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CHAPTER XIII. 
HUNTING-CAMPS ON HARD ANGER VIDDEN. 
Reindeer-Stalking. 
I. Under Difficulties. 
The Highlands of Hardanger, as the words IIar- 
clanger Vidden may be translated, must count among the 
larger areas of land that still survive in Europe abso¬ 
lutely barren and uninhabited. Measured roughly upon 
the map, the Vidden stretch eastward from the well- 
known Hardanger fjord, some seventy or eighty English 
miles before the valleys of Numedal or Hallingdal are 
reached ; while from its southern limits on Haukelid- 
fjeld, abutting on Telemark, no break occurs up to 
the neighbourhood of the Sogne-fjord, upwards of one 
hundred miles distant in a northerly direction. 
The whole of this space of seventy by one hundred 
miles is a mountainous table-land of a mean general 
elevation of 4000 feet, traversed or dotted with hills 
of much greater altitudes. Thus, on the north, the ice¬ 
fields of Hardanger-Jokul reach 6467 feet, Hallingskarver 
6000 feet; Haartieg, in the centre, 5390 feet; and on 
the southern verge, the Stor-fond and Nups-eggen exceed 
5500 feet. 
The landscape of Hardanger Vidden may be likened 
