Five Years in a Faroe Attic
EIDE, ÖSTERO, FAROE ISLES. 15 November, 1914.
DEAR HELEN,— When I wrote last, I was digging in the garden of Hans Kristoffer. Now I am in a remote fishing village on the northern end of Östero. Eide, as a winter residence, has but one attraction, the large family of a Danish Captain Kruse, whom I knew in past years. The youngest daughter, Amalya, and her husband, will give me shelter during the winter.
I left the capital, Thorshavn, at early dawn, on an open-decked motor-boat, which was heavily laden with passengers, luggage, freight, the mail, Iceland fishermen’s sea-chests, three sheep, a cow, and a large cask of soft soap, which leaked badly and soon spread itself over everything and everybody on board. Later, rain fell, and, mixing with the soft soap, made a fine lather. We were nine hours on the way, most of the time within the fjords, where heavy mists hid the fjelds and, falling, seemed to bar the way. The air was dank and chill, and when I at last saw Eide in the distance, I thought happily that for seven long months I need go nowhere in a boat.
There were Kruses to meet me on the sea-rocks and help me with the surf, and other Kruses, higher up, to hug me and escort me up the stony path, Kruses running down the little lanes and coming to doors to greet me, and meeting me at Amalya’s threshold, and dropping in later to bid me welcome. Other Kruses were out fishing. And so I settled down to keep house in Kvisten, which means the Attic.
You remember, of course, the story of the Three Bears and the Little Girl? Kvisten now resembles the home of the Little Wee Bear. All my life I have been bothered by chairs and tables unsuited to my height, and here was my opportunity. Joen Magnus, who is a carpenter, postman, fisherman, and a trifle of a farmer, has adapted many boxes for me. His charge is six cents an hour. I pay seven, and thus the pleasantest relations are established. There are twenty-two boxes, large and small, in Kvisten’s two rooms, though you would never suspect it, and all are suited to the needs of the Little Wee Bear and of me. They are my boxes, — mine to me, — and therein lies their charm. I own the kettle, the zinc pails, the frying-pan, and the broom. No one has the right to invade Kvisten, and put soda in my tea, and boil it ‘to get the goodness out,’ or to add sugar and nutmeg to my potatoes. No ‘sweet soup’ shall cross my threshold! I am weary of conforming, through many years, to the ways of other people. Now I propose to have some ways of my own.
This cottage is perched high on a slope above the sea, so close that, as I sit by my packing-case table, I see only sky and water and distant fjelds. In stormy weather, the great surges seem charging on to overwhelm Kvisten. They made me dizzy at first, and to get my bearings, I must rise and look down on the shore rocks and the grass-sod roofs of the Kruse trading-post, and boat-houses that shelter high-prowed fishing-boats, Omen, Svanen, Hvalen, Famiglien — the Eagle, the Swan, the Whale, the Family.
The village of Eide (pronounced Ida) iies huddled along the fjord, looking south between two islands over nine miles of sea. On the north are gray, storm-bleached grass fields, rocky fjelds on either side, and a pond, which only a long dike of up-tossed boulders separates from the lonely Northern Sea. On the east, a great solemn promontory rears precipitous cliffs two thousand feet above the surf, and seems to be saying, ‘Thus far.’ I don’t think it is my fancy that makes those northern waters seem sterner, more melancholy, than those of the east or west. On summer nights the glory of the sunset and the sunrise both are there; but now, in November, the sun is far away, making its shallow arc in the south.
I have been busy with preparations for winter — salting mutton and herrings, ordering supplies, filling little boxes with soil, and planting or sowing correctives of a too fishy, salty diet: chives and parsley, cress, and that best of all anti-scorbutics, the native ‘ scurvygrass.’
Amalya’s quarters, called Huset, and mine, Kvisten, are on the most neighborly of terms, and often, starting to go downstairs with a little offering like a turnip or a cup of canned tomato, I met Amalya coming up with a bit of fried fish or a pancake.
