Dec., 1890. 
THROUGH NORWAY WITH THE VESEY CLUB. 
269 
but the same joke lias been made about the English cheese- 
cover. Certainly some of the Norsk cheeses are “ high.” On 
the Fille Fjeld once I “ winded ” a cheese store at more than 
a quarter of a mile distance ; but in those days my nose was 
keen. I wish I had space to describe this saeter, all its appli¬ 
ances were so marvellously clean, and the fire-places, &c., so 
delightfully antique. But then, Kongsvold is a rich man as 
Norwegians go, and his cows, goats, and horses are his special 
pride. He has one greater pride though, and that is his 
grand-daughter, the most charming specimen of Norwegian 
maidenhood that we came across. All the unmarried mem¬ 
bers of the party—the males, that is—fell in love with her 
straight off, and if the married ones had not been securely 
held in they would have gone and done likewise, I am not 
quite sure whether in their heart of hearts they didn’t, One 
love-lorn bachelor mourned over her for at least a week, and 
almost got pitched head first from the balcony of an hotel 
at which we stayed subsequently, for daring to ask the pro¬ 
prietor thereof (unmarried) to give him her photo, which he 
had in his album. Probably the only thing that saved him 
was the fact that he was twice as big and four times as strong 
as the rival in question. 
Mr. Kongsvold’s station—as the reader will have noted, 
country stations are generally named after the proprietor, 
and sometimes have been in the hands of the same family for 
many centuries—was a marvel. Norwegian houses are built 
in two principal ways, of roughly-squared logs, eight or ten 
inches in section, or weather-boarded with double wails. 
Weather-boarding is either effected by means of boards 
placed lengthwise, and overlapping one another, as is so 
common in English barns, or placed vertically with narrower 
strips over the junctions. The stuffing is dry moss. Weather¬ 
boarding needs more architectural skill, and lends itself freely 
to ornamentation by balconies, &c. The walls are painted 
usually a pale creamy white, though near Trondhjem we saw 
the most delightful harmonies in red and ochre, The roofs 
are commonly covered with big slabs of shale, put on diamond- 
wise ; very generally in the smaller buildings they are thickly 
turfed, and covered with plants—pine and birch trees, eight 
or ten feet high, sometimes growing upon them. An inter¬ 
esting volume might be compiled upon the tectile flora of 
Norway. In this respect the cow-houses stand facile princeps. 
Every farm has one or more cow-houses for the cows when, in 
the winter season, they have to be kept under cover. The 
cow-house is generally built of hewn logs, two storeys high, 
and the upper storey approached by means of an inclined plane 
