The Garden of Hans Kristoffer
I
IT is a little garden of the North, far up in the sixties, on one of the Faroe Isles. The years of the garden are seventy-six; those of Hans Kristoffer are eighty-four. His forebears, Norse Vikings seven centuries ago, were not garden-lovers, and the chief interests of their descendants are codfish, whales, sea-fowl, and half-wild sheep. But the parsonage gardens of Denmark are noted, and back in the eighteenth century the daughter of a Danish pastor ‘married in’ to this old farm. And I think that ancestral memories of faraway Danish gardens, a heritage of garden lore, have come down to Hans Kristoffer from that ‘Ann Lisbit, born Svabö.’ I think it is to her that he owes his garden.
One spring morning he stood, a little boy of eight years, in the doorway of his father’s cottage. A mighty pile of ashes and refuse was close by; a rocky, boggy slope, a marshy bit at the bottom, where a cow stood, knee-deep. Hans Kristoffer surveyed it all, and something stirred to life in his heart. He had never seen a garden, but now he said to himself, ‘Here I will have a garden; here I will make things grow.’ And having made this resolve, he began straightway.
Permission was given him to do what he chose with the land; permission, but no help. And it would be a labor of years for one small pair of arms to dig and drain it, and build a dike around it. So, to encourage himself at the very outset, he went to the wild moors, dug up violets and catchflies and little orchids, and planted them on the outskirts of the ash-heap before he began the task of clearing it away. And that was the beginning of the garden.
I saw it first fourteen years ago, when I had been in the Faroes only a week. My destination was Myggenoes, an interesting bird island far out in the West; and a friend in Thorshavn had planned for me a short stay, midway, at Hans Kristoffer’s, and had written to tell him of my coming. Five hours of tumultuous seas, glimpses, through mists, of cliff islands of strange shape, with storm-clouds flying from their summits, and then I was deposited on the sea-rocks, cold, wet, and forlorn.
No Hans Kristoffer was visible. A curious crowd collected, faces peered at me from windows and around corners. Then a merchant appeared who spoke English, and to him I explained that I wanted to go to the King’s Peasant at Ryggi.
‘To Hans Kristoffer’s? Yes, to be sure. He was here a moment ago. Ho! Hans Kristoffer!’ he called. And at the word a little old man came forward and bade me welcome. It was Hans Kristoffer, and he had been there all the time. That was my first lesson in Faroe etiquette. The stranger, it seems, must make all the advances.
Then we started for Ryggi, Hans Kristoffer paddling softly by my side in his Faroe moccasins. Not far away, I saw a long, low, grass-roofed cottage, with flowery beds half-hidden in a shrubby growth of trees. Five minutes more, and Hans Kristoffer opened a high door in a stone wall, and I passed into the garden. I had only a glimpse of yellow bands of primroses, and nodding daffodils, and then I saw the housemother, Fru Johanne Katrine, smiling a welcome in the doorway.
As I have no garden of my own, I am obliged to dig in those of other people. In my bag were some seeds and roots that I thought might be new to the Faroes; and even before Johanne Katrine brought in the coffee and kringles, Hans Kristoffer and I sat down side by side, he with a Danish-English dictionary on his knee, I with one in EnglishDanish on mine, for mutual enlightenment. And when we had finished the coffee and kringles, we went out and planted the roots and seeds, and have been fast friends ever since.
I went to bed that night in a little bed of puffin feathers, hearing the soft rustle of leaves close by, and the hushah-hush of surf on the strand. Later, after midnight, there were other sounds, a puzzling, yet apparently friendly presence in the garden. I peered out into the silvery twilight. It was that short hour of the Faroe summer night when the sunset glow has passed away, but the sun delays its coming. The fjelds appeared bolder and sterner, and soft wreaths of mist gathered about their summits and filled the upland hollows. The sea looked like a great brimming bowl, exactly as if it would mount higher and higher and overwhelm the land. Only a faint, far sound came from the distant bird-cliffs — the wakeful kittiwakes’ cry, ‘ Trud-lar-i! Trudlar-i!' And Hestö and Kolter, strange shapes out at sea, seemed more than ever like sentient creatures heeding the command, 4 Keep silence before Me, O Islands!’
