20 Norway and the Norwegians 



and the beginning of the Cattegat, is the flattest and 

 most fertile part of I^orway ; the district which was 

 earliest inhabited, and which is historically the most 

 important in the whole country. 



It must be borne in mind that most of the land of 

 Norway, — even where no special range of hills is dis- 

 tinguishable, — lies, as compared with the sea-coast, at a 

 very considerable elevation : and that this great table- 

 land, which is the essential Norway, is everywhere inter- 

 sected, when we get near the coast, by valleys or fjords 

 that run far into it, and by the beds of rivers which have 

 a steep fall and a very rapid course. Some of the larger 

 valleys in the interior are very celebrated, as are the 

 Eomsdal and the Gudbrandsdal. Even the lower lands 

 approaching the Christiania Fjord are far from level ; the 

 rivers which run through them have, for the most part, 

 too precipitous a course to allow of their navigation. 



The whole history of Norway is suggested by the 

 character of the country which these formations bring 

 about. It is, in the first place, a country facing two 

 ways : looking out in one direction (as its rivers flow) 

 towards Denmark, towards the Baltic, which is the sea 

 uniting all the Scandinavian countries ; looking out in 

 the other direction towards the wild North Atlantic, 

 towards the British Islands, and beyond them to the 

 boundless west. Then, again, it is a country cut up by 

 its formation into many different parts, into the bare, 

 flat Finmark in the extreme north ; into the rocky 

 Halogaland (now Nordlandsamt and Tromsoamt) lower 

 down, a district particularly rich in its fisheries ; into the 

 fertile Throndhjem region (Nordre- and Sordre-Throndh- 

 jemsamt) always throughout Norse history strong in 



