In

1

Out of Hong Kong once more, for purgatorial flight over Wuhan, Xian, Ulan Butor; on across Siberia to split Petersburg and Moscow, Helsinki and Tallinn, completing our final Baltic glide into Copenhagen. Seated next to author is a young Swede, a high school boy, returning from Guangzhou, where he has spent a month training with world-class table tennis stars. He hopes to become a computer engineer. The cabin is filled with an assortment of Finns, Norwegians, Swedes and Danes, along with a sprinkling of Asians. Seated ahead of author, in a bright Danish print, is a Chinese woman accompanied by her two sandy haired children. For the most part the Scandinavians are gregarious, even vivacious, but also reflective.

High over Siberia our course is clarified for us by a new computerized graphic. We have left Irkutsk behind, are heading for Archangelsk. Outside our cabin it is 30^o below zero. Ahead, the Chinese woman’s fourteen-year-old daughter has settled into conversation with her mother; meanwhile the eight-year-old son, seated across the aisle, for the past hour has engaged author in a wordless exchange. Unfamiliar with English, he understands some Mandarin but cannot reply to questions; author, helpless in Danish, is also at a loss. To the question in Chinese, “What is your name?” author receives no response. Puzzled at first, he realizes this is not a question the little boy’s mother would ask him.

After twelve nonstop hours and nearly nine thousand kilometers, author has transferred to another flight. We are lifting off for Oslo, which we will reach by hugging the Swedish coast. On takeoff the runways of this international airport remind one of Oklahoma City. But at once we are out over the sea again. Our fellow travelers this time are mostly Norwegian. Though bluff and friendly in their way, they seem more inward, less modern, more possessed perhaps than the easygoing Swedes and the snippier Danes of an historical identity.

*

First Oslo outing, early evening scene, Karl Johan Avenue, the central boulevard that communicates between railway station and royal palace, a mile or so distant. Side walk cafés line the way, their tables sometimes four or five deep, smokers in lively conversation sipping at beers. Pedestrians stroll: girls in subdued conversation with girlfriends, guys with their dates, university students in shorts and tee shirts, businessmen in shirts and ties. An active erotic element pervades the scene. In front of a fashionable hotel, their bikes parked at the curb, members of a motorcycle gang loll with their black clad molls, pausing to rev their unmuffled motors at excruciating decibel levels. The promenaders ignore them. Most of the passersby are Norwegian, most of them blond. Parked alone at curb side: a vintage turquoise Volkswagen bug, its license plates bearing Hildesheim’s designation.

*

7:30 am Hotel Europa dining room. The deep yellow flames of a live candelabra burn atop its maroon tapers, the brass candlestick set in turn atop a red counter, itself poised above a breakfast buffet: freshly baked bread, a spread of cold cuts, condiments, fruit and yoghurt, juice, milk and coffee. A tall, portly Indian waiter, his apron and pants in identical black and white checks, clears tables, as more patrons enter: a traveling threesome of professional ladies, stylish in their various hues of blond; single diners; three middle-aged men, in vertically striped, two younger men in horizontally striped shirts. At a table sit three Chinese, mainlanders, one in early old age, two in full maturity, man and wife. A 68-year-old Scandinavian man enters, his belt supporting a Levied paunch; he sports a black tee shirt reading “Norwegian Wildlife,” a slightly comical moose depicted against a baby blue background.

8:00 am exterior view, Hotel Europe entrance. Above the door of this Rainbow Hotel, the single word “OVA.” Two tour buses are being boarded, the first by Spaniards, the second by Japanese. Two blond señoritas, one in a green polo shirt, one in a red, enter, the latter handing to the porter a black bag, on whose side read the yellow letters “SOL.” Leaning against the hotel’s exterior wall, her ample body clothed in a loose fitting white top over cream slacks, is a six-foot Norwegian girl, manager of the Japanese tour. Holding her glasses in one hand, she runs her other hand through her short blond hair. Over her white top she now puts on a light yellow jacket. Dark expensive sedans, as though in a funeral procession, head up St. Olaf’s Street in single file. Despite the bright morning sun, all have their headlights on.

Author sets out for stroll to harbor, crossing Kristian August’s Street, Kristian IV’s Street, passing on his right a gorgeous park bordering the grounds of the royal palace. High above, among its contoured berms, a worker is tending a bed of begonias, marigolds, lupine. Crossing Karl Johan Boulevard, author leaves the royal palace behind, as cyclists, descending the slight rise of its drive, squeak their brakes at the light. On across Storting’s Street, we descend another slope, past Sparebanken Nor, its “N” in red, its “o” in yellow, its “r” in blue. At the Nationaltheater Stasjon commuters are exiting. We pass a stolid complex of buildings, “United Colors of Benneton,” “Lui,” and “La Scada” jutting out into a broad side walk from their collective first floor. It is cool and pleasant. At Johan Svendsen’s Square, we pass the Oslo Konserthuset, a large moderne Norwegian sculpture forming an arch under which entering patrons must pass. To one side, also in bronze, a group of tall self-possessed Norwegians, standing together like gods, look outward and upward in different directions.

At Løkkeveien we turn to confront an agency called “Manpower,” its logo composed of half the da Vinci design of an heroic figure encircled. As a ship come into sight, author quickly turns right in hopes of reaching the water. Overhead, from a series of poles, fly Norwegian flags, the sky cloudless. A pale blue Coca Cola truck makes its appearance; it turns into a parking lot shrouded by tall poplars, across from which a clothing store whose sign reads “Joyce Joyce.” A gigantic dump truck, trailing a second, turns sharply into the street and heads back in the direction that we have just come from.

The harbor is bordered by a fancy new boardwalk, across which sit chic yuppie restaurants. Author passes a young father with two blond daughters of six and eight in tow. Boats in their berths read “Smørbukk,” “Hudra,” “Fergekroen,” the third a floating pub. Two private tour boats follow, “Hellen” and “Odins Ravn,” the latter done up in imitation of a Viking ship. On a van’s open tailgate sit two pretty girls, one applying blusher to the other’s cheeks. A tug passes, as another small ship makes its own way into the harbor. Having reached the end of the boardwalk, author comes face to face with a modern yacht called the “Challenger.” To the right a commercial loading dock is visible, red-cabbed cranes servicing a “Seatrans” vessel, as shorter cranes load the “Bergen” with six-foot diameter rolls of paper. Author turns corner into seedier side of wharf and continues, past “Sport and Fun,” where three male tourists examine a display of snorkeling gear; past “Erotisk Kunst”; past “Jimmy’s” stylish bar and restaurant, its chairs stacked neatly atop their tables. Standing out in the channel, before a wooden bridge, a nine foot bronze figure strides on wooden stilts. The air is scented with freshly cut timber.

Author turns to head back, looking across traffic roundabout, newly landscaped and cobblestoned, up a slight incline between the fronts of five-story late nineteenth-century brick and stuccoed buildings, whose perspective diminishes on up a series of rises in toward the city’s main streets. A regal Indian woman in magenta kurta pajama passes. Author crosses a railroad bridge, where two Norwegian women on the way to work smile at him, one in a sleeveless dress, the other in jeans and tank top. On the side of the bridge, in amongst ocher, aquamarine and black graffiti, someone has stenciled three stylized elephants, in red, black and yellow, the last two holding with their trunks the tails of those in front of them. As author remounts the slope already descended, left turn following right turn following left, he passes increasingly modern buildings. A blond worker in his early twenties sits on a curb, chipping at its stones with hammer and chisel, as several meters off an older man in red pants and blue tee shirt fills in with mortar the recently created gaps. Behind them a merchant is opening the door to his store, its red awning above reading in white letters, “Frukt og Tobakk.”

Author rounds corner and heads up a street with no street sign, passing a small basement store called “Inkognito Studio.” Its door is ornamented with three geometrical sunbursts, beneath them, “Free Sun,” “ProDesign,” “California Tan.” At Colbjørnsen’s Street a pale blue sparsely filled double trolley descends, as we turn into Dronningsparken, the paradisiacal grounds behind the palace. Once within the precinct we take a cinder path that winds beneath huge deciduous trees. In brilliant sunlight two pigeons peck at the park’s lush grass, still besprinkled with dew, as author continues to mount an S-curve upward toward the palace, leaving behind a kidney-shaped pond with ducks on its surface. Shifting course, he skirts the palace itself, leaving behind another kidney-shaped pond, an enormous willow dragging its branches through it. Pedestrians, few and far between, make their way to work along the park’s central asphalt pathway. A woman in shoulder-padded business suit cycles deliberately toward the exit. Higher still, two blond 20-year-olds, one with her bra-top untied, lie in the grass on their stomachs, between them in sunglasses a young man reading the morning paper.

Leaving the park, author crosses Wergelandsveien, past a Bibelskole, past IMI hotel, and continues on into Sven Brun’s Street, past Ophelia Nightclub Bar, to descend into Tulin Street, there pausing to read a sign for “Norsk Luthersk Misjons Samband.” As he arrives at Europa Hotel, a pretty girl is exiting its revolving door. “LOVE,” says her yellow tee shirt, the “O” in a sunburst.

*

Out into early afternoon Oslo, down St. Olaf's Street past blank Humanismens Hus, past its neighbor’s Romanesque lintels and gothic peak. At the corner of Pilestredet, on a wall left clear by another torn down, someone has painted a black and white version of Munch’s “The Scream,” three identical billboards beneath it advertising a candy bar called “Lion.” Overhead, cottony cumulus clouds mound in grey-shaded swabs. Across the intersection, at a single-table side walk café, three men are drinking beer, two in red shirts and blue pants, the third in a yellow shirt and red pants. Author continues on down-street past a travel agency that is touting tours of the Orient and Africa, North and South America, Australia and Europe.