It was the hour, too, when the Vættrir come out, the little folk that give Christian service, and stay only where there is peace and good-will. And something was stirring out among the flowers — a small brown figure, bending, lifting tenderly a bruised stalk, freeing a struggling plant from a weed, strewing a path with fine sand. Though small, it was too large to be one of the Vættrir. It was Hans Kristoffer, refreshing himself after long hours of toil in the home-fields, by tending his beloved garden.
After breakfast I went out with Hans Kristoffer, to make a closer acquaintance with the garden. In front of the cottage is a large bed of perennials with a little golden locust tree on the upper border. The taller plants are lilac and white lupines, a flowering currant, a foxglove or two, cottage lilies, yellow larkspurs, and one of bright blue monkshood, montbretia, monkey-flowers, Jacob’sladders, Shasta daisies, feverfew, mauve and white rockets, doronicums, Fair Maids of France, an oriental poppy, two peonies, and starry astrantiums. The lower plants are sweet Williams, pyrethrums, lilac and white horned violets, forget-me-nots, potentillas, Iceland poppies, a bleeding heart, Scottish bluebells, geums, catchflies, daffodils, Spanish irises, spiræas and wood hyacinths.
And then there is the border. First, a wonderful band of primroses. Never, no, not under Devon hedges, have I seen such a wealth of blossoms, hardly a leaf showing among them. Then comes a band of London pride, or Saxifraga umbrosa, or Mother of thousands, as you choose to call it. And the inner band is Poet’s narcissus, First the primroses bloom, then the Poet’s narcissus, and then the Mother of Thousands.
Below the large bed is a circular grass plane, with eighteen little beds following its circumference, each just large enough to hold a clump of sweet Williams, or clove-pinks, or pansies. And in the centre is a tiny spruce. The garden lies on a slope facing the sea, and when the great sou’easters rage, I wonder how any mortal plant can survive. But even when mourning some damage done, I remember what charm this sharp decline gives the garden, with the lovely tints of sea, strand, and sky as a background for the blossoms. Between the laced branches of little trees are long white bars of surf and the flashing of white wings; and you should see a big clump of Grandis daffodils against the gleaming purples of the strand!
There are gravelly paths that curve and wind down the slope, as paths should do, and all are bordered with primroses and the Mother of Thousands. They pass under the tiniest trees and between the biggest currant bushes that I have ever seen, and lead to a store-house, or to a sheltered nook among elderberry bushes, where there are benches and a table, or to seats by the sea-dike, or to the top of the garden with a wide view over sea and fields. And the only help Hans Kristoffer had in planning his garden was a bit of advice given him by a Danish pastor: ‘Don’t make squares, Hans Kristoffer, make curves.'
Though most of the flowers are in the large bed, there are not a few in odd nooks — a Thunbergianum lily, irises, beds of vinca, sweet Williams, and several rose bushes that never bloom.
By the time I had seen everything and we sat down to rest on the bleaching grass above the garden, I had discovered that Hans Kristoffer’s little trees and his primrose borders are the pride and joy of his heart. I was new to the Faroes then, and did not know that not a tree, not a shrub grows wild in the islands. But the garden bore traces of conflict: the little trees were browner than they should be, and some seemed to be perpetually blowing to the northwest, and others to the southeast, according to their exposure. And I fear they will never be much larger, much taller, though with the years they may learn to bow to the storms and curve low their branches within the shelter of the dike.
Indeed Hans Kristoffer reminds me of his own little trees. Small, brown and brave, with budding hopes cut down by cruel frosts and sprouting anew in the spring. Hans Kristoffer had many questions to ask me about the trees of America, and drank in greedily all I told him about the redwoods of California, and the yellow spruces of Alaska.
‘And that is far north too —Alaska,’ he said wistfully. ‘But no, they would not grow like that here, not if they lived to be a thousand years.’
And the primroses? These bare fjelds and barren slopes did not look at all primrosy. Yet, half a century ago, Hans Kristoffer found some pale blossoms under a ledge of rock on another island — the only place where they grow in the Faroes. He brought a few roots home, and years of patient and devoted care have made these wonderful borders. As we entered the bay, I had seen them shining like golden ribbons in the wan sunlight.