I am to have three lambs from another island. The first one came in midOctober, escorted from the landingplace by a score of small boys. It was dismaying to be confronted by a whole lamb, — intact, — but Amalya kindly officiated as mistress of ceremonies. Ole Jakob, a neighbor, was asked to kill and dress it in the cellar, I peering down fearfully from time to time through a trap-door in the kitchen. Ole Jakob had half the tallow, the feet, fifty öre (about fourteen cents), and two cigars, and declared himself more than satisfied, — handsomely paid, in fact, — and sent, his thanks. I replied, politely, through Amalya, that the thanks were to him.
Amalya’s family has whale-meat, salted, to eke out winter supplies. I have eaten fresh whale-meat scores of times and found it very good — almost like beef. But it changes sadly when kept in brine, and has a curiously pervasive odor. The days when Huset has whale for dinner, Kvisten ventilates diligently, loses interest in cooking, and takes gloomy views of the war.
I find that many people think my name is Mistela. Not knowing the meaning of the word Miss, and adding it to my surname, they think it a Christian name, like Marguerite or Malene. I like it as I hear it from a group of children. ‘Here comes Mistela,’ I hear the older ones say; ‘now, bid good-day prettily to Mistela.’ And as I pass, they raise half-frightened eyes to me and say in soft chorus, ‘Godan dagur, Mistela.’
This is the time of year when we are packed away in heavy, low-lying clouds that turn even midday to twilight. Storms and heavy rain day after day. Green slime growing on the little lanes, rocks, and cottage-walls. Housework is difficult in the uncertain light. There is a feeling like black cobwebs before the eyes. While I wait for the light to brighten, the shadows deepen and the brief day has passed. A lantern is an indispensable part of Kvisten’s outfit.
When, in late afternoons, a bit of war news is telephoned to the doctor, he writes it on a piece of paper, and puts it in a little frame that hangs on the outer wall of a cottage. Buffeted by the storm, I make a zigzaggy progress up to that cottage, where a group of men are burning their fingers with matches and growling about the doctor’s writing. Often I am kept there long, reading by the light of my lantern the message, as others join the group, and feeling very bashful about my queer pronunciation of Danish.
Am I or am I not a Kalve Kone? That means a halibut woman, one who possesses mysterious powers that can charm a big halibut to the hook of a fisherman. But the fisherman must have promised her verbally, or in his thoughts at sea, the beitu — a choice bit, cut from the fish between the fore-fins. And for this beitu no thanks should ever be given, though pleasure may be indirectly expressed. Last week, a man on the fishing-bank promised me the beitu, and a few minutes later he was having a sharp fight with a halibut that weighed almost two hundred pounds. When he came with the beitu, Amalya, who was speaking Faroe-ese for me, explained that, of course, Mistela understood that no thanks were to be given for it, but she was awfully glad to have it, and considered it handsomely done of him. Two days later, another man promised me the beitu, and caught nothing. So what is one to think?
December 22, 1914.
A British trawler came in this morning to get supplies for the homeward run. I saw the ship’s boat nearing land, and knew I would be needed to help with the ‘trawler English.’ I found Neils already in difficulty about ‘grub,’ ‘bac,’ and ‘tales,’ which the man had demanded. During the next hour I made acquaintance with plug, shag, and cavendish, helped to make out attestations, and sent a messenger among the cottages to find potatoes. The man’s face looked drawn and heavily lined, though he was not yet middle-aged. I understood it when he told me that he had been in the mine-sweepers’ brigade. Two of their vessels had disappeared, leaving no trace of crew or wreckage. The man expected to reach port byChrist mas, and I asked him about the homeward run — whether he followed all the prescribed routes of the Admiralty. ‘Huh!’ he exclaimed, with contempt, ‘if we did, we’d never get any furrader. Run for it and take yer chances. That’s the only way!’