We have reached a complex plaza with six streets issuing from it. High above, in its westernmost corner, construction is under way, cranes with their headlights on in full daylight. Bare-waisted, a guy of twenty strides across the square, swinging his tie-dyed tee shirt. Author exits square to enter another, where an ad for cosmetics reads “Color Me Beautiful.” A woman in long black dress and straw-white hair brushes author as she passes. A blue, accordion-pleated bus turns beneath the rust-red brick and pale-green copper trim of a tall apartment building, in whose first story is lodged an “Apotek.” Up a side street the lighted neon of the Mona Lisa Restaurant glows faintly. At a fruit stall in the square’s center, under a white awning, fresh raspberries exude their fragrance. At an adjacent stall a florist stands up, as author approaches to inspect his boxes of variegated blooms.

*

It is a cloudy afternoon. Promenading author turns into Henrik Ibsen’s Street, where a long line of cars has backed up behind a red light. As he continues to mount the street’s narrow side walk, traffic begins to pass. The incline increases. Cars proceeding down the middle lanes enter into the Vaterlandtunnel. Those proceeding forward are faced, like author himself, with nothing but grey buildings. Set at difficult angles, they draw the viewer up a darkening vista. At the first crossroad huge letters on the side of a building read “Megazone.” Up the way a sign in black on white reads “Rockefeller”; another, with a cross, “Freisens Hus.”

Things are growing darker and chillier. As we enter under our first overpass, a bookstore’s black outlined window, a bullet hole through it, advertises Norsk folk literature, a ten-volume set; the complete Jack London; the stories of Robert Louis Stevenson; Norway’s history in fifteen volumes; the history of Norwegian art. Next door a women’s naughty underwear store displays G-strings in purple, black and pink. Its white, large-breasted plastic models have coat-hanger hooks instead of heads.

Now deep within the tunnel, traffic sounds and noxious fumes increase. Overhead, yellow electric bulbs barely illuminate the filthy concrete concourse. To the right, an enormous black-on-white mural has been painted in the abstract-figurative early Norsk symbolic mode. On its surface, chalked in white, read thoroughly thought-out political statements. As traffic exits from the first tunnel to enter a second, a girl in black top, black pants and black beret cycles past, extending her left arm to signal a dangerous turn. Finally, relief, in the form of sunshine, then of ascent from inferno. Turning about, author looks back on the tunnel’s stage-like entranceway, behind which rises a grimly grey official building, its dozens of windows ranged in inevitable order.

*

Underground departure for Stavanger, compartment sparsely populated. Ahead of author, a foursome of retired Americans, two Minneapolis union members on tour of Norway with their wives, who have taken the window seats. Across the aisle, in another bank of four, a Norwegian woman in her early fifties, dressed in bright green skirt and white blouse. At author’s right, a Norwegian girl in her early twenties. We are exiting Oslo through a tunnel that undercuts the city. The middle-aged Norwegian woman stands to close the window. After a mile or so we emerge into daylight. Atop a small hill: high-gabled wooden houses, spacious and bright. It has rained during the night, but the sun now burns through a slightly hazy sky. Between tracks and harbor runs a superhighway. From each new suburb rises a neo-gothic, nineteenth-century red brick church. In an underpass two green blackboards have been affixed to the walls, chalk provided, to deal with graffiti problem. Addressing him in Norwegian, conductor asks author for tickets, taciturn Norwegian girl across aisle observing transaction. Now she stands to open her window. Author glances out at flourishing fields of grain only to have his view interrupted, as we plunge once more into a tunnel.

Arrived at Asker, the young woman opposite turns again to look at author: though angular in features, she is quite beautiful. Ahead, the middle-aged woman has apparently departed, the seat facing hers taken by balding middle-aged European man, his suntanned head topped with round brown spots. We have entered another tunnel, this one very long. As we are about to leave it, yet another retired American couple takes seats across the aisle from the two American couples. On one forearm, the husband bears an elaborate blue tattoo of a cross, on the other, the letters “USA.” We enter another tunnel. He is in black golf cap and red-white-and-blue shirt, his wife in beauty parlor do. After four or five miles we exit onto a landscape of vegetable farms. We are moving inland, though an inlet soon appears to reconnect us with the sea. Recently arrived American retiree has initiated conversation with couples across aisle. “HEROS” reads an underpass graffito, spray-painted in white on a beige tarpaulin. We slow at site of construction for a new railway bridge. On our right, a bridge for the auto route already spans the inlet, a new grain elevator also rising above the scene.

We are leaving Drammen. Carefully observing author/author activity, the middle-aged European man, a gold chain about his neck, adjusts his black-rimmed, oval glasses. With the air of a nineteenth-century intellectual, he strokes his grey-flecked beard, as he glances from one American couple to the other. Opening a map of Norway, the newly arrived American traces the route with his finger for the benefit of his wife. The landscape has begun to broaden and beautify. A green field slopes up directly into the conifer-forested hills behind it. On a rise above a rolling wheat field sits a lovely white farmhouse, behind it an enormous stable, now garage. Quickly we traverse a village, its houses amply spaced, all with broad balconies, new and old buildings alike in tiled roofs. On her way down the aisle a little girl pauses to engage author with a sidewise glance, her eyes Athena-grey. Together we pass a field in which hay, recently mown, has been rolled into bright green cylinders. The highway beside the road has diminished to two lanes, one of which has just been resurfaced. A pretty young railway employee in white blouse, junior bra visible beneath, her long hair caught in a blue ribbon, arrives to dispense coffee, as a two-propeller plane pulling a glider over-flies the train.

“Riding on a train is a pleasant way to travel,” says recent arrival, bonding with his American compatriots. He hasn’t done so since he was four. Trees now rise up to abut the tracks. Leaning forward, the angular girl glances at author, who instinctively averts her gaze, contact somehow not propitious. Hurtling through a small town, its track side station buildings a musty yellow, we soon pass the turnoff for Geilo. At the next station the girl departs.

We have reached Kongsberg, two hours into our scheduled six-and-a-half-hour trip. It has emerged that the most recently arrived Americans are from Tucson. The purpose of their trip to Stavanger is to visit the wife’s relatives. With the other couples they exchange accounts of their Norwegian experience. A middle-aged Scandinavian man in a red-black-and-blue shirt with matching shorts has entered to take seat vacated by beautiful, angular girl. We pass a black wooden house, antlers attached under the gable of its grey roof. The two American women enter upon extended review of their genealogies. Directly ahead of author, his red-white-and-blue golf cap turned around backwards to reveal the orange, red-outlined letters of his name, sits “Woody.” There follows discussion of his Norwegian genealogy, which he traces back to an ancestor who had run for the U.S. Senate in 1848. The European gent straps his black backpack over one shoulder, arises and departs. “What else happened yesterday?” asks Woody’s wife rhetorically, fishing for more Norwegian absurdities to serve as bait for a larger catch.

As we proceed through the balmy, sunlit day, there are signs that it is not always summertime in Norway: barns rise ten feet off the ground on stilts; huge snow-blowers sit by the railway tracks; in the distance looms a ski jump. The Norwegian woman in green skirt and white blouse returns, takes the seat opposite American wife. Pleasantly greeting the stranger who has taken her seat, she asks the wife if she would like to trade places. In accomplishing the maneuver she manages to split the couple, earlier seated side by side. The Americans smile and seem to accept the fact. Three minutes pass. Silently the husband stands and changes places, seating himself next to his wife again. They both face author now.

The wife, a decade younger than her husband, though plump, is well preserved, her rotund forms fitted into slack jeans and tee shirt. We have come to a small fjord, at whose northernmost edge stand hothouses for hydroponic tomatoes. She has kept up her makeup, rouge on cheek, eyebrow penciled. We pass two horses put out to pasture, one dappled, one caramel. But her frosted hair, in the American late-middle-age fashion, is almost comically short. Passages of road side foliage obfuscating the landscape, the view suddenly opens up onto a pie-shaped golden wheat field, rich unripened grain fields on either side of it.

Woody and Phil, his cross-aisle interlocutor, have identified a common friend, a famous baseball coach of university teams in Arizona. Phil, a Tucson resident in his fourth year of retirement, has known him, he says, since he was “yeah high.” Forty years ago in Minnesota the coach was a student of Woody’s, then instructor in a bowling class. We view a line of distant farms over a wide river, their white houses and rust-red barns a hundred years old. Having passed through Bø we stop at Lunde. The forest deepens. We enter a long tunnel. The track side road has degraded to a double rut, beige soil and gravel, an up-growth of grass in its middle. Soon it too disappears.

As we approach Neslandsvatn, the first beech-like trees make their appearance, intermixed with conifers. The terrain has become much more inhospitable. As we skirt a lake, a little butterfly jumps the water’s embankment and rises toward the train. A fire brigade relaxes under a stand of tall trees. The track side road reappears, on it a fire truck. Before long, smoke fills the air. All at once the track side road veers away, only to return several moments later with equal abruptness.

Four hours into our journey, the American conversation has turned to golfing in Tucson. As we idle at the station in Nelaug, several dozen swallows, at first tentatively, then rushing in pairs, settle on the electric lines. Having rested for a moment, all quickly depart. Talk turns to the size of counties in Arizona. Once we are under way again, the view opens into a yellow-green bog. A stand of conifers emerges from its midst, as though topping an island. It is 3:30, another hour and a half to Stavanger, or so the timetable says.

The foursome has settled in for a nap, Phil and his wife commentating the surround. In the confidential tones of pillow talk they discuss author, Woody, the Norwegian woman seated opposite. They look out the window together at the gorgeous landscape. Phil and his wife, it is clear, are still in love. The terrain grown even more rugged, the roadway is now scarcely wide enough for two cars to pass. At every turn he treats her with consideration; she for her part tolerates his glances at the beautiful service personnel. Suddenly the view opens out upon a fjord lined with garden plots. We experience three consecutive tunnels, as though they were three magical passages. We skirt a field of fledgling beeches, in amongst them taller trees, like chicks with mother hens. We pass through another stand of fire-destroyed timber. At several points, not often, but profusely, a heather-like plant covers the ground. On the smaller fjords vacationers paddle yellow canoes.

