Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Chapter XVI
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.
A PAINTED CHAMBER—THE TELLEMARK. 283
mechanical processes of stamping, &c., and if they were
made in England by the same processes of simple hand
labour as in Norway, they would cost a great deal more,
on account of the higher cost of such labour.
I slept in a painted chamber again, but the pattern
was more elaborate than the starch granule decorations
of my last night’s lodging-place. There were
processions of red, green, and yellow cavaliers along some of
the beams, and similarly-coloured ladies bearing
flowerpots on horseback on others. The apostles were
distributed on other parts of the walls, the vacant spaces
being decorated with paintings of independent
flowerpots. There were 110 real growing flowers, and the
floor was wretchedly dirty; the bed, as usual, of straw.
I was now in the famous district of the Tellemark, a
district that even the Norwegians regard as romantic.
The peasants of the Tellemark are celebrated as the
most picturesque people in Norway, on account of their
jewellery, their general costume, their strongly-marked
features, their poverty, dirtiness, and sporting
tendencies. The Tellemark is the wildest, most barren and
dreary of the inhabited regions of Norway; the
district and its inhabitants bearing a similar relation to the
rest of Norway that the wilds and people of Connemara
do to the rest of Great Britain and Ireland. A native
Norwegian reared upon fladbröd, and accustomed from
his infancy to rancid smoer, considers it an exploit, a
great effort of hardihood and endurance, to make a
carriole journey through the Tellemark; and the idea
of voluntarily doing it on foot never suggested itself to
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