He gave me no thanks for my help, no word of farewell. He gathered up his purchases, paused in the doorway, and looked with weather-wise eyes on land and sea. ‘Wind’s against us,’ he muttered; ‘everything’s against us’ — and so departedly sadly.
Later. I have heard that his ship has been shelled and sunk, but what has become of the sad little man I do not know.
Our letters to England now go first to Copenhagen, then to Aarhus in Denmark, then by a butter-and-bacon freighter back the whole length of the North Sea, north of tho Orkney Isles, and down the west coast of England to Manchester or Liverpool. Time, from sixteen to twenty-six days.
Yesterday a little deserter from Germany had tea here. Really he is from Slesvig. He explained earnestly, ‘Papa, Danish; mama, Swedish. Born in Germany, but not a German!’ I was surprised to find how well he speaks Danish, though Germany has done all in its power since 1864 to suppress the language. When he tried to speak English, he mixed it with German. His elder brother had been killed in the first days of the war. His best friend was called to service, but an accident delayed him.
Next morning his young wife received the message, ‘Two hours late. Shot.’ That was too much for the little Slesviger. He would rather be shot as a deserter than fight for Germany. He was a meek, pallid boy, but his eyes fairly blazed as he told of the death of his friend. Many adventures he has had, many narrow escapes, but now he has a British pass, is cook on a fishing vessel, and eventually will go to Denmark.
March 7, 1915.
The winter passes quickly, and it is time to think of garden-plots. Kvisten has lately been deeply involved in potatoes. Food-supplies are uncertain, and the Governor urges all to plant as many potatoes as possible, and new varieties have been sent from Denmark. I think my faulty Danish is responsible for the arrival from Thorshavn of more kinds, in larger numbers, than I had expected. It has been a time of stress, looking each potato sternly in the eye, to see if it means to sprout. I have made a little collection for each family of the Kruse clan, two other friends, and myself. Nine families, and five varieties for each family, and each variety to be kept separate and correctly labeled, and I to cook, eat, work, and sleep in the midst of it all. By bedtime so many potatoes had been imprinted on my retinas that, when I closed my weary eyes, I could distinctly see potatoes, brilliantly illuminated, floating in space. And now in the dim light, under my cot-bed, my packing-case table, wherever there is a place, are potatoes in shallow boxes, standing prettily in rows, making sprouts.
July 15, 1915.
I was going to show Eide what’s what in the way of little gardens, but this is a bad ice-year in the far North. Those Greenland ice-floes will not go. They drift and pack and drift again, besieging Iceland’s northern coasts, and causing ice-fogs that check and blast vegetation in these islands. Those peas and parsnips, cauliflower and oysterplant seedlings, one by one, went by the board, until only potatoes and turnips were left. Then blight attacked the potatoes, dry rot and horrid white worms the turnips, and a coast-wind tore my rhubarb to bits. I have two pea-plants that are doing well, but they are in a pot in Kvisten. Amalya has seen dried peas, and she always thought they were dug from the ground, like potatoes.
We have all felt the need of a peatfire in the haugi — the wild out-fields. There is nothing like it as a restorer of cheerfulness. And on one of our few clear days, we went to a lake among the hills, five hundred feet, above the sea. It was the coldest picnic I have ever attended, but with many attractions — kittiwakes taking fresh-water baths in the lake, black-backed gulls barking among the cliffs, and curlew chortling over the grassy slopes. Omma (which means grandmother) and I tended the peat-fire and made large quantities of tea to restore the circulation of those who fished for trout, from boats, and we returned home at half-past nine, when the sun was still shining on the fjelds. Not that we wanted to, but we were so very cold!
January 30, 1016.
DEAR HELEN, —
In a letter received from America the writer says she thinks of me as ‘dreaming away the peaceful days far from turmoil and agitation.’ I will now tell you of one of my ‘peaceful days.’
