86 NOTES ON A SUMMER TOUR IN NORWAY. 
vessels, propelled by one huge square sail attached by the yard to 
a single mast. These are the trading ‘“ yachts,’ and the heavy 
deck cargoes which they carry, and which look for all the world 
like huge stacks of fire-wood, consist of dried fish, which are being 
conveyed to southern ports from Hammerfest and the villages 
round. In build, these vessels are almost exactly similar to the 
ships in which the dreaded Vikings made their raids upon our 
coasts from these very fjords a thousand years ago. It is a 
curious case of survival, and of the survival of the fittest too, for, 
notwithstanding their apparent clumsiness, they are excellent sea 
boats, and wonderfully well adapted for the work they have 
to do. 
Immediately in the Arctic Circle is the Hestmando, the “ isle 
of the horseman,” so called from its resemblance, in certain views, 
to the figure of a cloaked horseman. This is the petrified giant 
who pierced Torghatten with his arrow. There is, perhaps, some 
excuse for his bad shot, in the fact that his adversary was some 
105 miles distant. . 
We now pass the great Svartisen snow-field, from which a 
splendid glacier flows down to within a few feet of the sea 
level. 
As the steamer passes up the stormy and treacherous Vestfjord, 
where, within the last few months such an overwhelming disaster 
overtook the fishing fleet, the magnificent panorama afforded by 
the Lofoden Islands opens out to the west. The summit of these 
islands has been very aptly compared with the jaw of a great 
shark, so many and so jagged are its points. They extend fora 
distance of fully 130 miles, and for the whole distance they are 
one mass of apparently inaccessible and partially snow-covered 
peaks. ; 
The town of Tromso is especially interesting, as we here for the 
first time come into contact with the Lapps, a nomad non-Aryan 
race, who, with the Finns, at one time constituted the sole 
population of this northern region of Europe. In the Tromsdal 
is a small colony of Lapps, who occupy several Gammer, which 
are dome-shaped huts made of turf and birch-bark, ‘‘ with a round 
