The Visionary: Pictures From Nordland

The latter was a royal palace in Saint Olaf's time, and Thore Hund's brother Siver

and covered with copper, and had an iron spire, and the other octagonal, exist only in legends, and of the famou

nd altar lights into the darkness among the Finmark trolls. Its power over men's minds has been correspondingly deep and great. Thither past generations for miles round have wended in Sunday dress before other churches were built up there. I

unds it to a certain extent to this day, with the old legends that float around it, and is kept up by the foreign paintings in the choir, by the mystical vaults, and by all the ruins, which the Nordlander's imagination builds up into indistinct grandeur. The poor man there is, moreover, a Catholic in n

with the supposed underground vaults were to me like a covered abyss, full of mysteries, and in the church-whose silence I often sought, since it lies, with its strangely thought-absorbing interior,

I lived, and in other subjects under one of the masters of the college; but in my leisure hours I sought the spots wh

le fascination over me; I stole there unnoticed and alone, and would sit for hours lost in thought over one thing and another, indistinct creations

eing under the influence of one of these unhealthy moods, I sat in the church on a

sion on me. It represented in life-size a martyr who has been cast into a thorn-bush; the sharp thorns, as long as daggers, pierced his

companion in suffering, and would have to lie there when its torments had at last come to an end. It was impossible to remove my eyes

's secret history, and it was only by an effort of will, called forth by a fear of beco

. She wore an expression of infinite sadness, as though she knew well the connection between me and the pict

nic came over me, an inexpressible terror

een sitting. At that moment, while my heart was still throbbing with terror, I would not have gone back again into the church f

system gave evidence of its unsoundness was late in

its dead, expressionless glance followed me for the rest of the day. It seemed to me as if its eyes, instead of looking out, looked inwards into a world invisible

ing desperately to climb up from the raging surf on to a rock. It was no other than our man Anders. He fixed his dull, glassy eyes upon me as he struggled, apparently hindered from saving himself by something down at his feet, which I could not see. He looked a

een the matter, that I had so suddenly tu

ed for the most part with fish, which my father had bought at his own cost, had been wrecked on the way from Bergen in a storm on Stadt Sea. The ship

following year, in the loss of another yacht, the Unity; and the third blow, with more important results, was str