We knew by noon that a storm was brewing, for the sea was restless, the reefs moaning, and the rising wind hooted in a way that meant trouble to come. Darkness closed in early, and by four o’clock we were in the grip of a hurricane from the north. The house shook and groaned and strained like a labor-
ing ship at sea. Torrents of icy rain and masses of sea-water carried horizontally through the air bombarded the house, and on the northern side forced their way through every crevice and joist and crack. Under the eaves, in the sloping closets, Josefine and I crawled on all fours, with lanterns, exhuming the contents, while Omma brought sacks and mops, buckets and tubs. In Kvisten, with its thin roof of zinc, its walls of two layers of planks, the uproar was so great that we had to shout to be heard. Yet above it all sounded that high shrill crying — the vox Humana of a hurricane.
During the worst gusts there was a curious lifting sensation, as if something had gone wrong with the attraction of gravity. It was singularly disconcerting to lose all sense of weight, and stability, and feel that Kvisten might whirl away like a pack of cards. What a night that was, we thinking that the roof would go, the house be carried from its foundations, and then what would Amalya do? For in that time of fear Amalya’s little son was born. I had him in my charge, five minutes old, — so blue and cold he was, — and held him close in the skirts of my red wrapper, while the windowframes sucked out and in, and the curtains blew in the icy drafts. Oh, poor little man — to come into the world on such a night!
I make from time to time tentative efforts to secure a passport, but they come to naught. I am in the diplomatic jurisdiction of Copenhagen; but with this troublesome heart the long and very dangerous journey to Denmark is impossible. I would venture the shorter one to Scotland, if I could get a passport. I wrote explaining fully how I was situated, that a ‘personal application’ could not be made, and giving the best of credentials. Such a trusting, naïve letter it was — so sure that there would be some accommodation in the law for one of Uncle Sam’s family, stranded in a far-away land. A few words, in reply, from a secretary, merely say that passports are issued on ‘personal application.’ So I remain in my island attic.
June 15, 1910.
We have had an anxious week. First, a rumor of the great sea-fight off Jutland, and then the death of Lord Kitchener. Faroe folk, before the war, have known little and cared less about the great ones of the outer world. But they knew about Lord Kitchener, and his death seems to them a personal loss, as if one more safeguard between their homes and the enemy had been broken down. And now, in another sense, they are comrades of the sea, for he has died the death that some of them will die. When the news came, I Look a Kitchener photograph with me down to the Kruse Store, where there is always a group of fishermen gossiping and smoking. They crowded around me eagerly, to see it, and I saw tears in the eyes of some of the older men. ‘A brave man, a good man,’ they said softly.
March 18, 1917.
The Thorshavn authorities announce that there is a three-months’ supply of grain and flour on hand, but future supplies are uncertain, and we are enjoined to use as little as possible, and to bear our coming troubles ‘with calm and dignity.’ Now we have used a sevenweeks’ portion, and in all that time not one pound of food has come to the islands. I cut down on light, fuel, and food, and could have eaten less and yet carried on as usual. I will not say that I did not want to eat more. Queerly enough, I was more hungry in my dreams than in my waking hours. I gave little thought to bacon in pre-war days, but now, about once a week, I dream about it. I sit down, with joy, before a large dish of delicately browned curly bacon, when suddenly it vanishes away. Distractedly I search everywhere, mopping away my tears, see it in the distance, pursue it, and it again eludes me. My grief wakes me, and I find that real tears have made me uncomfortably damp.
Next week our rationing will begin, and on Monday there will be a houseto-house inspection. Private supplies must be declared and attestations made. The whole matter is rather complicated, and the Thorshavn powers that be have kindly tried to explain, in technical language, in many columns of the little semi-weekly paper. We get on fairly well in everyday Danish, but these explanations have made trouble. And now I see groups of excited men, waving ragged copies of Dimmalœtting, and hear such comments, in Faroe speech, as, ‘Fool thou! I say thou canst not have sago!’ ‘Death and torment! You’ve got it wrong!’ ‘’S death! Oatmeal is rationed!’ ‘Out with thee! Thou ’lt have to swear on truth and honor how many potatoes thou hast!’ And I know that Eide’s men-folk are earnestly striving for comprehension before the ordeal on Monday.
