NATURAL HISTORY of NORWAY. 143 



Guldbran£lale, the houfe is ftill. fubfifting, in which king Oluf 

 lodged live nights in the year 1022, above feven hundred years 

 ago, when he took a circuit round -the kingdom to convert the 

 people to the chriftian religion. From the roots of the fir-trees 

 the peafants burn tar, even an hundred years after the trunk has 

 been cut down. This tar is a very profitable commodity, and fo 

 excellent in its kind, that bilnop Berkley, in his treatife on the 

 virtues of tar-water, recommends the Norway-tar in preference to 

 any other. An eminent merchant in this place has afmred me, 

 that the difpenfaries in London apply to him yearly by letters for 

 forty cafks of tar, the produce of Nordflord, which is of a more 

 reddifh colour than any other. In like manner the fir-trees from 

 Norway and Sweden are in much higher efteem, than trees of the 

 fame name and appearance in the warmer countries, in Spain, 

 for inflance, about Tortofe, in Tufcany, in Dalmatia, and other 

 countries on the Mediterranean, which may indeed content them- 

 felves with their own for want of better, but could not fell them 

 in their own ports, if a Norway-man mould import a cargo of 

 ours. There have been attempts made to fow the Norway fir in 

 England and other parts, but the difference of foil and climate 

 will not fuffer the trees to equal thofe of Norway. In refpect to 

 the foil, it is not the good, rich and black earth, that favours this 

 tree, nor the clay-foil, but rather the gravelly, fandy, or moorifh 

 lands. The method of fowing other trees will not fucceed with 

 this. It chufes to grow independent, and to fow itfelf at plea- 

 fure. The beft method therefore is to hang up here and there, 

 on a pole ere&ed for the purpofe, fome of the ripeff, pine apples, 

 by which the fmall fubtil feed which lies concealed between the 

 knots, may be thrown out by the motion of the wind, and drop 

 wherever that carries it. In the fens, the marrow or refin of the 

 £r-tree is naturally transformed into an incenfe, which may be 

 called the Norway-frankincenfe, and is found in the fenny 

 grounds. The buds or pine-apples of the fir-tree, boiled in ftale 

 beer, make an excellent medicine for the fcurvy, and not fo un- 

 pleafant to the palate, as the tar-water, tho' in effect of the fame 

 kind. In Sundmoer, and perhaps in other parts, fbme branches 

 grow upon a certain fpecies of fir-trees, which appear quite mon- 

 ftrous and ftrange in comparifon with the reft, for they are not 

 Part I. P p round, 