The garden grew slowly in its infancy. Some native flowers, some seeds from Denmark, cuttings from a Danish official’s garden in Thorshavn, little trees that voyaged adventurously in a sloop from Norway, southernwood that was once a sprig in a posy sent to a Faroe skipper’s wife from a Shetland Island port; and later came contributions from a Scottish Border garden, from one in South Devon, and from bleak Aberdeen. But few survived when sent from English gardens.
II
During the next five years I often turned up at Ryggi, after stirring adventures by land and sea, looking like a drowned mouse, and being revived by Johanne Katrine with hot milk and a good fire of peats. Never before had such a chance to dig been mine; but I worked in ignorance, and often longed for advice, preferably from some Norwegian scientist, versed in the vicissitudes of a sub-Arctic climate in a stormcentre where Gulf Stream and Polar current strive for mastery. He might have told me why foxgloves, a Croceum lily, and English irises thrive here, and German irises, hollyhocks, and Madonna lilies fail. Many plants struggle along doubtfully through the alternate soakings and freezings, the pitiless downpours, and violent gales; sprout often in February and are frozen in March; sprout again and are cut down in May; get the better of their troubles, show great promise of a flowery future, and then die quietly in June.
I usually took my meals alone, with catalogues of plants, bulbs, and seeds (from Barr of Covent Garden) propped open before me. Such treasures one could get for sixpence! New and improved varieties of snowdrops, crocuses, and narcissi, to replace the old inferior kinds, and English wood-hyacinths, pink, white, and blue — it was such an exhilarating thought that, after I had sailed away from the Faroes, those flowers would dance down a long vista of years, and through the medium of Hans Kristoffer’s many godchildren and friends, bloom in future little gardens of the seventeen inhabited islands.
There were evenings when, overweary, I have said to myself, ‘ It’s only a poor little garden. It would hardly be noticed in any other land.’ But I said it without conviction, and took it back again next morning. For, more than any garden I know, it is an epitome of the life of the people. On this soil during seven hundred years honorable, hospitable, brave men and women have toiled and suffered and kept their faith. Their old-time industries I can see from the vantage-point of the garden. The wind that blows over it brings messages from the home fields and the far-encircling sea and fjelds. Blindfolded, I can tell from which ‘airt’ the wind is blowing. In the garden, years ago I heard the whale-message going like wildfire over the land. And within these precincts we welcomed the Governor, when he came, one happy day, to bring the Cross of Danebrog, bestowed by the King of Denmark on Hans Kristoffer, for good service to his fellow men.
Johanne Katrine often comes out with her knitting, and paces to and fro with a mind divided between pleasure at my efforts and mortification that any guest of hers should look so bedrabbled and neglected. Johanne Katrine has a fine spirit of her own, but in all that pertains to the garden she is meekness personified. She never tries to help. She has, indeed, been sternly forbidden to give assistance of any kind. There is, of course, a reason for this. She told me, herself, the story of that fateful day when, Hans Kristoffer being absent, she thought she would help by weeding the beds in the grass plane, the little servant assisting. It was too early in the spring for flowers, and clove-pinks, when not in bloom, certainly do look like grass, and who could have dreamed that those tufts of common-looking leaves were sweet Williams, Hans Kristoffer s cherished dark-red sweet Williams? The brook, close by, was in full spate, and the little maid quickly gathered up the ‘weeds’ and threw them in the brook, and a strong west-fall tide swept them all out to sea.
But Johanne Katrine has a certain small privilege of her own — to make little posies for departing friends: a white clove-pink, a sprig of southernwood, a spray of the bleeding heart, which is her special property. And of course she can gather as many primroses as she wishes.
Somewhere she has picked up the Latin name of a certain species. And I often see her nodding complacently at the primrose border and murmuring, ‘Primula veris! Primula veris!’ as if to say, ‘I am not as ignorant as they think.’ Dear Johanne Katrine! They are not Primula veris; but who would have the heart to tell her so?
I was five and a half years in the Faroes without leaving the islands. Then, in the autumn of 1905, I went south to Scotland, to stay during the winter and return the next spring for another six months. When I went to Ryggi to say farewell, I found Hans Kristoffer in trouble. The spring before, he had enlarged his garden, including a strip of new land, and on it nothing would grow. Potatoes gave almost no return, carrots made only a hard disk and rootlets; flowers grew an inch tall, blossomed, and died. Something had to be done. And so, when I went to Scotland, I took a little bag of soil to be analyzed. A seedsman in Edinburgh advised me to go to the University and ask advice of the Professor of Agriculture.
