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188 LETTERS.
national pride, which frequently degenerates into personal
rudeness and dorskhed (clumsiness), which they themselves
turn into caricature by calling it Norskhed (Norwegianism ) ;
and they seem ever ready to say, “ Get out of my way,
thou! nobody in the world is as good as I am!” The
inhabitants of Trondhjem distinguish themselves above all
others by this spirit, and consider the name, a Z7rdnder, the
highest in the world. Beyond Trondhjem, in towns sepa-
rated from each other by a distance of one hundred and
fifty to two hundred English miles, and obscured the
greater part of the year by a veil of darkness and cold,
there prevails, I understand, a higher degree of civilization
than in the more southern parts of Norway. “ What is
the reason of this?” I asked the steward here, who was
born in the north. “ Because,” said he, “people in the
north have so very few amusements, and they are, there-
fore, thrown more upon their intellectual resources; to
these they must look for what makes life valuable and
beautiful.” — “ But,” I said, “the labor for daily bread, to
procure the means of existence, inust be very heavy there,
and cannot allow much time for a more refined education ? ”
“ No, their requirements are easily satisfied. Their exten-
sive fisheries, which constitute their most lucrative branch
of trade, enable them to procure with facility all they want,
and their material wants are few. The majority of the
inhabitants are in good circumstances, and find themselves
happy and comfortable.”
My dear Frances, does not this sound delightful?” I
wonder whether the people up there in the dismal north
do not, after all, live a more buoyant, a better, a more hu-
manly beautiful life, than most of the inhabitants of turbu-
lent Paris, and of the great workshop London, the mighty
centres of art and of the civilization of the present cent-
ury? Thank God! little is required to live a life hu-
manely pure and happy.
.With respect to Sweden, the temper of the Norwegians
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