Feats on the Fiord: A Tale

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C. Knight, 1841 - Norway - 375 pages
 

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Page 345 - Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest !" He smiled and wept when he spoke these words.
Page 365 - Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; Nor for the arrow that flieth by day; Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; Nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.
Page 119 - Erica had feared ; — worse than finding the boat gone ; — worse than meeting it in the wide fiord. What was to be done ? There was nothing for it but to do nothing, — to lie perfectly still in the shadow, ready, however, to push out on the first movement of the boat to leave the cove ; for, though the canoe might remain unnoticed at present, it was impossible that anybody could pass out of the cove without seeing her. In such a case, there would be nothing for it but...
Page 4 - ... of sea-birds which inhabit the islets ; and all these sounds are mingled and multiplied by the strong echoes, till they become a din as loud as that of a city. Even at night, when the flocks are in the fold, and the birds at roost, and the echoes themselves seem to be asleep, there is occasionally a sweet music heard, too soft for even the listening ear to catch by day.
Page 3 - ... glide over from peak to peak of these rocky passes, are imaged on the waters so clearly that the fisherman, as he unmoors his boat for his evening task, feels as if he were about to shoot forth his vessel into another heaven, and to cleave his way among the stars. Still as everything is to the eye, sometimes for a hundred miles together along these deep sea-valleys, there is rarely silence. The ear is kept awake by a thousand voices. In the summer, there are cataracts leaping from ledge to ledge...
Page 4 - ... in a Norwegian forest, wakens a myriad of tiny harps ; and this gentle and mournful music may be heard in gushes the whole night through. This music, of course, ceases when each tree becomes laden with snow ; but yet there is sound, in the midst of the longest winter night. There is the rumble of some avalanche, as, after a drifting storm, a mass of snow, too heavy to keep its place, slides and tumbles from the mountain peak. There is also, now and then, a loud crack of the ice in the nearest...
Page 170 - ... ash and birch had not hung down over it. At high water, nothing larger than a bird could go in and out beneath the low arch ; but there was a cavern within, whose sandy floor sloped up to some distance above high-water mark. In this cavern was Rolf. He had thrust his little skiff between the walls of rock, crushing in its sides as he did so. The bushes drooped behind him, hanging naturally over the entrance, as before. Rolf pulled up his broken vessel upon the little sandy beach within the cave...
Page 6 - January night, a hundred years ago, there was a great merriment in the house of a farmer who had fixed his abode within the arctic circle, in Nordland, not far from the foot of Sulitelma, the highest mountain in Norway. This dwelling, with its few fields about it, was in a recess between the rocks, on the shore of the fiord, about five miles from Saltdalen, and two miles from the junction of the Salten's Elv (river) with the fiord. It was but little that Erlingsen's fields would produce, though they...
Page 2 - ... itself out into the sea, till it ends in their dividing the region between them. On the spot, however, this coast is very sublime. The long straggling promontories are mountainous, towering ridges of rock, springing up in precipices from the water ; while the bays between them, instead VOL.
Page 3 - It is difficult to say whether these fiords are the most beautiful in summer or in winter. In summer, they glitter with golden sunshine; and purple and green shadows from the mountain and forest lie on them; and these may be more lovely than the faint light of the winter noons of those latitudes, and the snowy pictures of frozen peaks which then show themselves on the surface; but before the day is half over, out come the stars, — the glorious stars, which shine like nothing that we have ever seen.

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