15 May, 1917.
Some supplies have come, enough to carry us through the next few weeks. In Thorshavn some employment is given on public works, and throughout the islands land-owning peasants have more food, some milk and fats, and dried mutton. But in poor fishing villages there is much undernourishment. There is an old saying, ‘When Eide’s fishing-lines are dry, Eide hungers.’ Yesterday four ‘six-man boats’ (boats rowed by six men) were out, and a few small fish were the only returns for the hard day’s work of twenty-four men. Many people have only their ration of coarse rye-meal, weak tea and coffee, and wind-dried codlings. I can tell when a mother has been giving part of her scanty allowance to children or husband. There is a certain over-bright eye, an exalted expression, a strained, white look of the skin over the nose and around the mouth.
A well-to-do friend in Glasgow offered help, and I wrote asking for a little fine barley-meal and patent health-foods for the mothers of new-born babies and for sick children. She wisely sent my letter on to London, with her application for a permit. It showed that I asked only for those in real need.
Eight Faroe cutters have been sunk on the Faroe Banks. The men could not believe that Germany would harm peaceful fishermen of a neutral land, on the grounds where their forbears had fished for a thousand years. This is a hard blow. The cutters soon would have gone to the Iceland summer fishery, and on that the people rely for help through the winter.
June 20, 1917.
After a cold, dark spring and early summer, we have had a week of real sunshine, such as we seldom see, and we have basked in it and become dry and warm and sunburned, and the days have been all too long and too light for one’s strength. It is the time of peatwork, and a friend, Olivina, and I have had a private picnic on a promontory where she owns a peat-field. She was to ‘set up’ peats, and I to sketch and collect plants. So it was supposed, but the truth is, we had saved up flour from our ration, and in all secrecy we took the frying-pan with us and made pancakes on the heights, and the full quota of work was not done that day. After the pancakes — on a day so rare — it seemed advisable to let work go, and climb to the top of the headland. There, twelve hundred feet above the sea, we looked across perhaps twenty miles of shimmering sea-levels, — blue and pink and pearl, — and there was no land between us and the North Pole. Puffins darted to and fro like little shuttles below us. Gulls circled with no perceptible motion of their wings. A long, lean freighter passed, probably bound for Archangel. Then, from the east, came two pretty sister ships, shining in new white paint. They kept close together, and seemed like two little children abroad on some brave adventure. Once they checked, almost stopped, and Olivina clutched my arm. ‘ Undervands baaden!’ she quavered. But no, it was no submarine that had stopped them, only the fierce race, or current, sweeping east ward, and strongest at this phase of the moon.
12 July, 1917.
Yesterday I was startled by the sight of seven large trawlers, all armed, swinging in from the open sea. Eide is a lonely place. I had not seen a trawler, except far away, for more than two years. Amalya was calling to me to hurry — that probably torpedoed crews were being brought to land. I found that only a slight accident to machineryhad brought them in. But I could help about sending a telephone message, and soon a burly skipper and I were having a chat while awaiting an answer. He looked at me in amazement when he heard I was an American and had been in Eide almost three years. ‘Good Lord!’ he exclaimed, smiting his thigh in emphasis. ‘How have you held out in this hole?’
I replied, with spirit, that it was n’t a hole: there were many beautiful places near; I liked the people and was glad to be here. But later, looking about me, I admitted that Eide in the fog was not looking its best that day, all dank and dripping, and the cods’ heads and refuse too much in evidence.