As late afternoon approaches, our train begins to pick up speed. We are on a decline, hurtling westward. Our rate of descent also increases, enough to make one’s ears pop. We are heading down a valley, out to sea. As we lose more altitude, the road rejoins us, broadening again to two lanes. We dip to beneath the level of the road, until it dips to yet a lower level, passing beneath us. A public address announcement predicts our imminent arrival in Vennesla. We traverse a tunnel, emerge and decelerate into the station. Leaving Vennesla, we recommence our descent, entering into a noisy tunnel. We reemerge into the light, our rate of descent increasing again. Houses rise up to meet us. Departing from the bank of an inlet to nestle under the mountain side, we suddenly enter a long tunnel, emerging alongside the inlet’s waters only to enter yet another tunnel. As we exit, we look far down the inlet toward the sea, which is still not in sight. Another long announcement in Norwegian has informed us that we are approaching Kristiansand. Once we arrive, it says, please reverse the position of your seats, for we must back out of this coastal town to continue our progress toward Stavanger.

We have left Kristiansand and begun to retrace our route. The tracks divide, this side of the Y indicating our northwestward direction. The train is running far behind schedule. With two and a half more hours
to go, we will not arrive in Stavanger until after 6:00, eight and a half hours after departure from Oslo. The view at this point is badly obscured by track side up-growth. Occasionally, though, we look down to glimpse whole villages seated in broad valleys. We slow down and finally stop, in the midst of nowhere. Someone has failed to throw a switch that would have shunted us onto the right track. We must back up a quarter of a mile for the task to be accomplished. We have fallen even further behind schedule. Under way again, we enter into a very long tunnel. The compartment, having warmed up under the afternoon sun, rapidly cools off. The inane American patter continues: mindless comments about the weather, jokes based on mispronunciation of Norwegian names. Fortunately, two of the three couples will be departing at the next station. We enter into a broad valley, where horses, sheep, and cattle are all grazing in separate fields.

We have reached the original American couples’ destination. Waddling down the aisle they painfully debark, detained by their great girth, excessive luggage and silliness. In the background, awaiting them, stand a dignified Norwegian mother and her daughter, fearful that the relatives will fail to get off the train. Briefly we glimpse a scene of reunion, then head into a long tunnel. Approaching Gyland we must wait for a train to exit, before we can enter another tunnel. The mountains have become more massive, rising to twice the height of earlier peaks. We pass a scene of innocence, children bathing naked in a lake. On our left opens a broad fjord, along its farther bank a town called Moi, into which we now descend. From its private flagpoles fly thin triangular pennons bearing the cross of Norway. Once out of Moi the landscape takes on a grander authority. We traverse a mountain side gashed with vast natural axe-strokes. Across a bay of blue water appears a cliff side completely covered in dark pines. We have entered another dimension of Norway, one in which nature has wrested from man the greater identity. Beneath us a tiny red car winds along the side of a blue lake.

After a brief stop at Egersund the weather abruptly changes. The landscape turns somber, blue skies within minutes becoming overcast. We have entered upon a coastal plain, arable, but only exiguously so. Cultivating it requires that one remove large rocks deposited by receding glaciers. Some industrious farmers have done so, making of the boulders barriers to separate their fields. Some, less industrious, have piled the rocks at the centers of theirs. Quickly we pass through villages strung out along the track, now set back a mile from the sea. As we continue on, fields grow increasingly broader, some sown in a lush grass, recently harvested or in the process of being cut. In the least arable, sheep are seen grazing. Those of richer soil support herds of cattle. Those not being grazed are under cultivation, large barns at their margins ready to receive the summer harvest and shelter livestock during the winter. We hurtle through village after village, scarcely batting an eye. Gradually the undulant scene flattens out and we stop once more, in a dreary industrial town called Bryne. We are almost to the suburbs of Stavanger. It is 7:00 o’clock, nine hours since we had left Oslo.

Stavanger, 8:00 pm. A bright sun raking the fronts of yellow, rust- red, dark blue, houses reveals them in their most saccharine aspect. Author strolls in among them, the streets of the old town all but deserted. We head for the harbor, where black, white and red vehicles, their headlights on, approach along a double lane of asphalt, a brilliant carpet of emerald grass in its median. Like two immense tuning forks, pylons support a suspension bridge. Across the harbor the green arms of a tall red crane await business. At its stern a ferry churns a stream of white foam out of the blue sea. On a grey wall an heroic yellow graffito reads “VIKING.”

A white guy with his gorgeous black girlfriend passes. Three blond teenagers head up the hill, author following in hopes that they will lead him to signs of life. We pass a park, where an eight-year-old Indian girl is dancing by herself. Another level achieved and the mountains surrounding the harbor come into view. Author, now alone, passes a graveyard, its gate left open. On the wall of a four-story stuccoed building, the cutout forms of immense doves, their wingspans nine or ten feet. Crossing a bridge over a small valley, author enters Kirkegårdsveien, remounts Mégata and returns to his immaculate guesthouse.

*

Departure by express boat for Bergen, with a midway change at Leirvik. Skies are overcast, as we glide smoothly out of Stavanger, past oil barges, corrugated lodgings atop them. The harbor is lined with industrial sheds, cranes rising above pine trees. The boat’s seats are scarcely half filled, mostly with teenagers. Boarding the ship, they absorb themselves at once in books. Author engages in conversation an utterly gorgeous sixteen-year-old girl returning home from her summer’s work. She lives in a small village along the Nordfjord, far north of Bergen. Other passengers in their late twenties and early thirties buy beers and settle into their seats for conversation. It is 9:00 o’clock in the morning. Once out of the harbor, we increase our speed to 35 miles an hour.

One of the pleasanter features of Norway is that one is always addressed in Norwegian. On the train yesterday the 20-year-old railway employee asked author what he would like to eat, in Norwegian. At the guesthouse this morning, as, unbidden, he served author an English-style soft-boiled egg with two pieces of toast in a salver, the jovial, white-haired, red-faced, six-foot-four-inch owner, asked him, again in Norwegian, whether he had slept well. Later, at the ferry dock, he was asked, in Norwegian, what kind of tickets he wanted.

Having cleared the peninsula and headed out to sea, we must round a cape before veering north. According to the map our journey will take us past offshore islands that obscure the actual coastline of Norway. The seascape without interest, author takes seat in the row ahead to engage sixteen-year-old in further conversation. She is tanned from her summer, her nose aquiline, almost perfectly straight. Author expresses interest in her book. Though her lips are full and pouty, her fingers are long and slender. He tells her that he himself is a writer. She wears her hair in a boyish, layered shag, long bangs descending to her eyebrows. She herself a poet, her costume has been carefully chosen: silver necklace, tweedy jacket, black tights. We must write a poem together, author says. Karina smiles, her gold nose ring glinting.

Quickly the weather has changed. Author returns to his seat, Karina to her book. Two-thirds up the eastern sky the sun has broken through. We are maintaining a constant speed of 50 miles an hour, past a landscape increasingly bleak. In a small boat two orange-jacketed men are dwarfed by the water’s expanse. We have settled into a northwesterly course. At some distance, directly north of us, stands our first ship, its black hull floating along the horizon line, its white upper stages blending into the bluish haze of horizontal cloud. Across the aisle from author, two 28-year-olds are starting in on their third beers. Karina stands, leaves her seat and heads aft along the aisle, her eyes flickering for an instant as she passes author. Demurely she averts contact with any other passenger. We approach an island. While she is gone, we pass its shoreline in a single motion, dipping beneath a bridge that connects it with another, farther out to sea. Author decides to venture forth on deck.

Standing against the stern’s blue railing, he gazes over a triple-rooster of spray jetting out from the ship’s propellers. A bright turquoise plastic line has been strung across the stairs, prohibiting admittance to the upper deck. The motion of the ship is nothing short of terrific. Foam jets out from her sides like fresh-churned intergalactic matter, frothing onto, receding into the sea’s blue surface. We are passing a rugged island, its shore composed of long stone lozenges, only a bristly scrub of pine topping it. Suddenly a much closer island heaves into view. Quickly we leave it behind, awash in our tremendous wake.

Joining author on aft deck is a statuesque middle-aged woman in black hair, black skirt, silver-tipped shoes. Over black coffee she takes a final drag on her cigarette. Another, much younger woman, sits in the portal, prohibited from entering by her black, three-foot-tall Labrador; tethered, he nonetheless threatens passengers who venture onto the deck.

We have paused at a town of perhaps 20,000 people to take on passengers, its two-storied harbor side houses uniformly broad and gabled, all set cheek-to-jowl.

We have entered a somewhat larger port, its harbor filled with many pleasure craft, including a yacht named “The Happy Taurus, II.” Here wooden buildings are complemented by higher brick and stone structures. A lanky 20-year-old, her blond hair floating in the breeze, strolls the dock. The town is putting on its summery air; one can barely imagine how it will look in winter. Having left the town and its harbor behind, we enter onto the open sea. The sky grown cloudy, the wind picks up. To delighted squeals from the kids in the cabin we launch out over two foot waves. Rain begins to streak the windows.

Author passes ahead on a piece of paper a question for Karina: who is her favorite movie star? The answer: Johnny Depp. What is her favorite color? Blue, she says. With time to examine his written English, her responsiveness improves. Before long Karina and author have entered into correspondence, she adding untranslatable details in Norwegian. To break the rhythm of question and answer, he composes an ode to her beauty, in suitably simplified English verse. A long pause follows. Between the seats ahead peeks a sheet of ruled paper, on it a poem for author, in Norwegian. At Fråleirvik the two lovers debark. In the bright sunshine they stand together, waiting to board the new ship. On the surface of the water, oblivious to the dock’s noisy activity, a single little duck ruffles its white feathers.

