Peasant Proprietorship in Norway.
NORWAY presents us with the grandest picture of the effects of peasant proprietorship. There the land has, from time immemorial, been the property of the laborers who till it—it has never been poisoned by the foul curse of feudalism. The title deeds of many of these peasant holdings are in a dead language, and the names of the peasants are those of the district. The results are marvelous. Land which no English farmer would or could cultivate under our agricultural system, even if receiving a liberal bounty per acre instead of paying rent, is there made to support whole families, and that by the same race as ourselves, and in latitudes hundreds of miles farther north than John o' Groat's House, some of it even within the Arctic Circle. Sailing along the Arctic coast of Norway, the tourist passes here and there little oases called “stations,” where the steam omnibus halts to land and embark a passenger or two. If a careful observer, he may learn that in the midst of the rocky desolation there is a deposit of rock fragments and gravel left by an ancient glacier in a hollow formerly filled by the ice. This is cultivated, is a dairy, farm, and fishing station, farmers and fishers being all freeholders and capitalists, no such class of laborers without property existing there. One of the grandest of the Norwegian fjords is the Geiranger. It is walled by perpendicular precipices from 1,000 to 3,000 feet high. Sailing along the fjord, a boat-house is seen here and there at the foot of the dark wall. Looking skyward directly above it, may be seen what appear to be toy houses on a green patch. Closer observation reveals moving objects; a field glass shows that they are cattle, goats, and children, tethered to boulders to prevent them from straying over the edge of the precipice. A family resides up there, cultivating this bit of ancient glacier ground, backed by craggy mountain tops, with a foreground of precipice above the fjord. The only communication between these eagle-nest farms and the outer world is by the boat below. How that boat is reached, where is the staircase of ledges on the face of the precipice, is incomprehensible to the passing tourist. In most cases no indication of a track is visible. Nothing but absolute proprietorship by the cultivator could bring such land into cultivation. Latitude 62°, altitude 2,000 to 3,000 feet, summer three to four months long; the ground covered with snow during six or eight months of every year.—The Gentleman's Magazine.