Later, I met the young lieutenant in charge of the defenses. So trim and fit and lean he was, with clear, steady eyes. It was a credit to his discernment that he understood that this shabby old party who appeared out of the fog had a message that he must hear. To trawler captains I could not give it. No censor would pass it in the post. I looked into the eyes of that young man, and constrained him to listen; and as, for the time being, I had much dynamic force in me, he did listen, bless him, murmuring at intervals, ‘That is interesting’; ‘I did n’t know that’; ‘I’ll remember that’; ‘I’ll do my best.’
And then they sailed away, and I wandered about in much distress of mind. I was in the grip of nostalgia. The refined, clean-cut speech of the young officer, the first. I had heard since April, 1914, brought to mind all I had lost, was losing, in this exile. Out in the world the current of life was sweeping onward, full and strong, and I — what was I doing in this backwater, this futile eddy?
Then the fog lifted from the fields. Between two peaks the moon was rising. No stars are seen on a Faroe summer night. The pale moon casts no shadows. But a silvery radiance mingles with the daylight and the last glow of the sunset colors. Nothing is hidden, nothing obscured. The faint far fjelds show lovely tones of blue and violet. I could see the shining of the little streams as they slipped over the basalt ledges, the vivid green of their mosses, and the rich purples and reds reflected from the cliffs in the sea below.
It was so still that not the least line of white showed along the coast; but, as I looked, the whole surface of the sea rose, swelled upward and forward, and with a muffled roar, a great white surge flung itself along the cliffs’ base and over the dark reefs. It swept backward, and all again was still.
So beautiful it was, Helen, so peaceful, that my own troubles seemed of little moment, the way before me easier to follow.
Four out of five salt ships from the Mediterranean, which had permission to come to the Faroes outside the ‘danger zone,’ have been forced by the cruisers to turn back into it for examination at Kirkwall, and as they came out they were torpedoed. So good ships and men are lost to England, and food that the salt would have cured; and much hardship is brought on the Faroes. For, with no salt to cure the fish, there can be no fishing. The Germans are greatly pleased to have their game hunted in for them. . . . (The Censor suppressed this last paragraph. I thought he would, but I could n’t refrain.)
On Sudero is the last port from which ships sail for lands ‘down below.’ There bands of British trawlers, homeward bound from Iceland, drop anchor, and signal to the port officials, ‘We have come in to sleep.’ Close together the ships lie, a little flock of hunted creatures, and for seven hours all is quiet on hoard. Then out they go, no rest for them till they reach a Scottish haven. Much suffering and many lives and ships have been spared to Britain by this little neutral group, in a waste of waters where ships can take shelter, and torpedoed crews and wounded men find help and nursing. Money cannot pay for these things, but the British Government might let us have some petroleum, and allow a ship with supplies from America to be examined at Halifax instead of at Kirkwall, in the danger zone.
15 August, 1917.
We think with dread of the coming darkness. No petroleum on sale, of course no gas or electric light, no coal, no candles, and only a scanty supply of peat. America, as well as England, refuses us petroleum. (I wish I could have Mr. Hoover here on a December night, in one of our worst gales!) A new odor has been added to Eide’s general fishiness. House-fathers and mothers are trying out highly unpleasant fishlivers. Small boys are fishing for codlings. The old folks are praying that the Lord will send a flock of driving whales, to give food and light for the coming winter. And the smiths have gathered in all the old cans and every scrap of tin and brass, and are experimenting on little fish-oil lamps. They require a reservoir above the burner, a pressure to force the oil up to the wick.
The truth is, petroleum, postal rights, and other desiderata, are denied us because the British Government is afraid that the Faroes will be used as a supply station for German submarines.
It is surprising what can be done in contriving ways and means. The soles of my felt shoes are quite worn out, and I have re-covered them with a piece of a neighboring fisherman’s discarded trousers, giving in return a little flour. Anna has made a fine pair of shoes for her little girl from a fifteen-year-old felt hat.
I bartered three envelopes the other day for a lamp-chimney with a broken top, a handkerchief for a small cod, and I have known a large spoonful of soft soap to be ‘swapped’ for three hairpins.