The second phase of our journey is spent in the smoker’s lounge of a more luxurious ship. The seas have quieted. The new decor is mauve and purple. Karina, who hand rolls her own smokes, is fifteen and a half. We have taken seats – the last available – at a glass topped table for four and now sit cattycorner from one another. The other smokers in seats beside us adopt a languid, late morning attitude. As Karina and author begin a new poem, passing it line by line back and forth, they express a mild interest, though more in the poem than anything else. Glass panels partition the groups of lounge seats surrounding the tables, each panel etched with a white outlined, white winged, white beaked swallow.

Karina has left school this past year to work on her parent’s farm, where the family raises hydroponic tomatoes. This summer she has worked as a kindergarten teacher, a profession she hopes to pursue. She plans further study, perhaps at a college. Her family includes an older sister and two younger brothers, one four years old, the other killed this past year in a car crash. Author learns of these details over lunch in Bergen, where we linger for two hours. When Karina opens her wallet to show pictures, out falls a sheet of five or six telephone numbers, beside them a scribbled heart. These, she explains, are the people she loves. Lunch finished, we go in search of the tourist office, where she arranges author’s stay at a private house. After a brief walk to the dock he must say farewell. It is 4:00 pm. Karina boards the ship to await its departure, as author heads off to private house, so as not to keep its matron waiting.

Bergen, 8:00 pm, third story room of private house, through whose high fenestration a church tower, its steeple sheathed in elaborately worked copper. Like the western sides of the white houses below, it catches a steady stream of light from a sun that seems to have stopped declining at 4:00 pm.

*

Saturday morning harbor side market displays, accordion with spoon on washboard accompaniment: Norwegian caviar, Russian caviar, salmon paté. Lox on bagel with cucumber slice. Norske reker, French fish, catfish, turbot, monkfish. Pickled herring in mustard sauce, in tomato sauce, in sherry. Personnel behind the white oil cloth covered counters are bright and efficient, all clad in heavy orange fisherman’s pants. Author past fruit stand, vegetable merchant, display of pelts: red fox, golden fox, blue silver fox. Pleasure craft, mostly Norwegian, line the dock. A German, having just arrived, cleans the windshield wipers of his private cruiser, the “Barracuda.” A black hulled cutter, the “Grinna,” is tied up ahead of him. Farther along, the Bergen fire department makes its appearance, in a boat, a large van, a Toyota minitruck, a small fire truck, all in different shades of red. The occasion for their convention is unclear. Behind Global Spedisjon stands a sleek Plexiglas yacht, the “Surama” of London, two white panted, baby blue shirted, barefooted crew members tending its lines and lifeboat. Low in the water, next to two tugs, nestles the white hulled, blue striped “Pollux.”

A 50-year-old man, his long blond hair pulled back in a pony tail, sits cross-legged, leaned against a ten foot high spool of yellow telephone cable. In a notebook poised atop his rucksack he is writing a poem.

We pass a church, its squat, white wooden tower surmounted by an onion dome. Medieval buildings emerge, their ramparts crenellated, a stonework tower rising high above them, three tiny red bordered windows near its top.

Author faces the goal toward which he has been heading: two substantial ships docked at the harbor’s entrance: the yellow and black “Monika Viking,” a rescue vessel from Kristiansand, and the “Costa Allegra,” a creamy grey cruise boat from Italy. A large black-cabbed Volvo transport, a sea green container on its blue bed, turns into Bergen Fiskeindustri at the mouth of the harbor. Passengers are boarding the Costa Allegra. Across from her, only now come into view, is the luxury liner Europa, her grey hull striped in orange and blue.

At the end of the dock, old-fashioned ropes secure the Europa and the Costa to the same bulkhead. The few tourists still waiting to board are promenading. Two Greek-speaking hands, in blue zippered sweaters and white paint spattered overalls, descend a ladder to a tiny raft, disappearing below the dock, at the end of which stand two old men, dressed in inexplicably elegant ways. One, an Italian gent in a brush moustache, black trimmed grey jacket and cloth slippers, inspects one of the lines holding the Costa in its berth. The second, in black jacket, cane and grey fedora, turns to board the Europa. Meanwhile, a purple three wheeled souped-up road cycle thunders onto the wharf, its driver in black leather pants and jacket, a long black scarf about his neck. At his bike’s rear is a traveling cabinet, on whose surface the silver outline of a naked girl. The biker dismounts and strolls to the end of the pier, where he too tests the heavy cordage. Now he is joined by a girlfriend, in tasseled leather jacket, fringed leather pants, blond unkempt locks.

A red taxi-van arrives to deposit a group of expensively dressed tourists at the Europa’s gangplank, preparations under way for her departure. As author clears the ship, a new landscape opens up on the northern flank of Bergen: houses, dwarfed by a beetling cliff, sympathetic in their regularity and harmonious color schemes. Exiting dock side, author encounters a huge white-cabbed, red-bodied Renault truck, its side panel reading, in a never before seen style, “Cilerci, International Transport, Istanbul, Türkiye.”

Turning up Skutevikstorget, we leave modern Bergen to enter Bryggen, the oldest part of town. The road takes us behind Norsk Fiskeindustri, whose loading docks not surprisingly smell of fish. Across the way at number 7, a man in red shirt and blue pants works at repairing his little white cottage. Farther on, the granite mountain comes down to meet us, yellow daisies peeking up out of its crevices. We have reached a parking lot for camping caravans. On the rear panel of a Mercedes tour bus a popular artist has painted a romantic Dutch landscape: windmill and sunset, both in red and yellow. Distinguished little wooden houses line the opposite side of the roadway, one in maroon and olive trim. On this side a sign advertises “Michigan Propeller.”

The highway ahead promising nothing new, author loops back along Nye Sandviksveien, whose house fronts are graced with roses, poinsettias and potted pansies. At the end of the street a house painter on break holds forth at the center of a five way conversation. Beside a red outlined telephone booth we pause to look out over the retiled roofs back down into the harbor. From high above, the Europa stands complete, her foredeck whitened by the sun.

As author continues descent, ahead of him two twelve-year-old darlings, in identically blond ponytails, their skinny legs squeezed into tight-fitting jeans, hoof it into town for Saturday afternoon fun. Reaching her slender arms and graceful fingers behind her head, the taller of the two reaffixes the rubber band that holds her hair in place. The girls keep a distance from one another, nudging closer from time to time to whisper secrets. Author turns harborward, passing a tall medieval church, a bronze elephant standing high above a drug store’s entrance. He pauses before the statue of a young man who had sacrificed his life for the fatherland, then before another in memory of Snorri Sturlason, the date on its side 1178.

*

8:01 reads the Coca Cola clock at dock side, a girl in a green sweatshirt, an older man the age of her father, jogging past together. We are backing out of our berth, headed today for the Sognefjord and points along it: Balestrand, Vangsnes, Flåm. As the ship pivots, we face the aperture of the port, through which the North Sea Surveyor is entering. Picking up speed, we pass the tall medieval tower with its little red windows and onion dome; the Monika Viking, whose lights have been on all night.

“Man Overboard. (1) Throw life buoy into the water. (2) Notify the crew,” reads sign on seat ahead of author. We have reached the end of the dock, where two young men stand talking, hands in their pockets against the chill. The Europa has departed; likewise, the Costa Allegra. Smoke issuing from four stacks, her white silhouette reading against the cliffs, the Arcona from Rostock crosses the bay. As we leave her behind we accelerate to 35 miles an hour, entering onto a dark grey slate of sea. We pass a twelve tiered grain elevator and round the cape. Along an increasingly distant shore, in among high-rise towers, on through trees in a more sparsely settled terrain, a yellow bus threads its way.

We are half an hour out of Bergen, standing off from another town, the cliff face behind it allowing for only a thinly etched roadway. There is virtually no arable land here. A crook in the coast provides shelter for a small marina, behind which commercial buildings. Then, nothing but rocky coast, a single house perched high above.

We glide beneath a suspension bridge, which descends from high to low, as it crosses from mainland to offshore island, its paired cables elegantly interwoven. Once past, we point northwestward and accelerate to 40 miles an hour. The coast here is populated with rather large, newly built suburban style houses. Across the white railing of our prow lies a bright green polyester line, two strands of it opening and closing in the wind. Rain drops begin to whiten the surface of the windows, as we head shoreward and cut throttle, presumably in preparation for our first landing. Five gulls fly in a pseudo formation against a background of granite cliffs marked by water runoff. We settle into a riparian channel, standing but a dozen meters from the mountain side. We approach a town past abandoned storehouses, older inhabited structures, newer ones, past wild intermittent growth. Trees have fallen into the sea; boulders obtrude into the channel; cliffs rise abruptly. There is no road.

So thoroughly patterned with rivulets are the ship’s forward windows that those who had rushed to take seats behind them are now dismayed. A Swiss girl, encountered yesterday at the tourist office, opens a portal and exits onto deck. Meanwhile the ship’s conductor works the aisle with his array of European equipment: leather purse, leather pouch, ticket puncher, coin changer, ticket machine. We have not stopped after all. Instead, we pick up speed and purr forward, attended only by the quiet of the landscape. Like skeins of carded wool a cloud drapes itself over a small mountain, a solitary white house punctuating its forested face. Along the coast a bright yellow fishing shack shines like a beacon. After a village carved out of the cliff side we suddenly leave behind the civilized realm, deciduous giving way to coniferous growth. In the now much more rugged landscape single cottages appear at intervals, one per inlet. Rounding a cape we leave all behind but nature herself.

An hour out of Bergen the coastal mountains have receded inland, the shore uninhabited. Gradually things improve. The sun having broken through, red barns and square white houses begin to appear, receiving its benevolent illumination. On the flatter slopes farming recommences. We pass a white church with a black steeple, three grey gulls descending upon it. Then rocky outcrop quickly supersedes farmland. Battling against the head wind, a single gull makes its way out to the end of a promontory, from which a single fir tree rises.

