3 5 6 Norivay and the Norwegians 



quently gilt), if any heirloorns of this are left iii the 

 family ; but the high prices which foreigners are willing 

 to give for tliis 'gammel solv' is bringing an immense 

 quantity into the market. All of this, of course, goes 

 out of the country. The present writer found that in 

 an interval of seven years the price of the old silver 

 had gone up enormously. 



' The casual traveller must not expect that in the 

 hotels to which he very likely will confine himself he 

 will find any true representative of the food of the 

 people, any more than he found one of the national 

 costume. There he will get sahnon and fresh meat in 

 abundance. But in the interior of the country, in 

 many parts, at any rate, the people only rarely eat 

 fresh meat or fresh fish. The meat which they do 

 consume has been smoked or dried and kept for mouths 

 — for a year may be — hung up in their stabur or store- 

 houses. To our taste it is uneatable. Salt herrings are 

 very much consumed in the country. But farinaceous 

 food forms the staple of the national diet. It is usually 

 ^aten not in the form of bread but of porridge, called 

 in the Norse grod. In the rural districts the bread is 

 generally of two kinds, black bread made of rye, and 

 resembling in almost every particular the German rye 

 bread, and a curious very thin biscuit-bread no thicker 

 than mill-board, wliich goes by the name of flat bread 

 {fiatbrod). It is made of barley or oatmeal, often witli 

 a little potato-meal added. Potatoes, though they were 

 not introduced into Norway till tlie middle of the last 

 centurv, have become a favourite article of food. 



In the constitution and the domestic life of the 

 country, as we have described it, we seem to have 



