vi Preface 



supplying those details conceruiug the habitat, the 

 rarity, etc., of different plants which the traveller in 

 Norway, however keen his faculties, could likewise 

 not learn from mere observation. 



It will characterise the aims of the present volume 

 in a sentence if I say that, while books of the descrip- 

 tive sort are addressed chiefly to what fare-bills and 

 guide-books call the intending tourist in Norway, the 

 following pages have been written chiefly for travellers 

 there in esse, for men or women who can see for them- 

 selves what is to be seen in the country, but cannot 

 know of tlieniselves what they might wish to know 

 concerning it. 



I need not say that I have no hope of supplying 

 more than a portion of their wants in this kind. 

 Next after the limitations of ignorance, the scheme of 

 this volume has been largely regulated by what the 

 writer's intercourse with travellers in Norway, and 

 those who would be classed as ' general readers,' led 

 him to suppose were the heads of information most 

 required and sought after. He found as a general 

 rule, that his interlocutor was deeply impressed by cer- 

 tain vague and general ideas concerning the past of 

 Norway and of the Scandinavian people ; that certain 

 words were for him what are for the Norwegian salmon 



