e is sun and
glory of summer, the day of which is not only twelve hours, but lasts
continuously, day and night, for three months--a warm, bright,
fragrance-laden summer, with an infinite wealth of color and changing
beauty. Distances of seventy to eighty miles across the mirror of the
sea approach, as it were, within earshot. The mountains clothe
themselves up to the very top with greenish-brown grass, and in the
glens and ravines the little birches join hands for play, like white,
sixteen-year-old girls; while the fragrance of the strawberry and
raspberry fills the air as nowhere else; and the day is so hot that you
feel a need to bathe yourself in the sun-steeped, plashing sea, so
wondrously clear to the very bottom.... Myriads of birds are surging
through the air, like white breakers about the cliffs, and like a
screaming snow-storm about their brooding-places...."

But "as a contrast there is a night of darkness and terror which lasts
nine months."

In this arctic gloom, during which the yellow candle-light struggled all
day long through the frost-covered window-panes, the Finn grew big in
Jonas Lie, and the Norseman shrank and was almost dwarfed. The air was
teeming with superstitions which he could not help imbibing. His fancy
fed eagerly on stories of Draugen, the terrible sea-bogie who yells
heartrendingly in the storm, and the sight of whom means death; on
blood-curdling tales of Finnish sorcery and all sorts of uncanny
mysteries; on folk-legends of trolds, nixies, and foul-weather sprites.
He had his full share of that craving for horrors which is common to
boyhood; and he had also the most exceptional facilities for satisfying
it. Truth to tell, if it had not been for the Norse Jekyll in his nature
the Finnish Hyde might have run away with him altogether. They were
mighty queer things which often invaded his brain, taking possession of
his thought, paralyzing his will, and refusing to budge, no matter how
earnestly he pleaded. There were times when he grew afraid of himself;
when his imagination got the upper hand, blowing him hither and thither
like a weather-cock. Then the Norse Jekyll came to his rescue and routed
his uncomfortable yoke-fellow. Hence that very curious phenomenon that
the same man who has given us sternly and soberly realistic novels like
"The Family at Gilje" and "The Commodore's Daughters," is also the
author of the collection of tales called "Trold," in which his fancy
runs riot in a p