In his den, in the old gray pile of buildings, the professor was finishing an important work on the domestic animals of Great Britain and contiguous islands. Only one thing was lacking, — information about Faroe sheep, — and how to get it? At that moment, a knock on the door, and I appeared, carrying a bag of soil. From the moment the magic words ‘Faroe Islands’ were uttered, my welcome was assured. Did I, perhaps, know anything about the sheep of the islands?
Did I not! I had absorbed sheep-lore for more than five years. I had a personal acquaintance with scores of lambs. I knew the length of their tails, the set of their ears, the shape and color of their spots, and I had photographs and statistics. The professor was given the information and illustrations he needed.
He analyzed the soil and found it most attractive in its lacks; and when I returned the following spring, I was preceded by a beautiful present from the professor to Hans Kristoffer, of three kinds of fertilizers, the only stipulation being that they should be tried in three separate sections, and the comparative results noted. That autumn carrots and potatoes were well grown, flowers bloomed abundantly, and since then all has gone well.
III
And now I am back again in this month of May, 1914. I thought I was never again to see Hans Kristoffer and the garden, but a fairy godmother made it possible. Influenza and a late spring have delayed farm-work. That must come first, though the garden suffers.
And my working powers are in abeyance. Only by making promises to an Edinburgh doctor, am I here at all, in honor bound to climb no fjelds, to have no exciting adventures, and to return to Scotland before the big storms of September.
I am in the garden now, taking notes of the changes of eight years. I weed a little, tidy up the perennials, put the refuse in a cracker-box (anglicé, biscuit-tin), replace the cover and sit on it, resting under the lee of the currant bushes. How narrow-minded I was during my first years in the garden — how priggish my attitude toward these currant bushes! I thought that they should be pruned to increase their bearing, and only my ignorance of the proper methods saved them from vigorous measures that would have grieved the heart of Hans Kristoffer. He seemed to think the pruning of a bush an unkind act toward a friend. So they grow in peace, making tall leafy shrubs, pleasant to the eye, and giving shelter from the keen sea-winds; and that is better than berries.
Hans Kristoffer is somewhere near. All day he has been carrying crates of seed-potatoes on his shoulders, from the house attic to the fields at the bottom of the hill. It is now five o’clock, and he appeared a few minutes ago, looking a little weary (he is eighty-four years old), but in the best of spirits. He says that he thinks he has earned a little recreation. So he is crawling on all fours under the big currant bushes, scraping from the soil the thick moss that has grown there since last summer. Now and then he emerges, looking rather flushed and scratched, and all covered with fluff and dry leaves, and we chat a little until he disappears again.
‘Seems to me the little spruce in the grass plane has done very well.’
‘The top’s crooked,’replied Hans Kristoffer gloomily. ‘It had made a beautiful green top six inches long, and one day a mean old starling came along, nipped off the top, dropped it, and flew away. Right before my eyes he did that. If he had only put it to some use!' lamented he. ‘And then a lower shoot had to be bound up to take its place. But it was always askew. It has never looked the same.’
‘Did I tell you about the thrushes?’ asked Hans Kristoffer on one of his brief visits. ‘No? Well, some little time after you went away, the currant bushes stopped bearing. I could n’t find out what was the matter. During two years we had n’t a berry. Then, in April, a great sou’wester blew a flock of red-winged thrushes onto the island’s west coast. They were on their way to Iceland. I suppose they could see the trees from afar,’ said Hans Kristoffer with a gratified smile, ‘and they crossed at once to the garden. And then they could n’t go, for the storm changed to a hard nor’wester, and they never start in a hard wind. They stayed for a fortnight. We thought that there were a hundred and twenty-five in the flock. They were busy all the time among the currant bushes. Even the soil beneath the bushes looked as though it had been worked with garden tools. We were very careful not to disturb them, and went on tip-toe if we had to go to the storehouse after they were settled for the night. And we kept the cats away. You should have heard them sing. I did n’t know that any birds could sing like that. I don’t know what they did to those currant bushes, or what they found there, but we had a fine lot of berries that year, and since then we have had no more trouble.’
