The Visionary: Chapter 7

Chapter 7

TRONDEN�S

On a naze to the north of Hind Island in Sengen lies Tronden�s church
and parsonage. The latter was a royal palace in Saint Olaf's time, and
Thore Hund's brother Siver lived there. Bjark Island, where Thore Hund
had his castle, is only a few miles off.

The church itself is in many respects a remarkable historical monument.
Its two towers, of which one was square and covered with copper, and had
an iron spire, and the other octagonal, exist only in legends, and of
the famous "three wonderfully high, equal-sized statues" there are only
remains which are to be seen at the west doorway.

This church was once the most northern border-fortress of Christendom,
and stood grandly with its white towers, the far-echoing tones of its
bells and its sacred song, like a giant bishop in white surplice, who
bore St. Olaf's consecration and 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. If the soapstone
font which stands in the choir could enumerate the names of those
baptised at it, or the altar the bridal pairs that have been married
there, or the venerable church itself tell what it knew, we should hear
many a strange tale.

Protestantism has plundered the church there as elsewhere; remains of
its painted altar-shrines are found as doors to the peasants' cupboards,
and what was most imposing about the building is in ruins. But the work
of destruction could not be carried farther. The old Roman Catholic
church feeling surrounds 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 no small degree in his
religious mode of thought and in his superstition. It comes quite
naturally to him, in deadly peril, to promise a wax candle to the
church, or to offer prayer to the Virgin Mary. He knows well enough that
she is dethroned, but nevertheless he piously includes her in his
devotions.

I dwell upon the memories of this church and its surroundings, because
during the two years I stayed at Tronden�s I was so strongly influenced
by their power over the imagination. The hollow ground 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, close to the parsonage, and, as a
rule, stood open on account of the college organ practice--daylight
sometimes cast shadows in the aisles and niches as if beings from
another age were moving about.

I made great progress in Latin and Greek under the teaching of the
agreeable, well-informed minister, in whose house I lived, and in other
subjects under one of the masters of the college; but in my leisure
hours I sought the spots which gave so much occupation to my fancy, and
therefore Tronden�s was anything but the right place for my diseased
mind.

My nervous excitability has some connection with the moon's changes as I
have since noticed. At such times the church exercised an almost
irresistible fascination over me; I stole there unnoticed and alone, and
would sit for hours lost in thought over one thing and another,
indistinct creations of my imagination, and among them Susanna's light
form, which sometimes seemed to float towards me, without my ever being
quite able to see her face.

It was late in the spring of the second year I was at Tronden�s, that
one midday, being under the influence of one of these unhealthy moods, I
sat in the church on a raised place near the high altar, meditating,
with Susanna's blue cross in my hand.

My eye fell on a large dark picture on the wall beside the altar, which
I had often seen, but without its having made any special impression 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 body in
all directions, and he could not utter a complaint, because one great
sharp thorn went into his throat and out at his open mouth.

The expression of this face struck me all at once as terrible. It
regarded me with a look of silent understanding, as though I were a
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 from the
picture; it seemed to become alive, now coming quite near, now going far
away into a darkness that my own dizzy head created.

It was as though in this picture the curtain was drawn aside from a part
of my own soul's secret history, and it was only by an effort of will,
called forth by a fear of becoming too far absorbed into my own fancy,
that I succeeded in tearing myself away from it.

When I turned, there stood in the light that fell from the window near
the front pew, the lady with the rose. She wore an expression of
infinite sadness, as though she knew well the connection between me and
the picture, and as if the briar-spray in her hand were only a miniature
of the thorn-bush in which yonder martyr lay.

In the lonely stillness of the church a panic came over me, an
inexpressible terror of unseen powers, and I fled precipitately.

When I got outside, I discovered that I had lost Susanna's blue cross.
It could only be in the church on the step where I had been sitting. At
that moment, while my heart was still throbbing with terror, I would not
have gone back again into the church for anything in the world--except
Susanna's blue cross. I found it, when I carefully searched the floor
where I had been sitting.

The second time during these years that my nervous system gave evidence
of its unsoundness was late in the autumn, a month or two before I was
to go home.

A peasant, who had gone in to see the minister, had fastened his horse,
which was wall-eyed, to the churchyard wall. I began to look at it; and
the recollection of 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 to me, and as if it would be
quite natural if it forgot to obey the reins, and left the ordinary
highway for the road to Hades, along which the dead are travelling.

With this in my mind, I sat that afternoon in the parsonage where people
were talking of all kinds of things, and there suddenly appeared before
me a home face, pale and with a strained look, and soon after I could
see that the man to whom it belonged was striving 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 as if he wanted to tell me something.
The vision only lasted a moment; but a torturing almost unbearable
feeling, that in the same moment some misfortune was befalling us at
home, drove me from the room to wander restlessly in the fields for the
rest of the day.

When I came back they asked me what had been the matter, that I had so
suddenly turned deadly pale and hurried from the room.

A fortnight later there came a sad letter from home. My father's yacht,
the _Hope_, which, after the custom of those days, was not insured, and
was loaded 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 had sprung a leak, and late in the afternoon had to
be run ashore. The crew had escaped with their lives, but our man Anders
had had both legs broken.

This shipwreck gave the first decided blow to my father's fortune. The
second was to come towards the end of the following year, in the loss of
another yacht, the _Unity_; and the third blow, with more important
results, was struck when it was at last decided by Government that our
trading station was not to be a stopping-place for steamers.

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