40 Norway aiui the Norwegians 



Scandiiiavia of the rock-cai'viugs iu Boliuslan. When 

 I come to speak more particularly of the Viking boats, 

 of which examples are extant in the museums, I shall 

 point out the difference between the modern craft which 

 I have described and the Viking ships and the ships 

 which preceded them. But despite the differences 

 which exist, there remains enough likeness to make 

 this existing boat a real link between us and the re- 

 motest past. 



Other links between us and the past are the houses of 

 Scandinavia, especially those of Norway, many of which 

 keep the form which was given to them in the most 

 primitive days. Most houses, we know, have grown by 

 accretion ; what are now the different rooms of a house 

 were different buildings added on as age followed age 

 and people became more refined and exacting in their 

 tastes. The primitive element, what we may call the 

 kernel of the English house, is really the hall ; and that 

 is why the word 'hall' has come to have such a wide and 

 varied significance in our language. In old-fashioned 

 houses even of to-day, and in houses which, like modern 

 country houses, try and imitate the architecture of an 

 earlier time, the hall with its wide fireplace is simply 

 the laro-est room in the house : the other rooms seem to 

 have gathered round it. What we might call the two 

 essential constituents in a house of the jMiddle Ages are 

 the 'hair and the ' bower,' so often brought into connec- 

 tion and contrast in our ballad poetry. ' Bower,' it 

 may be said, has no connection with boughs, and means 

 nothing in the nature of an arbour, though many people 

 have a sort of notion that it does. It is really the 



