One sole power--the
unproductive power of ice--reigned unchallenged. The roar of the open
sea no longer reached the deaf, dumb inlet, where during one short
season of the year Nature made haste to produce the slender harvests
necessary for the food of the patient people. A few tall pine-trees
lifted their black pyramids garlanded with snow, and the form of their
long branches and depending shoots completed the mourning garments of
those solemn heights.
Each household gathered in its chimney-corner, in houses carefully
closed from the outer air, and well supplied with biscuit, melted
butter, dried fish, and other provisions laid in for the seven-months
winter. The very smoke of these dwellings was hardly seen, half-hidden
as they were beneath the snow, against the weight of which they were
protected by long planks reaching from the roof and fastened at some
distance to solid blocks on the ground, forming a covered way around
each building.
During these terrible winter months the women spun and dyed the
woollen stuffs and the linen fabrics with which they clothed their
families, while the men read, or fell into those endless meditations
which have given birth to so many profound theories, to the mystic
dreams of the North, to its beliefs, to its studies (so full and so
complete in one science, at least, sounded as with a plummet), to its
manners and its morals, half-monastic, which force the soul to react
and feed upon itself and make the Norwegian peasant a being apart
among the peoples of Europe.
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