THE AMERICA N-SCANDINA VIAN REVIEW 6Gr> 
paragraph, which, by the way, does not describe the villain of the story, 
but the hero. It tells of a father and daughter living alone on the 
mountain gaard Svartjorde. It is a quiet, moonlit night, and they 
stand outside the house looking up toward the overhanging mountain. 
He stood leaning his shoulder against an old rowan. The crown of 
the tree laid a network of twisted, deformed shadow lines across the 
yard. The man was standing half in shadow. A black dog-skin cap 
came far down over his head, mingled with his beard, and made a sin¬ 
ister hairy blackness. Under the edge of the cap a pair of heavy eyes 
gleamed savagely. There was a cold breath of the woods and wilder¬ 
ness about the man. The daughter was a little pale, black-haired thing. 
Her eyes were easily lit by a dream—a dark, far-sighted calmness, as 
if she felt lonely and were longing to get away.” It is like looking into 
a deep mountain ravine that is never visited by a ray of sunlight. The 
fact that Valplassen is reputed to be one of the best, sellers of the year 
shows how far Norwegian literary tastes have traveled toward the 
primal wilds. 
A young author of great promise, who also writes of the wilderness 
but with a more universal appeal, is Mikkjel Fonhus, who has lately 
won a name for himself with 
his animal stories. The Troll 
Elk (Troll-Eigen , Asche- 
houg, 1921) tells of the life¬ 
long struggle between the 
mighty hunter “Gaupa” (the 
lynx) and the famous elk 
which has baffled all the elk 
hunters of the neighborhood 
and is known far and wide for 
its strength and wildness. 
Ever since he killed the 
mother of the Troll Elk and 
heard the uncanny cries of the 
calf, Gaupa has had a suspi¬ 
cion that this is not an ordi¬ 
nary elk but the reincarnation 
of a human soul, and he re¬ 
members the threat of a crazy 
Swedish laborer who prom¬ 
ised to return from the grave 
in the guise of an animal. Yet 
the pursuit draws him, and he 
can not desist. He tries the 
expedient of shooting with 
a huge old-fashioned bullet 
Mikkjel Fonhus 
