Primitive Customs 53 



sii'cli villages are to be found. The traveller, however, 

 need not go much out of his track to come to regions 

 very sparsely inhabited, where the life is still most 

 primitive, and where he may go on for days without 

 finding anything but a succession of the gaards or 

 homesteads of which I have spoken. I will take one 

 district, which the traveller may easily visit if he choose. 

 Thelemarken, which lies at the back, so to say, of Odde 

 on the Hardanger Fjord. There is a fast route from 

 Odde to Kongsberg, and from Kongsberg you get into 

 civilisation again, for you get upon one of the few 

 railways in Norway, and can travel by it to Christiania. 

 Unfortunately, the living and accommodation are so 

 rough that not many people are tempted to make the 

 expedition through Thelemarken for the sake of a 

 good specimen of primitive Norway. 



Some primitive customs, too, relics of bygone super- 

 stitions, and even of pre-Christian religions, are better 

 preserved in Scandinavia than in any other of the 

 countries of Northern Europe, though even here, it 

 must be said with regret, they are rapidly dying out. 

 Of these, the one which the traveller has most chance 

 of seeing some example of is the keeping up of the 

 Midsummer, or St. John's Day fires ; what in Germany 

 are called, or used to be called, the Johannisfeuer, and 

 in France Feu de S. Jean. There is scarcely a country 

 of Europe which used not to celebrate this festival of 

 Midsunnner, which the Swedes and Norwegians still 

 keep up under the name of the Sankt Hans. The time 

 for the festival is the eve of St. John's day, and St. 

 John the Baptist is the patron of it. But there can be 

 no doubt that it springs from religious rites earlier than 