It is very cold. The snow lies white on the fields, and now and then there is a sudden hissing and rattling among the currant bushes, — fine dry snow and hail, — and down-dropping veils shut in the garden.
Suddenly I remembered the primroses. I had not thought of them before. Even with this cold, they should have been in full bud now. I looked at the border nearest to me. Only the Mother of Thousands was there. Just then Hans Kristoffer appeared a few yards away.
‘Why, Hans Kristoffer,’ I cried, ‘where are the primroses?’
Hans Kristoffer turned a little from me and stood a moment looking over the bay. Then he came nearer, and said in a low tone, ‘They died.’
‘They died?' I echoed in dismay.
‘Yes, they had a sickness, and it spread, and I could n’t save them. I did all I could, all that people told me to do. Oh, yes! I did my best, but nothing helped. In two years they were all gone.’
I looked at Hans Kristoffer, seeing him dimly, through a mist, and I cannot say that his eyes were quite dry. For a moment I felt that I could not have it so. I would write to America, ask wealthy friends to help. My dear old friend should have his primrose borders again. But no — the distance and the difficulties are too great, and after all, the Mother of Thousands is fair to see.
But he shall have more polyanthus primroses. They will not make borders, but they are pretty in groups, and strange to say, the few that I left here eight years ago have not been affected. I have seeds with me. I will sow them to-morrow, and perhaps they may be large enough to transplant before I sail away in September.
June 15, 1914.
In former years the garden had few neighbors. Now there are many, and in each house are children, cats, dogs, chickens, and ducks — enemies of the garden in effect if not intention. It was not with malice prepense that two dogs had a fight yesterday among my seedlings. Nevertheless, to-day only five remain out of one hundred and twentyfive. And I cannot blame the hens, that they like to lie on their sides and kick in the large flower-bed. It is a pleasant place to kick in. But this cannot go on. Hans Kristofler is growing worn with all these losses and disappointments. So I have decided to write to that kind professor in Edinburgh, who has become a friend, and ask him to get an estimate of the cost of chicken-wire to top the stone wall and the dikes around the garden. I fear it will cost too much, and I will say nothing about it to Hans Kristoffer. But I must have measurements, and I have revived an old plan we had, to make a map of the garden.
And now Hans Kristoffer and I prowl about—he with a long fishing-pole marked off in alens, and I with a dressmaker’s yard-measure. We have an abstracted and solemn air, and mutter as we go, ‘50 by 100; 40 by 75 by 150.’
August 3, 1914.
Only thrice have I left the shelter of the garden for longer trips. The last time it was to a hamlet on the western coast. People were kind, and there were wonderful cliff islands, but I was homesick for little trees and encompassing walls. When I opened the high garden-door, there stood a clump of beautiful English irises in full bloom. Not white, not gray were they, but like the shadow cast on white by dancing leaves. I had been in storm-swept spaces, where no fragile leaf could grow; and to see these stately flowers, their petals so fair and perfect, made the garden seem ‘the veriest school of peace.’
Then I saw Hans Kristoffer coming toward me, and his eyes were troubled. ‘The Governor has sent a message,’ he said. ‘There will be war. It is thought that Denmark will be drawn in, too. People are frightened.’
And now there is no more peace in the garden. The cottage is the gathering-place for troubled souls. No wonder they are afraid. They remember too well the old tales of the Napoleonic wars, when the Faroes were forgotten, the yearly supply-ship did not come, and children lay dead on the sea-rocks where they had crawled to eat seaweed. Four German cruisers have been seen near. There is talk about the places of refuge high up among the fjelds, where people fled from pirates in the old days, They are cunningly concealed, yet one can shelter several hundred, and a few stout men hold the entrance.
The S.S. Chaldur has come in, and is anchored in the bay. The captain is called to military service in Denmark, and must take the vessel to Copenhagen. It will be crowded to its utmost capacity with Danes called to service — students, patients for hospitals, summer visitors, merchants; and there are two English officers who came for a few weeks’ fishing. I have been acting as interpreter for them. They think that England must join the war, and they will soon be on their way to France. It is believed that Denmark will be at war before the Chaldur can reach Copenhagen. It has no wireless, no cannon. The Captain’s family is on board.