20October, 1917.
We have a new baby, a frail little creature, unfit to bear the coming winter. She is not six weeks old, an age when the normal child is a little pig, with unawakened intelligence. This dear baby looks from one to another with bright, questioning eyes, earnestly, sadly, and yet with a sweet composure that seems strange in such a helpless mite. We laugh at her, and tell her that she need n’t put on such dignified airs, that we mean well, even if our manners are not as fine as hers. I suppose she seems older because there is no baby fat to hide the pure oval of her face and the fine lines of neck and shoulders.
We have had heavy rains and a low temperature since the middle of July. Even now, between snow-squalls, haymaking is going on. Many are bearing home the half-dry hay, to spread it out in their little cellars. Wretched food it will be for the poor cows; but there is nothing else to give them.
30 January, 1918.
Eide had a ‘dry Christmas’ (no spirits for sale), and so, for many women and children, a happier Christmas than usual. We made a quite charming little tree from a piece of spar, with sticks inserted here and there for branches, and covered with heather and crowberry. Amalya fished out some decorations from her childhood days; there were some little toys sent in August from a Scottish friend. I made cornucopias with the colored illustrations of a Liberty rug-and-carpet catalogue (and very pretty they were), and from beeswax cast ashore from a torpedoed vessel we had little brown candles, which spluttered briskly as they burned, from the sea-salt in them. We had long been saving from our flour-and sugar-rations, and by an elaborate system of barter and by mutual gifts in the Kruse clan, we managed to have some good Christmas food, and sugar-candies and gingernuts for the tree. It was really something like a Danish Christmas, with the singing of the Christmas songs, ‘Still Night, Holy Night,’ and ‘A Child is born in Bethlehem.’
We are having a terrible winter. Such cold has never before been recorded in the Faroes. This long siege began on December first. I was at the window after dinner, wondering at the strange ashy-red color on the fjelds, when, with a noise like thunder on Kvisten’s roof, all was blotted out, as if a gray blanket had been thrown across the window. The gale raged with hurricane force until the next morning.
Seven were killed (two on this island) and many injured.
Then followed week after week of gales from the North. No fjelds, no sea, no sky, all milled up in a whirling fog of hard-cutting snow. The light in Kvisten was dim and gray, so thick was the ice on the window. I shared my wardrobe with my potatoes, yet they were frozen. The water-supply gave out long ago. There is too little peat to melt much snow. The only water we have must be brought some distance, from a brackish pool near the sea. The salt water makes a sticky glaze on the skin without cleaning it. There is practically no soap in the village, no soda or other cleansing stuffs. The fish-oil lamps diffuse a universal oiliness. But there is one advantage in the common plight: no one can look with disdain on his fellow man and say, ‘I am clean.
The pride of the family, Melrose by name, a large, half-Cheviot ram, blew away in that opening gale. His carcass was fished up three days later from the sea. This is not a time for undue fastidiousness, and Amalya has salted most of the meat, and the rest we ate with a properly thankful spirit. Only I wished that Amalya would speak of the dear departed as mutton, instead of saying, ‘Nella’ (our boy’s name for me), ‘will you have another piece of Melrose?'
The baby, Elizabeth, fails from day to day. The doctor went to Denmark last year, and no one will come to take his place while the war lasts. But no doctor could help her. She needs warmth and sunshine, and Amalya should have a generous and varied diet.
The people miss the little visits of happier days between the cottages, the gossip over a cup of tea and coffee, and perhaps little cakes brought out to honor a guest. Now the food-rations do not admit of hospitality. I admire the kindly fibbing that goes on when a neighbor comes on some necessary errand. ‘Now don’t get anything for me. I’ve just had breakfast, and could n’t eat a bite more.’ Often I am asked wistfully, ‘ Has the Fróken any news of the Amerika ship — with coffee?’ as if, being an American, I must possess special knowledge. But not a word have we heard.
