ELK-HUNTING IN NORWAY 



quarters. The resources of the sseter were exhausted, 

 and we returned to the house by the river, whence the 

 more thickly-wooded portion of the ground could 

 again be hunted. In this part of the forest was a 

 very precipitous and densely-wooded glen, evidently a 

 favourite resort, along its borders, for elk. Here and 

 there I had seen along this glen the old elk-pits (elg- 

 graves), made by the natives a century or so ago for 

 trapping elk. The outline of these pits was clearly 

 distinguishable in every case. I saw four or five of 

 them. They were about 12 feet long by 9 feet broad, 

 and, though partially tilled up, had probably been some 

 12 feet in depth, with sides so sloped that the bottom 

 of the pit was broader than the top. Probably timber 

 fences led up to them, on the principle of a wild-duck 

 decoy, and they were concealed by branches of trees 

 covered with moss and leaves, and made in likely elk- 

 passes, by the glen already mentioned, or under some 

 steep cliff between valleys frequented by elk. The 

 elk would probably have been driven into these pits, 

 unless they occasionally took the pass of their own 

 accord. Once trapped, escape would have been im- 

 possible. It is likely that the pits were staked. 



In the days before firearms were invented, one can 

 well imagine the utility of these pits in providing the 

 natives with elk-meat for winter use. On one occa- 

 sion in more recent times (this was Ivor's story) a 

 hunter had wounded an elk, which subsequently fell 

 during the chase into one of these pits. A difference 

 of opinion between the hunter and the maker of the 

 pit as to the ownership of the elk led to the violent 

 death of the pit-maker. No doubt this was a rough- 

 and-ready method of deciding, in a primitive manner, 

 what was really a very nice and difficult question of 