August 10, 1914.
And now the Chaldur has gone, and all is quiet again. These are dark days, made more depressing by dense fog that wraps us in like a pall. Great flights of sea-fowl, made bolder by the fog, gather close to the village. Their wild, raucous cries, the confused clamor, like frightened human voices, add to the sense of foreboding. And the other day, when two great creatures emerged from the mists in Thorshavnfjord, the people of the little capital gathered on the sea-rocks and awaited their fate in silence. The Dreadnoughts anchored, a flag was run up, and it was the British flag. Then the people said, ‘God be praised!’ and took courage. England has joined the war.
Thrice above the sound of haymakers’ voices has sounded the dull booming of cannon. Denmark has canceled all sailings. The little fleet of motor fishing-boats rocks idly at its moorings. No more busy coming and going, the soft chug-chugging echoing along the cliffs. For there is no petroleum. Supplies are low. Denmark, England, and Norway refuse us food. There is only a little tea. This is a serious matter, and Hans Kristoffer has recalled a bit of plant-lore told him long ago by a Danish pastor’s wife: that the leaves of a little trailing Northern raspberry, when dried, make a good substitute for tea. With much enthusiasm we went in search of it, dried it, made a brew, and bade the family try our war tea. But the emphasis with which the proffer of a second cup was declined showed that it was not a cup that cheers.
I have been transplanting baby polyanthus primroses, each a tiny rosette of leaves. Johanne Katrine watches me with a half-smile on her anxious face.
‘ I like to see you do that,’ she says, ‘You seem so pleased, so satisfied with your work, as though you expected that someone would be alive next spring, to enjoy them.’
A really delightful thing has happened. The Edinburgh professor, instead of sending me an estimate of the cost of chicken-netting, has bought it himself and sent it to Hans Kristoffer as a present. Not only chicken-netting, but barbed wire, and rolls of strongmeshed netting warranted to keep out cows and sheep. But, the first surprise and joy past, Hans Kristoffer has gone about heavily, with a troubled face. ‘It is too much,’ he murmured. ‘I can do nothing in return. It is not right.’
I saw that stern measures were necessary. ’Hans Kristoffer,’ I said, ‘cannot the professor be permitted to use his own money in the way that pleases him most? Would you begrudge a kind friend a pleasure? I think you are showing a very evil spirit in this matter!’
Hans Kristoffer’s face brightened. He had not looked at it in that light before. Of course, he could not deny such a kind friend a pleasure.
And then began the work of putting up the defenses. There is enough, not only for the garden itself, but for the kitchen-garden and for a field of potatoes. We are nothing if not militant nowadays. And this morning Hans Kristoffer announced happily that he thought the fort was now impregnable to land forces. But only by attacks of the enemy could possible weak points in the defenses be ascertained. Nothing, he added sadly, could protect the fort from the devastations of that miserable air-ship — a half-time thieving crow.
August 27, 1914.
To-day came a cable message from an Edinburgh friend, ‘Advise return immediately.’ But I cannot return. On the Continent ambassadors and consuls must be shepherding flocks of wandering Americans, but nothing of the kind is happening to me. There is no consul, no passport, no mails, no money, no ship to the outside world. The Thorshavn bank will not cash a cheque. Leith has closed her port to us, and I must stay, perforce, probably the only American marooned in the far North.
We must not speak of the war to Johanne Katrine: her heart is weak, and she cannot bear tales of bloodshed and suffering. The all-too-brief bulletins are telephoned from Thorshavn and pasted on the doctor’s window so all can read. When I bring home the news, Hans Kristoffer and I exchange glances, and then separately and casually retire, to meet again in sheltered paths among the currant bushes. If Johanne Katrine appears, she finds us talking loudly and cheerfully about the flowers.
September 12, 1914.
As the British cruisers have cleared the North Sea, the outlook seemed brighter. Two Danish boats came with supplies for the Faroes and Iceland, and if I could get permission to land at Leith, a return to Scotland seemed probable. And then the German mines began their devilish work. Disguised as trawlers and other fishing craft, and flying the flags of Norway, Denmark, and Holland, the Germans set the mines under the very noses — or bows — of the British patrol. Two large Danish steamers were the first to go, and scores of other vessels, large and small, followed, most of them neutral. Of course, this is all in defiance of international law, this sowing of mines — and floating mines, too — on traffic routes of the high seas.
