Norwegian Holiday
THE diary that I have just dug out must, I suppose, be thirty-five years old ; at any rate, I know that I was child enough to :treasure the little model of a stolkjaerre that was brought me back from the trip. I was prOad, I remember, of my toy, and also of having a Father wealthy enough to adven- ture to foreign parts like Norway; though with the know- ledge of later years I guess it about the cheapest holiday that a not-very-rich professional man of that day could have offered his invalid wife. This Cruising that we think of as so modern really begun a generation back with Norway and the Midnight Sun business. There used, as I also remember, to be a music-hall song about it all.
Norway makes, of course, such a natural cruising country, with only 24 hours of open sea from Newcastle, and then hundreds of miles of sheltered fjords and of coast-line pro- tected from the ocean by that tremendous chain of islands. And so our fathers with a few pounds to spare would take their fourteen days for so much money and would be carried up this and that terrific fjord and would practically never get off the boat.
Today it is different, and with more railways and ever so much better roads the inside of the country is open to the tourist. That stolkjaerre has become a picturesque survival like the Irish jaunting-car, and modern motor-'buses will carry the traveller comfortably over hundreds of miles of excellent roads. He can for that matter take his own car ; the line from Newcastle to Oslo will ship it at £3 15s. against one passenger ticket. The rate is lower for two tickets, and for three the car is taken for nothing. Or humble people without cars will even go to Norway to walk ; if the question arises as to how they manage with their Norwegian, the answer is that they do not manage. The Norwegians mostly speak English. It is an easy country. It is also an economical country. Railways ordinarily run second- and third-class only. The plutocrat who wants his first-class must wait for a night train • and then it only means that he will get a carriage to himself.
It is a country of infinite variety, and from Stavanger in the south to Kirkenes in the north is as far as from London to Algiers. In the Siirland or Southland you can bathe for while the Norwegian summer is short, it is extremely vivid and the flowers seem to spring up almost in a night. There are little bathing beaches to be reached for about £15, with a day each way on the steamer from England and 8 days in the Norwegian imr. Or the tourist can stick to the fjords, per- haps a hundred miles of inland gulf with the mountains rising their 8,000 feet sheer from the water edge. The famous fjords are the Sogne and the Hardanger, and Bergen is the usual starting point for that sort of holiday. Prices vary, bid 10 days can be had from about £18 18s. with all sorts of shore, excailsiona WO. thrOwniri is a tittle les.' for second-class on the sea-trip, or it may Le a little more for
July bookings. Or £36 for 23 days is another inclusiye price, but there are infinite varieties of fares and routes and tours.
In the far north, the Midnight Sun months are from May to July, and about £25 may be the fare for a real North Cape trip. Or the tourist with time to spare can get over to Stavanger and then book on one of the Mail Steamers plying to the north ; the round trip will take 14 days. Or with longer still to spare, there are the little local steamers which run like 'buses from island to island and from little nort to little port. Perhaps £1 a day " all-in " this sort of outing may cost him, and his English will be understood in surprisingly remote places.
The visitor of more conventional tastes might fish (many hotels throw in their fishing as a guest's little perquisite), might mountain-climb, might go and look at the Lapps ; they are too used to it to be surprised. Or he might really surprise his wife by taking her to look at the shops. Norway is not all mountains and fjords and terrific scenery; it has towns and big hotels and places where they dance. Though certainly there are no casinos and there is no gaming and 'no demi-monde ; the country is a bit on the virtuous side.
You can get there by rail most of the way ; from London to Oslo is about _50 hours by Hamburg and Sassnitz and the train-ferry. But from Newcastle to Bergen is only. 21 hours on the fast boat, with another service taking a little longer and calling at Stavanger ; or from Newcastle a line runs to Oslo in 37 hours. Then an alternative port is Hull, 30 hours to Oslo via Christiansand. And while we are on the maps, it is possible to book a short trip to- visit the three Scandinavian countries and to have a look at Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Oslo ; it costs 30 guineas for 17 days. And there are all sorts of such varieties of trips that can be booked in London.
Norwegian Travel, I see, has advanced since the days of that toy siolkjaerre of mine and of that old dead-and-gone diary of a long-forgotten holiday. I will not say what I read in it, but I think that it was a Happy Holiday. JoaN GIBBONS.
[We regret that in the article on " Fishing in Scotland," published in our issue of May 25th, Ballygrant Loch was included erroneously among the Lochs in which fishing could be had by the day.]
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