23 April, 1918.
The baby, Elizabeth, died on Easter Day. The world is too hard a place now for little babies. Our boy, Oli, grieves for her; and knowing that many things are ordered from Thorshavn, he begs Amalya to write for another little sister just like Elizabeth, to be sent on at once.
30 May, 1918.
The American schooner has come to Thorshavn, nine months from port. She must have feared she was fated to be another Flying Dutchman. Month after month of contrary gales crippled her at last, so she drifted into the danger zone and had to seek a Shetland haven for repairs. Part of the cargo is damaged, but the coffee is saved. The news passed swiftly over Eide, called by happy voices from house to house. I saw tears of joy on one wrinkled old face, and heard a quavering voice singing the gay ‘Coffee Song’ — a danceballad that the singer had danced more than a half century before.
And now our only postal communication with the outer world is by one old hooker, which brings salt and some restricted wares from a British port, and takes back salt fish and fish-liver oil. To name it is forbidden, but seamen call it ‘The Lucky Ship.’ Nor can we ask when it will come or go. During more than two years the valiant old skipper, now aged seventy-four, has gone back and forth across the danger zone, having adventures that cannot be told. There is one young gunner on board, but all the crew and officers range from fifty-five to seventy years.
15 December, 1918.
All was quiet when the few-worded message came of the signing of the Armistice. Of course, in a little neutral land there would be no official celebration. A crowd gathered quickly when the few-worded bulletin was put up, and some asked me, ‘Can it be true?’ And some said, ‘God give it be truth!’ and some wiped their eyes. And I said ‘Gud ske Lov’ (God be praised), and went away where I could see from afar that northern shore, where now I need not dread to look, fearing what I might find there. For the seas are to be clean once more! And then I went back to Kvisten and did my housework, and that was all.
15 January, 1919.
In December, for the first time since July, 1916, a real steamer entered Eide fjord. A shabby black old hooker, to be sure, but it was the ‘Lucky Ship.’ And now I can tell its name, the Cromwell, and the brave old skipper’s name is Captain Gibb, of Aberdeen, and the ship belongs to the Iceland Shipping Co., Leith, Scotland. I wanted to go on board, but we are quarantined against the Spanish influenza and no one is allowed on deck. Only by going to windward can bags of salt be delivered to the freight rowboats, and oils and fish transferred to the steamer.
THORSHAVN, 2 August, 1919.
The breaking up of my life in Kvisten was a hard time. I was really ill with a ‘near-pneumonia’ cold. Storms and heavy surf swept the village-front, making the launching of a boat impossible. Could I get to Thorshavn in time to go on the Chaldur? Would she go to Scotland on her way to Denmark? Was my promised passage assured, when scores of passengers on the spot were clamoring to go? I dared not let myself think of the parting from those who had become so dear to me. Silence seemed the only way of getting through with it. Once I said shakily, ‘Amalya, you know what is in my heart?’ — ‘Yes, Nella, I know.’ Then, just in time, the storm subsided.
Our boy at the last would not say good-bye. ‘Nella was bad. Nella should not go to England. Nella should stay in Kvisten always.’
It was a small party that set forth in the tiny fishing motor-boat. Our housefather at the helm, a brother-in-law at the engine, two neighbors as assistants, Fru Kruse and I the passengers. The box-like pit where whelks for bait are kept had been cleaned out, and Fru Kruse and I sat down there, with our heads peering out above the rim. A piece of canvas stretched overhead kept out the rain. And so we chug-chugged southward, hour after hour, in the gently falling rain, toward Thorshavn, where I was to see a pony and a tree for the first time in five years. Part of the time we were between the islands, then on the open sea, past treacherous reefs and sucking whirlpools off the Stromö coast, where many a boat has ‘gone away.’ Then, as we rounded a point of land, we saw on the far southern horizon a faint smudge of smoke. That was our Chaldur, and she will take me south to Scotland.