September 21, 1914.
And now the big storms of September have begun. The time has come to say farewell to the garden of Hans Kristoffer. In Eide, far to the North, as far as one can go, lives a young Faroe-Danish house-mother, who will bid me welcome to two little attic rooms, where I can keep house during the winter. Then, the war over, the seas clear, the port of Leith open once more, I will fare away to Scotland in the spring — in the spring, if God wills it.
The potato-planting, barley-sowing, peat-cutting and drying, the fishingvessels coming and going, the curing and drying of fish, the haymaking — all these have I seen this year from the vantage-ground of the garden.
And I have seen the coming of the whales!
The close of the season’s work I saw years ago, one delectable October day and night — a rarely quiet day, the fjelds white with new snow, and gleaming with alternate bars of purple and gold, as the sunlight glanced across the layers of basalt. The blue peat smoke drifted across the fields from the ‘Sodnhuser’ — little cabins where the halfripe barley was drying on rocks above the open peat fires; the fragrance of coffee, a snatch of an old ballad, the throbbing of flails. ‘One—two! one— two!’ say the flails, and that emphasis tells that three women are down on their knees beating out the barley on the earthen floor. From the fjelds comes a confused clamor, the shouting of men.
the yap-yapping of dogs, the bubbling cries of sheep, the shriller notes of frightened lambs. It is the fjall-ganga — the ‘mountain going,’ when sheep are driven down for slaughter. And that night many sheep are killed in Hans Kristoffer’s large outer kitchen, with its floor of beaten earth, its open loft overhead, with great beams on which fishing rods, whale spears and harpoons are laid. The air is thick with smoke and dust, and the steam from wet woollen clothes. There is a large group of sheep waiting in one corner. Others are in the adjoining cow-byre. The tired dogs are stretched at full length on the floor. The puppy, to-day, has made his ’maiden run.’ His skin twitches with fatigue and his paws are red with blood. The sheep are silent except for one slight convulsive struggle as the knife pierces the throat and the vein is severed. Then comes the splashing of blood in a bucket held to receive it.
And seated below the one lamp that hangs from the rafters, where the light falls on her work and on her fair bowed head, is a slip of a girl in a faded blue cotton frock, knitting a bit of lace.
Outside, the moon shines cold and clear, and in the north, pale streamers and shafts of green and yellow dart like search-lights across the sky, or fall, wavering and shuddering, to the horizon.
Hans Kristoffer is busy bearing to the storehouse at the foot of the garden, troughs of livers and hearts, crates of heads and feet; and, later, the other men will help to hang the ‘ Krops ’ — the carcases that are to dry in the salt-laden air, hanging in the open store-houses.
I remember, too, when Hans Kristoffer received the Cross of Danebrog.
This is bestowed by the Danish King for some act of valor, for public services, and other reasons. The old custom is to have it given in church after service, the recipient coming up the aisle and standing before the altar. But the Governor was a man of heart. He knew what an ordeal that would be to Hans Kristoffer. And so one day the little Pigeon Hawk came from Thorshavn, with the Governor, his three little boys, and a learned Doctor of Divinity from Denmark. Johanne Katrine brought out her best tablecloth; there was good fare and a profusion of flowers; and, after dinner, as we sat there with coffee and little cakes, the Governor, saying only a few heartfelt words, pinned the Cross on Hans Kristoffer’s homespun coat.
I know the surroundings so well that if you should blindfold me, twirl me about thrice and let me take one long sniff, I could tell you from what ‘airt’ the wind is blowing. Is there salt sea-air, fragrant grasses, a suggestion of roses and cocoanuts from delicate seamosses? It is low tide and the wind sou’east. Infields and sea, and the pungent odor of salt cod drying? — wind in the south. Mild humid breezes, peat fields and moors, rotten cods’ heads, refuse and manure? — west, due west. A tang in the air blowing from wild fjelds, wild thyme, crowberry and heather? — ah, that’s the north wind, undefiled by man, and best of all when in its summer mood.
And afterward, — as if to give the garden a share in the feast, — we went out and paced up and down the little paths, a very gay little party, as both the Governor and the learned Doctor had special social gifts and a very pretty wit.