NOEWEGIAN TOWNS. 129 



The exports of Bergen consist chiefly of fish, exchanged for colonial 

 produce, cereals, fruits, wine, and manufactured goods, imported mainfy by 

 British vessels. Formerly all the northern fishers, even those of Lapland and 

 the Lofoten, brought their captures to the Bergen market, sailing hundreds of 

 miles through mist and storm for the purpose. But since the foundation of Bodo, 

 Tromso, Hammerfest, and other northern marts, these long and perilous trips have 

 ceased. 



Bergen is one of the wettest spots on the globe, and leprosy, that frightful 

 relic of medieeval times, still lingers in the neighbourhood. There are about 

 2,000 tainted by the virus, but only on the coast, the evil being apparently due to 

 an almost exclusive diet of succulent fish. Thanks, however, to a better treatment, 

 the number of victims is yearly decreasing. 



North of Bergen follow other fishing stations, such as AalcHHnd and Cliristtana- 

 stmd, both standing on islets at the entrance of fiords ramifying far inland. But 

 east of the island of Hitteren comes the far more commodious Trondhj em-fiord, 

 communicating seawards by a narrow and well-sheltered channel, and expanding 

 to a wide land-locked basin, fed by many streams, and skirted by an extensive 

 arable lowland tract. Trondhjcm thus enjoys the advantage of standing on the 

 verge of the natural depression separating the Kjolen from the southern table- 

 lands, and it will also soon be connected by lines of railway, on the one hand, with 

 Christiania, and on the other with the shores of the Gulf of Bothnia. Although 

 situated between the sixty-third and sixty-fourth parallels, the severity of its 

 climate is tempered by the warm Atlantic breezes, and a solitary lime-tree is 

 proudly shown to strangers as a proof of its mildness. Even farther north, near 

 the village of Fnisten, walnuts occasionally come to maturity. 



Formerly capital of the kingdom, Trondhj em still remains the religious metro- 

 polis, and in its cathedral are consecrated the Norwegian kings. This monument 

 of the pointed style, the finest in Norway, dates from various epochs between the 

 end of the eleventh and beginning of the fourteenth century, and in modern times 

 portions destroyed by fire have been rebuilt. On a rocky eminence commanding 

 the city formerly stood, according to tradition, the castle of Hakon Jarl, last of the 

 Norwegian pagan kings, of whom the saga relates that he sacrificed his own son to 

 the gods. 



In the neighbourhood some industrial villages utilise the enormous motive 

 power furnished by the surrounding falls and rapids ; timber is also floated down 

 in abundance ; and a mine in the vicinity supplies the best chromate of iron in the 

 world. In the same district, though in the Upper Glommen basin, lies the 

 mining town of Boros, whose copper beds, containing 4 to 8 per cent, of pure 

 metal, have been worked since the middle of the sixteenth century, partly by 

 miners of German descent. 



No town worthy of the name occurs north of Trondhj em till we reach TroniHÔ, 

 480 miles distant as the bird flies, and at least 600 by the intricate coast-line. 

 Tromso; Hammerfest, still farther north; Vardo, or Vardohus; and Vadso, on 

 Yaranger- fiord, are the stations where the deep-sea fishing craft are equipped for 



