these coasts the conformation of a fish's spine, fishery being the
staple commerce of the country, and well-nigh the only means of living
of the hardy men who cling like tufts of lichen to the arid cliffs.
Here, through fourteen degrees of longitude, barely seven hundred
thousand souls maintain existence. Thanks to perils devoid of glory,
to year-long snows which clothe the Norway peaks and guard them from
profaning foot of traveller, these sublime beauties are virgin still;
they will be seen to harmonize with human phenomena, also virgin--at
least to poetry--which here took place, the history of which it is our
purpose to relate.

If one of these inlets, mere fissures to the eyes of the eider-ducks,
is wide enough for the sea not to freeze between the prison-walls of
rock against which it surges, the country-people call the little bay a
"fiord,"--a word which geographers of every nation have adopted into
their respective languages. Though a certain resemblance exists among
all these fiords, each has its own characteristics. The sea has
everywhere forced its way as through a breach, yet the rocks about
each fissure are diversely rent, and their tumultuous precipices defy
the rules of geometric law. Here the scarp is dentelled like a saw;
there the narrow ledges barely allow the snow to lodge or the noble
crests of the Northern pines to spread themselves; farther on, some
convulsion of Nature may have rounded a coquettish curve into a lovely
valley flanked in rising terraces with black-plumed pines. Truly we
are tempted to call this land the Switzerland of Ocean.

Midway between Trondhjem and Christiansand lies an inlet called the
Strom-fiord. If the Strom-fiord is not the loveliest of these rocky
landscapes, it has the merit of displaying the terrestrial grandeurs
of Norway, and of enshrining the scenes of a history that is indeed