22 
WILD NORWAY. 
miles across the fjeld, and erected expressly for reindeer 
shooting by a Norwegian friend, who had kindly placed 
it at our disposal. As we tramped slowly upwards, 
two things occurred to us:—First, that among the 
multifarious arrangements of the previous night we 
had forgotten one thing — luncheon; secondly, that 
three Norsk miles equal twenty-one English, to say 
nothing of the five thousand feet ascent which these 
particular three included. We therefore called a halt 
at the highest of the three farms that occupied the 
lower valley. Here the hospitable bonder , with his w r ife 
and daughters, provided us with breakfast of boiling 
coffee, potato-bread, sundry sorts of cheese, and delicious 
moltebcer and tutibcer (fell-berries) with cream. We 
also put some of the said potato-bread (which is of the 
consistency of half-melted gutta-percha) and cheese in 
our pockets, and thus fortified, made a second start in 
earnest. 
The ascent proved an easy one. Up to the level 
of the highest sseters was a fairly defined track follow¬ 
ing the contour lines of various converging glens, and 
commanding glimpses of a mountain torrent whose 
cascades and cataracts rivalled in romantic beauty many 
of the “ show ” things one sees in Norway. This track 
brought us out at two thousand feet, without encounter¬ 
ing difficult ground or having any climbing at all. The 
next thousand feet were more abrupt—no track, all 
path-finding through tangled scrub and bog, where the 
placid ponies were at one moment struggling girth-deep 
in mire, the next calmly snatching a mouthful of 
heather. Here we left behind us the zone of tree-growth 
and willow-grouse; and on the next ridge above, we 