Author has stepped out on deck. For the past hour he has been talking to a French woman in her mid thirties, a professor of physics. We are moving more slowly again, through a narrow channel. On her month’s vacation she is touring Norway. Another gorgeous concrete bridge spans the flood from shore to offshore island. Her field is solid state physics, with a special interest in thin films, magnetism, magneto resistance, neutron diffusion. The rocks here, presumably igneous, are striated, their black surfaces veined with white. She is the youngest of several sisters, the others all married. Author tightens yellow rain jacket against the breeze. Her hair is Scandinavian blond, her eyes a Nordic blue. We are exiting from the double clutches of a narrow shoreward passage into a wider inlet bay. She is married to her work, which has taken her to conferences abroad. It begins to sprinkle, heavy clouds lowering.

We prepare to make our first landing, at a very small port. The single debarking passenger is called upon to tie the bright green line to the cleat. The rain has darkened the dock’s concrete surface. The expanse of nature is empty, the only sound the crackling of our ship’s radio. We are off again. Amid a grove of evergreens rises a white Lutheran chapel, its roof in grey. We peer through the mist at a rust red boat house only to return to a rainy, rocky deserted coast.

As we cross the mouth of an inlet, a rip line indicates the motion of the incoming tide. We leave a cove behind, its shoreline mountainous. At Soleibotn we prepare for our second landing. A drizzle commences. An attendant awaits the toss of the green line. Secured at our bow, we mechanically lower the gangplank. When it touches down at the stern, two passengers, a man and his wife, her jacket pulled over her head, step on board. Having caught a parcel of plastic covered newspapers, the attendant hustles to our bow to cast us off. Standing on deck, a Japanese tourist videotapes the scene, his wife, in a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt, framed for the shot. Behind them an American woman in turn photographs the Japanese, her six-foot-two daughter standing at her side.

In a roiling broth of fog we enter the broad mouth of the Sognefjord. Before long, as we begin our approach to Lavik, the sun breaks through. Over the town dock flies a flag, a quilt made up of the flags of many nations.

Author to deck for fjord inspection. We pause again to let off passengers, approaching a cliff that rises sharply above us, its top hatted in cloud. Along the narrow coastal road winds a line of vehicles. A gull, rising and descending, flaps its way across the open gorge. As we cross to the opposite side, the wind picks up considerably, making the use of handheld recorder impossible. We veer back, round a cape and return to the fjord’s center, where the wind whips the bluish green surface of the water, capping it with waves. Up a crevice, on the second tier of peaks: our first glimpse of still unmelted snow.

Another hour passes in conversation with professor, as we move eastward through a progression of mountain ranges, the sun casting its beams on the fjord, heavy cloud covering the more distant peaks. We are more than half way. Author exits onto deck for exhilarating 50-mile-an-hour glide into Balestrand. Heading straight for a church, we change direction, veering toward a nineteenth century wooden tourist hotel, its three stories in elaborate carpentry. Through clearing clouds we again look upward to much brighter patches of snow.

Balestrand – we have reached our first big destination – seems little more than a village. As the ship lays her flank against the dock, we face back out into the fjord, a single brilliant line of white sunlight striping its center. Two Japanese kids in white short shorts circumambulate the deck with two newfound western friends. Once back in the cabin – author returned to protect seat against influx of passengers, the Captain begins another discourse, this time on the myth of the Viking king, who, grasping his sword hilt, rises in the midst of a green field on the opposite side of the fjord. We recross for landfall at Vangsnes, a view opening behind us of the larger passage through which we have come.

Author talks to Norwegian sailor, who tells the story of his recent unemployment. Educated, experienced and technically qualified, he has lost his job to foreign labor. Only the captains and mates of today’s vessels, he explains, are Norwegian. Ships pick up their crews in the Philippines. Backing out, we shift gears, turn and are under way, heading once more into the blue grey, green shadowed, ever-changing waters of the fjord.

On our approach to Flåm we are making our third landfall within half an hour. Author to front of ship for through-window observation. Promenading on deck, with American grandma and six-foot-two-inch mother, is the Japanese mother, all four kids alongside, Mickey Mouse smiling. “Hotell,” says a sign at Leikanger atop a two-story wooden structure, its concrete modern annex half hidden behind it.

We have long since entered the Aurlandsfjord, an inlet off an inlet, and are now passing the mouth of yet another, the Naer Øyfjord, which in turn debouches into the second inlet. “This,” says the Captain, “is one of the narrowest fjords in Europe, the only access by boat.” A ship with red striped black stacks is exiting it. “One famous Norwegian lived in a house up a cliff so high it could only be reached by ladder,” he says. “When the tax collector came, he just lifted up the ladder.” We enter the narrow harbor at the town of Aurland, almost in sight of Flåm.

Established at guest house, author heads out of Flåm on foot, past 1940s railway, with its silver trestle and quaint transformer. We cross a wooden bridge over a mountain brook so clear that its bottom is visible under three feet of water. At the head of the harbor stands a huge propeller, once part of an Estonian ship, “sunk by the Norwegian militaries,” the plaque says, “after German planes had bombed her, April 5, 1940.” Cottonwoods rustle in the shade of a cliff behind us. ”The Estonian captain, Mihkel Kekägi, was killed in the attack.”

Leaving the little town’s outskirts, we ascend a highway, scarcely a lane wide, past an old hotel, many of its windows broken out in back. Out in the bay a single prop plane with pontoons is landing. As though in imitation, a large gull dives toward the water’s surface. Author looks down onto the heads of three Korean tourists also climbing the mountain. As we round the bend, a burst of spectacular scenery greets us: an orchard of low-lying fruit trees, at their feet a blanket of luminous green grass; a mountain base covered with whispering aspens; above, a dark interval of conifers, almost black in their shadowed recesses. The single prop plane, having taxied back out of the harbor, now revs, strains forward, slowly gaining speed for its takeoff. Gulls flutter from its path. After 300 yards it is still not off the surface of the water. Another hundred yards and it is barely skimming the waves. At last, perilously close to the opposite shore, it lifts off, veering to avert the embankment. As it heads on up the fjord, its little drone continues to echo.

The skies have begun to scumble over ominously, author questioning the wisdom of having left on a hike without rainwear. He has crossed the fjord and entered a smaller road poised below a highway exiting from a tunnel. “Aurland, 9 km,” read the black letters on a yellow sign; “Hella 100”; “Oslo 336.” Down the highway roars an eighteen wheel Ringnes beer truck, on its back panel: two six-foot glasses of frosty brew. We reach the site of a large cascade, whose flood here rushes under the highway. Eager to follow the waterfall to its source, author defers to portentous skies which suggest that return would be more prudent.

As he re-approaches town, a black hulled cutter makes its way into the harbor, its white upper deck lit by a brilliantly re-emergent sun. Down the gorge the sunlit single prop plane is also returning. All of a sudden the light goes out, the water’s surface sullen. Descending author accelerates pace, past broken out windows of hotel, hoping to reach port before the cutter enters, before the plane lands. Approaching the dock, the boat reverses its engines, churning up a white and light green froth on the suddenly sunlit rippled surface of the water. As author reaches the dock, out in the bay the little plane touches down. Returning past railroad station, he retraces route over wooden bridge, an electric train humming toward Myrdal behind him. Once across the mountain brook, he circles back to the garden of the guest house, past fruit tree and flower bed, to an already opened door.

*

Pre-departure mid-morning stroll east of Flåm, view of mountain side cascade, mountain side meadow, mountain side brook, light effulgent, sides of white clapboard houses especially bright. As clouds encroach, the sun infiltrates them, banding the mountain side in white. It is still and cool.

Flåm station, 11:25 am, awaiting train for Myrdal. At the end of the platform a sign reads “Supermarked.” A group of German tourists, middle-aged, corpulent, self-satisfied, volubly commentate the scene; the Scandinavians take no offense but themselves are more polite and introspective. Author takes seat in empty compartment, which begins to fill with young European backpackers, their tents, parkas, rucksacks in purple, lavender, turquoise. On the platform outside stand two railway personnel: a six-foot-three-inch man in very pale blue shirt, one arm akimbo; a melancholy boy in a dark blue suit too large for him, hands clasped behind him. With a burst of compressed air the doors shut, and we are off, past yellow station side buildings, under a silver trestle, past brook, meadow, cascade. The trip to Myrdal covers only twenty kilometers but will take fifty minutes. Tentatively the melancholy boy checks our tickets, a faint smile on his lips. We pause at Lunden, scarcely a kilometer out of Flåm. Two immense boulders in the midst of the flood have had wooden walkways built about them so that they may be circumambulated. Quickly we begin to scale the mountain side. Within another kilometer we arrive above Håreina, looking down into the red roofed village over raspberry fields.

At the end of the gorge the flood rises into rapids. We have climbed to 60 feet above them and peer back down onto a solitary angler fishing with a twenty foot silver pole. Ascending farther toward the ridge, we enter our first tunnel, exiting to face another cascade, its water free falling. We continue upward, our speed slowing to twenty miles an hour. Snow patched mountain tops, greened with new foliage, appear through the openings. We enter a second tunnel, glimpse the flood and enter a third. Exiting, we follow a ridge to the opposite side of the crevice. The Germans scurry across the aisle to occupy every available window seat. In the distance, another cascade, beneath which a group of houses, all crouched on a slanting shelf of rock. At Verekvam, the ten kilometer mark, we must pause for another train to pass. Beside the track lie freshly chopped piles of wood. The train for Flåm arrived, we recommence our ascent, laboring at the incline. We emerge from a tunnel to face a downrushing stream. High above, a mountain cap is melting.

Soon we too have reached the snow line. Traversing a long curving tunnel, we open out onto a light turquoise froth of rapids. All at once we enter another tunnel, three times as long as the last. Laboring to ascend, we exit slowly onto a platform to rest. Before us rush, with violent force, the riverlike waters of the Kjosfossen. Ninety three meters high, its creamy flood thunders, churning downward out of nowhere, disappearing beneath us. The sunlight, striking its turbulent surface, clouds its mist. Behind glistens a black cliff. Under way again we traverse a series of tunnels, glimpsing through brief apertures an intermittent scene of rugged beauty. Within minutes we have reached the lake out of which the roaring cascade had issued. Pausing at Vakahalsen, where middle-aged backpackers board, we arrive at last at the green mountaintop town of Myrdal, where the Bergen train for Oslo awaits us.

