudbrandsdal to the west all lead into the Jotunheim, where the highest of Norway’s mountains are massed in a huge citadel of snow and ice.
    A Gudbrandsdal delicacy is the dark brown goat-milk cheese (
gjeitost
) made in the peasant farmsteads. Near Vinstra, a station on the railway, is Bakke farm, the site of Ibsen’s drama of the semi-legendary peasant hero, Peer Gynt. One of the rooms of the farm has been moved to the station, where it forms a bookstall.
    The Osterdal is the most easterly of the great valleys of Norway. Beyond it lies the desolate region of forest and moorland and lake that divides Norway from Sweden.
    Pine forest dominates the Osterdal landscape. The closely massed trees stretch to every horizon. Only in the cleft of the valley is there a strip of farmland. Elk roam the forests and reindeer the uplands, and close to the Swedish frontier is the Femund lake, a vast stretch of water, renowned for its fine fishing.
    The Glomma river, a broad, fast stream, runs down the valley. In the season huge rafts of log timber are floated down it to the saw mills.
From Gudbrandsdal to Jotunheim (from a Hiking Diary).
    They gave us trout in the restaurant car as the train from Oslo was running through the Gudbrandsdal—trout caught the evening before in the waters of one of those tumbling, tempestuous rivers that streak through the valley between the dark mystery of the forests and the brilliant green of the meadow lands. And after the trout came reindeer steak with cranberry sauce.
    There was something delightfully prophetic in the menu. In a few hours, after we had detrained at the station of Sjoa with our rucksacks and tent and fishing rods and ourtwo Norwegian elkhounds, who also each carried their ten pounds of food and gear in pannier sacks, we should be winding our way through those forests where the cranberries grow thick between the silent pines; we would fish the rivers and tarns as we came upon them, and fry our catch over the camp fire for the evening meal; and high on the uplands of the Jotunheim, upon which we had planned to emerge later, we should as likely as not come up with those little herds of wild reindeer that trek from moorland to bleak moorland, always within sight of the permanent snows.
    At Sjoa the two dogs stormed wildly out of the van at the back of the train after four hours of incarceration in wooden boxes. We gave them five minutes’ freedom while they raced about.
    The forest closely ringed the little station, and the dogs vanished into the blackness between the pines, to appear suddenly again as though shot from a hidden trapdoor. They sent the stationmaster’s white cat scudding half-way up a tree, and atoned for the act by affectionately licking the bare legs of a little girl with two long yellow plaits who had come down from a
seter
with a wooden bucket full of golden butter.
    Then we hitched our packs, harnessed the panniers to the dogs and set off along the valley of the Sjoa river, westwards towards the peaks of the Jotunheim that glittered far away beyond the sharp horizon of forest ridges.
Camping Out
    That night we camped on the forest edge, on an open grass space high above the river. Once there had been a
seter
here. The fallen logs of the ruined huts lay grey and bleached like old bones. Long ago, for this is ancient country, even for Norway, cattle had grazed on this acre of grass, and generations of peasant lads had tramped up to the hut from the valley farms for the traditional Saturday night courtship with their
seter
girl.
    We fished for half an hour, got five plump little trout, and set them to fry over a pinewood fire. It was in September, and the dusk came down, soft and dark, when we had finished the meal. The moon swung up from behind the spear-heads of the