lay on the water.  He has been used from childhood to think of the unexpected, the possibility of all possible things in Nature, as a sword hanging over every peaceful, quiet hour, and he generally carries this instinct with him in his intercourse with his fellow-creatures.  While you are talking to him, he may dive into his mind like the sea-fowl, but you do not suspect it, and are not therefore disconcerted.  This introspection may occur while he has tears in his eyes, and in moments when he is most deeply affected—­it is his nature, and he will always retain a dash of it, even when he has moved, with all his belongings, from natural into civilised surroundings.  He eludes you, steals, with his imagination and his watchful suspicion, in, among, and around your thoughts; indeed, if he is a really talented Nordlander—­I am too dull and disinterested to be able to do it—­I believe that, without your suspecting it, he can go, with his hands in his pockets, right through your mind, in at your forehead, and out at the back of your head.  He would be invaluable as a detective or a diplomatist, if only he had more strength of character, and succumbed with less childish weakness to the influence of the moment; but these are unfortunately his weak points.  I am speaking now of the strong trait in the national character as it shows itself in the more conspicuous natures, and would not be misunderstood to mean that men of character are not to be found in Nordland too—­many a time, perhaps oftener than elsewhere, they are hardened into something grand.

In a native Nordland family there will generally be found—­such, at least, is my belief—­some drops of Fin blood.  It has been remarked elsewhere that in the Sagas, when the greatest peasant races in Halgoland were spoken of as descended from half-trolls, or mountain-ogres, this only meant Finnish descent.  Our royal families were of Finnish extraction, and Fin was a good-sounding name borne by the greatest men in the land—­for instance, Fin Arnesen. [One of Olaf the Holy’s most trusted men.] Harald Haarfager and Erik Blodoexe both married Fin maidens.  The mystic sense-affecting influence which has been ascribed to them, was only the erotic expression of the great national connection between the two differently derived elements; the fair-haired, blue-eyed, larger-minded and quieter Norwegian, and the dark, brown-eyed Fin, quick of thought, rich in fancy, filled with the mysticism of nature, but down-trodden and weak in character.  The Fin, to this very day, goes as it were on snow-shoes and sings minor strains, while many a Norwegian, in his pride of race, little suspects that he has any connection with that despised people.