Author takes seat opposite handsome, black clad Norwegian youth.

Behind dark glasses his eyes are closed, his fingers holding in place the earplugs of a CD player. In his early twenties, the long strands of his blond hair are caught in a pony tail. A beautiful redheaded girl of twenty returns to take her seat next to author. And we are off. Even though near the ridge of the mountain, we enter a tunnel at once. Exiting, we pass directly into a series of sheds built to protect the tracks from snow. We look down onto a large lake. At the end of the snow shed we pause, gazing up at a scene of blue sky and single unraveling cloud. Under way again we pass through shed after shed, through whose internal apertures light flickers in experimental film like sequences. We are viewing mountain peaks from almost mountain peak level, looking at lakes from the level of their sources. Surprisingly, even at the summit there are signs of habitation, houses wedged in among lichen-covered squarish boulders. We enter a long shed, light emitted into it as though by photon bursts. As we begin descent, the sound of the train whines down to a lower register. A girl in shortly cropped blond hair gets up and leaves, closing the compartment door behind her. Exiting a tunnel, we enter onto a rock-filled scene interwoven with streams, in the midst of which sit solitary cabins: black, brown, dark red.

We have arrived at Finse, official railway buildings in black. Their first story, red curtained windows reflect the train itself. On the hill side above stands a black house in red trim. As we leave the station, we enter a waste land. Atop a mound of stone, a single turquoise tent makes its appearance. Gradually we descend to lower altitudes. Little lakes open up to an ampler lake, along whose shores are distributed a few camping vehicles. Out of lakes, streams begin to flow eastward. In this region wooden snow baffles, twenty feet high, have been constructed. Some, badly damaged by the force of the wind, have yet to be repaired. In amongst a huge field strewn with angular lichen-covered boulders sits a single backpacker dressed in red and black. We have now descended several hundred meters to stop beside a lake, whose name is not indicated by any track side sign. The mountainous clouds have attained a midday stasis.

Through the first few hours we have passed from mountain peak to rocky decline to valley descent. Now the rolling landscape, though still forested, begins to support farms on its lower slopes. Meadows emerge, only to be erased by forested hills. By the tracks a stand of conifers is interspersed with younger deciduous trees. The fields return, yellow and green silage with beige grain.

Descended to yet lower levels, mountains now surround us. To the east, a blue grey purple range, to the south, a ridge of forested green. As we slip on through the landscape, towns become more frequent: station, soccer field, school and church. We reach Hønefoss and pause, its station house a deep yellow stucco layered with courses of red brick. As we are leaving the town, we survey its large handsome houses. For two hours author has been talking with Kvasti (read “Shasti”), a lovely freckle faced girl from a large family that lives on an island south of Bergen. Her older sister has recently married a Swede. She herself spent this last year in England as an au pair girl, an experience which has left her with a lower-class London accent. In the East of the city she met many Africans and Asians. The Caucasian Englishmen, she remarks, “are so lacking in color, their clothes so drab. Black and white, black and white!” She is on her way to Oslo to look for a secretarial job. If she cannot find one in two or three days, she will return home. Clearly she comes from a happy, affectionate family. Her mother, only 42, wears the same size dress that she does. Mildly curious about Asia, Kvasti is shocked to learn that author’s elder son has married a Chinese woman. She feels that communication with a Swede would be difficult enough. When she marries, not too soon, but “certainly by 25,” her husband will be her own age. “People 39 and 22 are too weird. They can’t communicate.” Kvasti loves her mother but feels more distant from her father. Nonetheless, when she chooses a husband, she says jokingly, he must play the guitar. Later she confesses that when she was young her father had. The family has some history of divorce. Her uncle drank too much and his wife left him. Her husband should be honest and faithful, she says. She does not want many children, though when she is pressed she admits that three, or even four, would be just fine.

According to the map posted in our compartment, we are almost to Oslo. Having passed Drammen, the superhighway joins us. Access bridges gracefully arch overhead. At Asker we enter a long tunnel: three miles, four miles, five miles and running. Leaving Asker, we enter another. As we exit, around the bay’s bend, Oslo finally comes into view, a rainbow lighting the sky to the East.

“Hello!” says gorgeous black eighteen-year-old native speaking Norwegian, table next to author, Oslo kebab restaurant. She is seated with two friends, redhead and blond, sixteen and seventeen. “Me fuck you?” the black girl suddenly asks, author the only one unaware of what is going on. It is 6:30 pm, the sun still shining brightly, sailors, layabouts, restaurant people all in loud conversation.

“Hello?” says the blond, the others girls now openly laughing at author. Leaning over, she kisses him on the cheek. Interest of restaurant patrons picks up.

“Hello!” says redhead, to a great deal of tittering all around.

“What is your name?” the black girl asks, in Norwegian, checking position of author’s wallet as she does so. Author responds, repeating her question.

“Huula,” she replies.

“Huula,” says author, imitating her, the blond and redhead falling over themselves in laughter. “Hulahupa,” he adds. Hula responds with appropriate physical gestures. The other girls press forward. Author does his best to thank them, in Norwegian, as he declines their lively, lovely, dangerous offer.

*

Author facing toward Oslo, as 7:37 am train pulls out of Central Station, headed for Göteborg. In sky blue glass against blue sky stands the Oslo Plaza Hotel.

We are passing through Moss, soon to arrive at Fredrikstad. Within three hours we should be in Sweden.

We are exiting Fredrikstad. Ahead in compartment sits a group of four Norwegian businessmen on their way to the Norway-Sweden soccer match, two of them in their mid sixties, two in their mid thirties. A session of off-color joke telling gets under way, accompanied by many hearty, full-bodied laughs, much blushing. With each punch line the senior member of the party glances at author, smiles and tips his beer.

Having advanced now for some time through sunny wheat fields, we stop in Sarpsborg. As we continue toward the border, the landscape increases in beauty. We pass through a little town dominated by a refinery, its white cylindrical structures gleaming in the sun. A boy walks down the aisle in a tee shirt reading “World Athletic Championships.” The businessmen ahead, in conference with compatriots across the aisle, consult their tickets to see which section of the stadium they are sitting in.

2

We have reached the town of Ed, the Swedish flag flying atop its station. It is 10:15. The transition from Norway to Sweden has been an easy one, little observable change in landscape or style of habitation. No one has asked to see passports. We look down onto an iceless outdoor hockey rink. Bending around a small lake, we accelerate and move on into a broader, more luxurious domain. It is half past 11:00; we have arrived at Öxnered. According to the schedule we should reach our destination at a minute to 12:00. Alongside us a double highway makes its appearance, author reading its road signs with distances to points in Norway. Looking forward over his shoulder, he glimpses at last an indication that we are heading into Göteborg. As we approach the city an advertisement announces “Pelerins Margarinfabrik.”

At 4:30 pm. In the eighteenth century Gothenburg was headquarters to the Swedish East India Company. Pure blue sky, full sun.A shipping line with exclusive rights to the Eastern trade routes as far as China.Single ideographic cloud behind tall deciduous trees.The present city.Courtyard, Jörgens Vandrarhem, Dalagärde, suburbs of Göteborg. Has a Palm House, a Rosarium and a Butterfly House.

*

Mid-morning stroll down Skånegatan, past three girls distributing leaflets, past guy sporting three-day beard hawking tickets. “Welcome to World Athletic Championships,” says a large sign, sunstruck Ullevi stadium looming ahead. View of crowd through portal: a spectator in yellow visor, shirt already off; the sound of rhythmic applause; the flags of many nations drifting on a rope over the upper deck. As author makes his way around the arena, a world-class walker pumps past in white tee shirt, blue shorts. On the green breeze-ruffled surface of a bordering canal, three green-headed, brown-bodied ducks paddle by, one ruffling its feathers. We have entered Valhallagatan.

We have returned to the city center, past ancient ramparts, to enter Trägårdsföreningen Park, its lawn studiously tended, its walkways graveled. Above massive clumps of trees floats a Fuji blimp in green and silver. At an outdoor café a concert of classical Lieder is in progress, the dark-suited male soloist holding a delicate microphone before his lips. Author, off in search of other attractions, encounters the Palm Garden, in whose window appears a bronze of a young nude, baby in arms. Near the Rosarium he pauses before a languishing fin-de-siècle piece by a Swedish sculptor, as, from the café behind, a female voice enters in duet. At the Butterfly House, through a plastic curtain, he enters the Asiatic section, where, against a background of jungle noises, Europeans clad in white shorts inspect living specimens. A giant butterfly perches atop a tropical plant, fanning its black wings like bellows. Others approach, as though to greet author, suspending themselves in mid-air. Standing attentively under their parents’ tutelage to examine a chart of Chinese types, two boys of eight and ten look up to see a butterfly-like teenage girl, her nails painted blue, examining them.

At the park’s corner we enter the Lagerhuset, an outdoor museum. About a bed of blooming roses four blond girls converge. Along the bank of a canal the garden narrows into a cool path, overarched by the boughs of elms, on whose trunks, high above, bird houses have been attached. In Sweden at every turn something extra is done, for ecology, for convenience, for the quality of life. Author returns to the park’s entrance by way of an open stage covered with a striped tent, its guy wires encased in plywood to protect the insouciant passerby. As a solitary woman prepares a dramatic performance, two boys of three and five sit on the grass before her. We traverse the emerald sward, where a triangular column of mirrored glass reflects it, casting on one side a dark shadow, on the other, the light of the sun.

Exiting the park, author pauses by a circular pool, its rim heavily populated. A fountain within jets to a height of three stories. Two policemen amble past in fantastic paramilitary outfits. Across the busy intersection, atop a black shingled roof, reads the single word ”CLOCK” in yellow-outlined orange, its “O” a dial with hands at twelve and eight. Resuming his progress, author crosses an arch that spans the canal. Ahead, a six-foot-two-inch man in black cut-off top with a single hand on its seat pushes a silver bicycle. Together we reach an heroic equestrian statue, author pausing to take a seat on its pedestal. One step below, a Carlsberg beer open beside him, sits an old salt, smoking, a paper Swedish flag inserted above the bill of his cap. Author arises to continue on down Östra Hamngatan toward the train station; on his left emerge the towers of the Christinakyrka, the Rådhuset between them.

