18 
WILD NORWAY. 
but anxious, as a rule, to render service, and instinct 
with a sympathy and simple honesty that are rare and 
refreshing. He is self-respecting, resolute, and resource¬ 
ful in a crisis. With such men the comradeship of a 
month or two begets feelings of friendship and respect, 
and it is a source of legitimate pride when such are 
found to be reciprocated. 
I know I have elsewhere called some of these men 
pot-hunters (and excused the term), for they are pot¬ 
hunters, and I cannot overlook it, much as I like 
them. The Norseman often shows a stolid and phleg¬ 
matic exterior ; yet his heart is in the right place, and 
governs his actions, which spring thence rather than 
from the lips outward. 
The two characteristics that have struck me (I refer 
to remote rural districts) are their poverty and their 
contentment. The former, in distant dales, can hardly 
be exaggerated, and to us is incredible. Money simply 
does not exist. What a man cannot make with his 
hands or hatchet he does without and doesn’t even 
seem to want. Their lives are of the hardest—like 
their native rocks; they know not comfort, nor recog¬ 
nize its reverse, and under circumstances that to many 
would represent abject misery, they are contented and 
even happy. Perhaps, after all, such conditions are 
incorrectly described as “ poverty.” 
I will not omit mention of the other sex, albeit my 
Experience must be largely limited to the handmaidens 
who have accompanied us in hunting expeditions. 
Women in Norway work as hard as the men. One 
sees them in twos and fours, pulling, without rest, 
across leagues of open water, or carrying what looks 
