660 
THE AMERICAN-SCANDINA VIAN REVIEW 
Marja, who loves the sheltered valley and fights her silent, desperate 
fight to draw her husband and sons away from the terrors of the sea 
which drive her almost out of her mind every winter. Strangely con¬ 
trasted, too, are the two grandmothers, one of the land, the other of 
the sea; but Kristaver’s mother, with the far-sighted eyes and the fatal¬ 
istic trust in God, is the stronger. 
The conflict goes on in Lars’s mind. He loves his father with 
passionate hero worship, and is caught in the thrill of adventure, but 
the keen mind of a more studied generation sees whither it all leads: 
for the tradesman and speculators, wealth; for the fishermen, poverty, 
hardship, and diseases brought on by exposure that rot the body! 
Bojer takes his young hero through almost everything that can happen 
to a fisherman and more than usually happens in one season. He learns 
to row all day till his mittens are wet with blood and to stand all night 
cleaning and salting fish. He is along in the historic battle of Troll- 
fjorden, when the biggest haul in the history of Lofoten was well- 
nigh lost in a battle royal between the row-boats and the usurping 
newcomers, the steam-boats. Afterwards he sleeps in the snow on a 
deserted coast—for the fisherman must go wherever the fish leads 
him—while many men sleep themselves into eternity. He is present 
at the death of one of his father’s men, when one of their comrades is 
chosen by common consent to administer holy communion, because 
the dying man can not depart in peace without the sacrament_a 
beautiful incident simply and devoutly told. He has the experience 
of clinging to the keel of a capsized boat in the open sea and being 
picked up half dead by one of those almost incredible acts of heroism 
not seldom heard of among Norwegian fishermen. It is “Lame Jacob” 
who sails his own boat right over the keel of Kristaver’s and drags 
the shipwrecked men in. 
“Lame Jacob,” the roisterer and braggart, who is never out of 
trouble on land and never deserts a comrade on sea, whose boat is 
his bride and his only home, is one of the most delightful figures in 
the book. After the big haul at Trollfjorden he buys boats and goes 
about padded with money. He was no longer a fisherman, he was 
an admiral. But when Lars Myran, school principal, returns to his 
home many years later, he finds Jacob, nearly ninety, half blind, pot¬ 
tering around to earn a few pennies for tobacco. When Lars rather 
pompously reminds him that “if you had not saved me I would not 
have been here to-day,” Jacob looks up indifferently—he had saved 
so many. A symbolic figure perhaps! But after all'Jacob had lived! 
Bojer is at his best in picturing the lives of the common people. 
Ilieie is exubei ant fun, kindliness, keen observation, and intimate 
sympathy in this book about Ivristaver, the last viking, and his fellows. 
In the fisheries with their romance and adventure, their picturesque, 
almost melodramatic contrasts, Bojer has found a setting which 