Tomorrow’s tickets purchased, author heads for harbor, up a narrow street untrafficked except for two whores, one in flaming red, the other in bleach-blond hair, who take a seat on a ledge to await his passage. Smiling, he crosses to the opposite side to pass two smiling Africans. As we enter Packhusplatsen, the bow of a ship called “Sea Side” comes into view. Strung across two corbelled windows a bedsheet reads, in red hand-painted letters, “Meat is Murder.” We arrive at a parking garage floating on the water. Across the narrow highway a sign reads “Viking café Viking,” next to it another, “Kinesiska Muren,” followed by the Chinese characters for the Great Wall. We pass a black, high-rigged, steel-hulled ship named “Will,” its decks painted many colors. We walk by a ship all in white that reveals its name only as we reach its stern, where a gold-incised wooden plaque reads “Hamlet.” To our left a tall building, atop it two tall stacks, announces “Göteborg Energi.” In a refitting yard across the harbor stands the Stena Gothica. At the Stena warehouse, surrounded by a barb-wire-topped cyclone fence, a sign reads “Hittegods” [lost property]; another, with a yellow geometrical eye on a black ground, “Argus Wakt.” At the Stena terminal, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish flags fly side by side. Three fire trucks race up the avenue, followed by an ambulance.

For above an hour author perambulates a lower-middle-class neighborhood of commercial establishments and housing blocks. A kid clad in black clatters past on a skateboard, his tee shirt reading “Hard Core Drug Free.” At the corner of Nordhemsgatan and Tredje Långgatan sits Le Village, on whose black awnings reads, in gold, “Bar och Antikt.” Across from a neo-gothic police station a sympathetic alcoholic hits up author for three kronor. As author turns into Linnégatan, named for the great Swedish author of the biological system of classification, a sign reads “F” (pink) “I” (yellow) “X” (blue).

The neighborhood gradually turning middle-class, author enters into Friegångsgatan. At the corner of Haganygata and Mellangatan, as he stops to tie his white shoelace, he is propositioned by a black prostitute. The sky has cleared. Outside Robert Dixons Stiftelse sits a brightly polished, red-tanked Harley-Davidson, black fringe on its black bags. The view up this flagstone side-walked, cobblestone road-bedded street – two blocks to a knoll covered with trees – shows only three cars parked in a whole block of grey, cream, ocher, red and yellow buildings. At the corner, outside a dress shop, sits a rack of white dresses.

Author mounts a steep hill into an upper-middle-class neighborhood of plain high-rise apartments and small hotels. The wind picks up, bearing with it Göteborg’s fragrance. Perhaps her lovely, perfumed, sandy-haired, middle-aged women have something to do with it. Circling back toward Götaplatsen, author traverses Amund Grefweg, reaching a triangular corner, where a blue-and-white zebra-striped trolley car mounts the hill side.

Arrived at the plaza, he takes a seat in the shade on the steps of the Konserthuset, across from the Stadsteatern. Between the two, on a cobblestone rise, stands the gigantic statue of Poseidon, his head capped in childishly thick bangs, an archaic smile on his lips. In his hand he holds a fish, out of whose nostrils and mouth gush three streams, as other fountains at his base spray him with water. An awkward blond lad in lavender sweatshirt must pose with his mother before the great god to be photographed by dad. Behind Poseidon rises the art museum. Mounting the limestone steps, author finds its bronze doors, one bearing Athena, the other Apollo, locked. Turning about, he views over Poseidon’s showered back the long esplanade of Kungsports Avenyn, light catching the leaves of its bordering lindens. Below in the plaza fresh-cut lumber is being raised from the bed of a Scania truck. In red sneakers, a lissome eight-year-old girl flips both sides of her long red-flowered skirt. As she swings back and forth, framed by the theater’s two neoclassical caryatids, the wind swirls her blond tresses overhead.

Descending from his post, author skirts eight-year-old and family, the snot-nosed baby bawling, on past a pair of 20-somethings smelling of strong soap. At Engelbrektsgatan, he scurries to cross before a black, inward-veering Volkswagen bug. Ahead, on the side walk, attracting a small crowd, a Swedish band offers a spirited rendition of Dixieland tunes. Two Muslim girls approach and pass, one in a black, one in a cream shawl. A red-haired mother and her gorgeous red-haired daughter, both in black tee shirts, wander into author’s path, he inattentively almost colliding with a 20-year-old beauty whose tee shirt reads “Replay.” At the next intersection a chartreuse-vested policeman, his baby blue jumpsuit silver-striped, holds the waiting pedestrians at bay.

Author takes seat on bench to absorb the parade of dazzling women: black girl in tight mocha knit, her legs emerging from beige socks above short, cream tie-up boots; blond bob-cut girl striding past in a deeply-tanned athletic rhythm; full-breasted strawberry blond, 35, the whites of her eyes showing, as she glances at author; Asian girl in high heels, her ebony carpet of hair sparkling in the sun. Two blond four-year-old twins recline in their pink perambulator, as a pouty French teenager in “Often Imitated, Never Equaled” tee shirt pauses. A gaggle of five pre-teens, the colors of the Swedish flag daubed on their cheekbones, stop to buy bubble gum. Atop her head at a jaunty angle a green “Girls Like Attitude” baseball cap, a tall, dark Israeli beauty glares at author.

We conclude in Kungsportsplatsen, its crevices blackened with shadow, light still ablaze on its upper stories. Surrounded by weary tourists, an eight-member band of Bolivian aborigines performs its seductive rhythms. The wind picks up again, sending curb side detritus skittering, modifying bamboo-fluted, mandolin melodies, overturning the maple’s green leaves to reveal red undersides.

*

The trip from Göteborg to Lund, on an uncrowded early-afternoon train, takes us through ever-widening landscapes, broad enough to accommodate spacious fields of wheat, much of it being harvested – or just having been. The main stops of Varberg and Halmstad are so unimportant as not to be listed in the guide. Only Helsingborg, across from the more famous Danish Helsingør (Shakespeare’s Elsinore), receives comment. We have left the province of Bohuslän to enter that of Skåne (Scania). We rejoin the coast, the Öresund here separating Denmark from the southern tip of Sweden. Without a pause we traverse the town of Landskrona, cartographical center of Europe. At Helsingborg, only 25 miles from Denmark, the train has been decoupled, four of its cars continuing by ferry across the sound, thence to Copenhagen, the remainder on down the coast to Malmö.

Arrived in Lund, author strolls its main street, past Optik Magasinet, Burger King, Gallerix. Along Bytare Gatan a young painter daubs sienna over a lighter ocher, smearing creamy window sills. Otherwise well kept, the little city is friendly, smiling faces tacitly asking “And who might you be?” At the railway station, a beautiful middle-aged married woman has gone out of her way to allay the traveler’s anxiety, booking in advance for him his sleeper from Malmö to Stockholm, writing out by hand the times of tomorrow’s trains.

The late-afternoon sun, though much closer to the horizon than Oslo’s, is still bright. As author circles toward the Domkyrka, Lund’s leading attraction, four male undergraduates pass, smelling of cologne. ”Even if we hate you,” proclaims a graffito, “we won’t kill you . . . YET.” Before long the double pyramidal steeples of the Romanesque style church materialize. Once inside the narthex the odor of wax fills the air, as candles illuminate from within a metal sphere. A gaggle of young Spanish-speaking tourists stands beneath a red electric sign that reads, alternately, “24^o” / “17:24.” We continue our stroll through this pleasant if provincial town, past travel agency (in whose window a map of Italy composed of pizza slices, crust for the coastlines); past a charcuterie, vegetables displayed in its windows (tomatoes piled on white plates, green peppers in maroon metal vessels, cucumbers wrapped in plastic, a green bowl of red peppers surrounded by leafy lettuce).

Having started a second circular outing, this one embracing the first, before long we reach a park, a huge elm at its center; under another deciduous tree stands a statue of Carl Linnaeus, deep in thought, as he examines through his magnifying glass a handful of flowers. A little farther and we enter the general precinct of the university, the streets taking on an historical air. Along a high wall a graffito has been scrawled in Hindi, Swedish translation provided beneath it; in a second hand: “Clapton is God.” As a 20-year-old African male in red and black athletic suit labors uphill on his off-road bike, a Swedish girl and her Asian classmate coast downhill, the latter asking, “Should we go to Louise’s room?”

At last author completes his second, much wider circuit, returning to store fronts across from the train station: Parfumerie Nefertiti, Café Fellini, the Da Tong restaurant. At 6:15 the street is already closing down. As an old pigeon-toed codger shuffles toward him, an overweight but active woman in white dress strides down an alley filled with sunshine.

*

Having reached Malmö from Lund late in the morning, author sets out at once on foot along Norra Neptunigatan, turning east to cross the eastern arm of a nearly quadrangular moat that defines the inner city. Arrived at Norra Vallgatan he turns south again, past the hotel Pallas, past the Olympus Restaurant and Pub, its doors open but not yet for business; on past the Hotell Royal, past Liber Hermods, on whose door someone has painted a small graffito reading “Porn.” We have reached Kungsparken. Outside is stationed an orange Superbeetle, within, a Volkswagen bus, on whose side the hand-brushed words “Teater Anonymos.”

