A Summer Holiday in Scandinavia

THE narrative which my eldest son has written in the following pages, describes faithfully -- and I think not without interest -- the stages, scenery, and incidents of one of the most delightful little journeys that I remember to have made in the course of many experiences of travel. Norway is a country which all lovers of Nature should certainly visit; and if they once go there it is likely that they will return. Everybody is familiar, by description or pictures, with the rugged grandeur of its mountain chains, its fiords, and its forests of fir and birch; but what we were not so well prepared for, and what this volume justly brings into prominence, was the extreme beauty of many of the inland valleys, where a chain of lovely lakes, unknown to the world by name, links together landscape after landscape of delicious pastoral or woodland charm, so that the traveler finds the characteristics of the finest Swiss, Welsh, and Scottish highlands united in this far Northern realm. Such is, of course, the summer aspect of the country, for November locks up the lakes and streams in thick-ribbed ice; and "dark," no doubt, as well as "true and tender," is then the North. But it is for summer holiday-makers that these pages are compiled -- although Norway in winter, with its merry sledging, its fine sport on the hills, and its vast forests draped and embroidered with snow and ice, also possesses its own attractions.

Besides these, its great natural charms, which the author has felt -- in common with all the members of our happy little expedition -- and to which he has here borne witness, the people of the country are almost invariably -- at least, in the limited districts which we traversed -- the kindliest, simplest, and most honest whom travelers could encounter; and an Englishman feels among them, I think, an instinctive sense of kinship. I have been glad to see how often this is evidenced in my son's Norwegian notes; and feel confident that whoever takes friendly sentiments and frank politeness as part of his travelling equipment to Scandinavia, will find himself, as we did, almost everywhere "at home."

Not being put forward for more than a series of wayside pictures sketched along two of the main routes in Norway, it has been thought unnecessary to add to this volume a map of the country visited. Any of the existing books of travel or reference will not only show our road, but all the other numerous lines which, no doubt, offer as much, or even more of, beauty and variety. The Author has added a chapter briefly describing our landward journey home, through Sweden, Denmark, and Jutland; with notes upon two or three points of special interest -- such as the country of Linnaeus, and the city of Thorwaldsen -- while an appendix is given, containing some hints, which will be found useful, on fishing, shooting, and cariole-travelling.

Edwin Arnold.
South Kensington,
May 18, 1877.