80 SCANDINAVIA. 



opening like crevices in the flmk. It lodges on the uplands, where it is blown 

 about by the whirlwinds, and in the lower gorges it melts without being changed 

 to ice ; hence the small extent and number of the Scandinavian glaciers. 



Seen from the sea, the Norwegian mountains arrest the spectator by their dark 

 crests, their snowy furrows and white terraces blending with the clouds or 

 contrasting with the blue sky. They are yearly visited, especially by English 

 travellers, although their outlines necessarily present less varied and picturesque 

 landscapes than the Alps and other European highlands. The plateaux, with an 

 elevation of 3,500 to 5,000 feet, no longer entirely covered with snow during the 

 summer, and variously known as Jiede, or " heaths," and riddene, or " wide lands," 

 are dreary wastes, more desolate -than the desert, varied here and there only by a 

 few snowy heights, like tents pitched in the wilderness. The surface of the 

 uplands consists of a red and clammy soil, toilsome to the wayfarer, while the 

 hollows are filled with peat beds, whence ooze black streams, sluggishly flowing 

 from pool to pool in search of some outlet to the lower valleys. Vegetation is 

 confined to lichens, mosses, and stunted grasses, with a few juniper plants and 

 dwarf willows in the more sheltered spots. But no trace of man, except at long 

 intervals along the few paths winding under the hills, and avoiding the swampy 

 tracts in their way across the heath. 



At the foot of the mountains the scene changes with the climate. Here is the 

 abode of man, his lowly dwelling visible in the midst of the woodlands, or by the 

 side of the running stream. Seawards the escarpments of the plateaux are seen 

 at their full height, varied by snowy crests towering above the highest eminences, 

 or blending with the clouds. But the peculiarly wild aspect of the coast scenery 

 is due to the contrast between the rugged cliffs and the unruffled waters reflecting 

 them, to the ever-shifting panorama of the fiords, to the headlands fringed with 

 reefs, to the groups of rocky islets and maze of straits and channels. Nowhere 

 else in Europe, not even on the south-west coast of Ireland, or in the Scotch firths 

 with their basalt headlands, are the winding inlets of the sea skirted by such 

 grand and frowning bluff's. The vessel penetrating into the gloomy passages of 

 the fiords between almost vertical rocky walls, seen from above, seems like a tiny 

 creature breasting the waves. The Bakke-fiord, on the south coast ; the Lyse- 

 fiord, east of Stavanger ; and the great avenues converging on Christianssimd are 

 like the Colorado canons, vast troughs hollowed out of the solid rock. 



The Scandinavian Islands. 



Rocky islets are scattered in seeming confusion along the coast from Magero 

 to the Stavanger-fiord. Beyond the hilly peninsulas connected by narrow 

 isthmuses with the mainland, there rise other eminences formed of the same 

 geological rocks, and presenting the same general aspect, but of lesser elevation, 

 and plunging into deeper waters. Still farther off" succeed other islets, forming 

 apparent seaward continuations of the headlands, and beyond them the countless 

 reefs and rocks of the Skjiirgaard. The Norwegians compare these advanced islets 



