PREFACE 



The growing attractiveness of Norse scenery to English 

 and American travellers, whereof the returns of steam- 

 ship companies and hotels would be sufficient evidence, 

 has been witnessed also by the production during recent 

 years of a good many books descriptive of the country. 

 The present volume is not an addition to the number of 

 these. It does not, that is to say, aim chiefly at 

 describing what the tourist may expect to see in Nor- 

 way ; but rather at supplying those items of informa- 

 tion which the most sharp-sighted traveller could not 

 get from observation alone ; some of those links wliich 

 unite the Norway of to-day to the Norway of the 

 past, and the parts of the existing life of the country 

 visible to the eye to other parts which the mere 

 tourist cannot participate in, the life of politics, of 

 industry, of literature, which belongs to the inhabitants 

 of a country but not to the visitors to it. A final 

 chapter, kindly written for me by Miss E. Tindall, 

 deals upon the same plan with the Flora of Norway, 



