columns, for most of the thinking men of Norway are liberals. Since
1878 Mr. Thommessen has been the editor, and he was the first to
modernize the Norwegian press by printing cable dispatches, cartoons,
caricatures and other illustrations.

_Dagbladet_ is also a widely read and influential daily, under the
editorship of Mr. A.T. Omholt, and has a large circulation. Its list
of contributors has included some of the most distinguished writers
of the country. There are numerous other dailies of more or less
influence and circulation, and all the trades and occupations have
organs, as in the United States. In every town and almost every
village, a weekly or semi-weekly is published, usually by the liberal
party, and sometimes by other parties. Even Hammerfest, the most
northerly town in the world, which lies in the Arctic Circle, has two
enterprising weeklies.[q]




CHAPTER XVIII

NORWEGIAN FOLK SONGS


If the dwellers of the deep fjords, the somber fir-clad mountain
valleys, and the bleak ice-fields do not "open their lips so readily
for song" as the people of southern lands where the sun creates an
eternal spring, it is not because they are without lyric power, as is
clearly apparent from the rich and varied folk-songs and the splendid
creative work of Edvard Grieg.