4 Norway and the Norwegians 



compared to the vast stretches of woodland, of rocky 

 mountain, of lakes, of rivers, of glaciers. All these 

 things combine to produce the same impression upon 

 the mind, to the effect that man is still but a recent 

 intruder upon the antique solitudes of nature. You 

 might even fancy that nature is preparing summarily 

 to eject him ; that it needs but a slight convulsion — 

 slight as an exercise of lier power — to crush for ever 

 those scattered houses which lie between the cliffs 

 and the fjord ; to sweep away the farm-houses on the 

 mountain side, or bury them beneath a portion of a 

 single glacier ; then, that her ancient and majestic 

 peace will be restored to the primeval land. 



Looked at, therefore, in this light, it is the immense 

 antiquity of the Scandinavian countries which is brought 

 home to you. All the forces and the relics which are 

 impressed upon your imagination are the forces of 

 nature, the relics of her work. Waterfalls which fell 

 as they fall to-day ages before man set foot upon the 

 soil ; glacial bouldere, moraines, which have been left 

 exactly where they now stand when some hundreds 

 of thousands of years ago the Glacial Age came to an 

 end. 



And yet, even in the annals of Nature (strange though 

 the assertion must sound), Scandinavia may be said to 

 be a younger country than others in Europe. She is 

 so precisely in virtue of the great share she has had 

 in the Glacial Era of which we have just spoken. It 

 is not, I imagine, unknown to the reader that there 

 was a time — a time we can hardly reckon, however 

 roundly by years, but one not so very remote in the 

 category of geological ages — when the whole of northern 