Traversing the grounds of the former palace, now museum, author turns corner past greenhouses to face a large black windmill, three stories of windows penetrating its sides, its uncanvassed armatures stilled. Before it sit students listening to their teacher. Crossing Slottsmöllebron, the palace mill bridge, we turn northward again to encounter a family occupied with feeding geese, behind them a sculptural group in bronze: “Pojke med Gäss,” a twelve-year-old boy in bronze with two bronze geese, a third goose at some distance ahead of him. We continue along an asphalt path leading out of the park, past bronze nude reclining in sensuous attitude. We face back to observe boaters on the waterway. A cyclist on the bridge that we have just crossed hovers above the boat. Beneath a tree a sandy-haired girl leans her back against the back of her boyfriend. Two gorgeous blond girls in white tank tops and khaki shorts recline on the grass, their unlaced greige boots removed. Author, pausing under heavy leafage, is joined by a young wedded couple, the husband clasping a new-born babe to his chest. On a tour boat in the adjacent canal, to an audience seated at tables, a guitarist is singing a song of love.

At the park’s exit stands the Stadsbiblioteket. As we reenter the city proper, at the corner of Fersensväg and Regementsgatan, a sign reads, in red, “Malmö,” in black, “Traffikskola.” Author crosses the intersection and heads north. Two workmen are installing a new sign, the sign on the side of their own truck reading, in red, “Spectra,” in black, “Montage.” A white teenage girl in long red hair glances at author, as two squawking gulls circulate above the scene beneath them. “Hermes Tours” reads a sign in Greek-style letters. In the next shop window a large anatomical drawing titled “The Muscular System” displays both front and back views. Author passes a recently closed shop, its floor being sanded in preparation for its next occupant; “Hyper Hyper” reads its sign. Crossing David Halls Gatan, author looks in at a display of Oriental rugs. Next door, in front of a shop called “Xtase,” on a paint-bespattered stepladder sit single shoes, white, grey and turquoise, yellow, beige and pink, one to each step. At the curb a man in white pants, white shirt and white cap holds the strings to three balloons, red, blue and yellow. Up the street a sign reads “Dance Life.” Author turns right into Södra Förstadsgatan to join the stream of midday mall-strollers. On the corner stands a store called “City Livs.” He passes another called “Nya Kina” (New China), entering to discover products manufactured to standards of western taste. An interior design studio called “Housing” has its “i” dotted with a “q.” He passes “Minerva,” her blue letters on a golden ground; having bought a pear-flavored yoghurt, he examines her display of antique bottles.

Emerging from the mall into Ö. Rönneholms Vägen, he faces a triangular shopping center, along one side of which stands the Jin Long Restaurant. A young man walks by in black pants, his red tee shirt outside them, behind him a six-story apartment building with cream trim and a green mansard roof. A middle-aged man walks by in white pants and a black shirt, on it the alphabet stenciled in white. This avenue is cast into shadow by the new Sheraton hotel, its elevator visible as it ascends a glassed-in shaft. A black-roofed yellow Corvette convertible stops before the hotel, its back lights blushing arterial red.

It is 1:00 o’clock. Describing a half-circular course, author arrives at Gustav Adolfs Torget, one of the moated city’s two largest plazas, where two short-shorted blondes are distributing lavender balloons, at their feet a red heart-shaped pillow reading “I Love You.” We pass into Södra Gatan, whose architecture mixes old and new. Flying above the street are banners in black, orange and yellow. Author descends into Stor Torget. Viking herms support the pilasters of an eight-story sandstone building. Above a theater, its sign reading “Camera,” another reads “Turnus.” Higher still appears the planet Saturn, represented as a silver half sphere, neon lines forming its famous rings. To the north-west rises the steeple of the central railway station.

It is 2:00 o’clock, author strolling along the shady eastern side of the square. At the base of its six-story buildings are cornerstones recording their dates of construction: “1904,” reads one. At the end of the way stands a café called “Piccolo Mondo.” This square opens into another square, the Lilla Torg. The sun shines warmly on a geranium planter and a muscle-shirted six-foot-four-inch Swedish man promenading past it. By way of Johansgatan author exits to continue north along Norra Vallgatan. Across from the train station a huge red crane based in a blue truck is lifting a refuse bin, two feet by four feet by ten feet, through an open window on the sixth floor. A statue of the city founder, Franz Suell (1744-1870), looks down the narrow shaft of the inner harbor toward a lighthouse, framed within a crane’s three-sided armature. Across from him on the side walk a bride and groom pause to be photographed. Author crosses Franz Suellsgatan and continues northward. At Prostgatan he encounters a building in three different values of grey. “Diligentia” reads its motto. A young woman drives by in a white coupe, two young sons strapped into the seat behind her. The side walk before the Hotell Norrvalla is nearly deserted. Half-filled buses pass. Across the canal a train arrives, behind it three tall pale green grain elevators. Another train exits the city heading north. Author crosses the narrow Bagersgatan, looking down corner steps into a café named “Oasen.” Over its entrance, spray-painted in blue, is the single word “ding.” In front of a yellow stucco building are parked three red cars in almost matching hues.

We have reached the eastern arm of the ring canal and proceed along the Västra Promenaden. At the corner of Tullgatan a long sign reads “System-Texte.” It is a store that sells signs. One reads “Hängende Last”; within its black triangular frame, on a yellow ground, is depicted a large rectangular box, one of whose supporting cords has just broken. We cross the northern arm of inlet water and enter into Östra Förstadsgatan. Across the way stands a shop named “Census Data,” another, “Star Light Hair Salon.” Two twelve-year-old girls, one black, one white, stroll along lank-limbed, smiling. We pass by Asian Express, across from it Nanjing Da Fan Dian, to enter Aladdin. Almost hidden by oriental fabrics, perched upon carpets at a small work station, the owner tamps at an object, alternately peeking at and ignoring author. His store is filled with treasures from the East: elephants, ships, large-breasted Indian goddesses; flasks, scales and beaten vessels; scarves, beads and tiles with Arabic inscriptions; lutes, castanets and other musical instruments. Author approaches to admire his artful reassembly of a silver tabla.

A studio called “Polyphoto” is filled with wedding pictures: a demure bride smiling but uncertain, her floral bouquet in yellow and blue already beginning to wilt; a slightly older couple in street clothes, her bouquet held beneath her hip; a sailor with two bright-faced girls, all three figures in sailor hats. A heavily-perfumed middle-aged woman passes, tanned, her ankle-length dress fitted with many buttons up the front, nowhere near all buttoned. A six-foot-three-inch guy in running shorts and dark glasses pauses to light a cigarette, his shirt vertically striped in red, blue, orange, purple and black. Reading the paper in a doorway, a grey-haired man in a yellow tie sits on an overturned clay pot, a tall can of Coke on the stone doorstep beside him. In a Phillips store, beneath florescent lights and circulating fans, household appliances are displayed. On the closed door of an icebox a photograph of its contents has been pasted: a bottle of wine; a bowl of eggs; salami; a newly-baked cake; a shelf of beers, another of soft drinks; a fresh fish on paper, dried fish in a dish; olives, olive oil and caviar; cups of yoghurt; mushrooms, radishes and string beans; a large tomato; a can of Delmonte fruit cocktail; strawberries, plums and a pineapple; oranges, lemons and limes. On the corner is a record store called “The Jukebox”; inside, wearing a black tee shirt, a youth is examining CDs.” If you don’t love me,” read the white letters on his back, “I’ll kill myself.”

We have reached Värnhems Torget. As Föreningsgatan leads out of it, a red-headed girl in a purple velvet to-mid-calf dress strides past, two bare-waisted guys, one with a purple heart tattoo, following. Having received no response, they stop to buy soft drinks and hot dogs. Farther down the street a sign reads “ABC Rehab”; beneath the A, B and C neatly-lettered graffiti read “Anna,” “Boris,” “Carina.” At the next corner a service advertises “Securitas,” its offices taking up the whole first story of a block-long building. The lower-middle-class neighborhood now grows progressively lower-class, apartment blocks devolving into plain brick, grey stucco. Two little black kids cavort on the side walk. An eight-year-old girl in dredknots shows her biceps to her seven-year-old brother, he squeezing it, she laughing. Author detours into Zenithgatan, where nineteenth-century sweatshops line one side of the street, opposite them factory dormitories. In one of the grimiest windows, a graffito in yellow reads “SUN.” On the wall of the next building in white paint the “A” of anarchy has been drawn and circled. Two middle-aged men cycle by with their shirts off.

Author rejoins the more affluent Föreningsgatan. We have reached the corner of Exercis Gatan, where the three blue awnings of a racquet shop read: “Badminton,” “Squash,” “Tennis.” The sun still high at 3:00 pm, we skirt the black-railed Mosaisk Begravningsplatsen, a Jewish
cemetery, either side of its allée bordered with tall leafy trees. A mother in black dress pushes a white baby carriage across the zebra stripes of the intersection. Together we enter St. Pauli Kyrkogatan, headed for the edifice itself, its towers, turrets and steeples in pastel blue, all surmounted by a curlicued open-work cross. At the foot of this truly ugly yellow brick church strolls a mother with two young daughters in lavender and purple. On unicycles two more kids, one white, one black, pass behind a green Volkswagen bug. Author continues southward on Kungsgatan, treading the cinder path of its allée, moving in and out of the sunlight past luxuriant beds of semi-tended flowers. At last he arrives at a circle, at whose center stands a bronze neoclassic Flora, her left arm raised above her head. Reclining on one of four surrounding benches, he falls asleep.

After an hour’s nap he arises to cross a broad avenue, where the window of Scandorama gives back his reflection. We have joined the southern arm of the canal, on which preparations for a dragon boat race are under way, the three crews dressed in yellow, baby blue and black. Two young men holding pikes stand by the boats, ready to push them off. Aboard each a drummer is testing his drum. Having crossed the bridge, author descends to the landing for a closer look at the crews. Strutting black-shirted oarsmen are attaching masks of faces to the backs of their heads, propeller beanies atop them; the yellow-shirted contestants are arranging flowers in their hair; the blue-shirted crew is donning ridiculously long billed caps. As spectators gather, the oarsmen take their seats; pushed off from the moorings, they begin to paddle slowly toward the starting line, one bridge distant. In the stands kids jostle for position, as a Swedish announcer amuses all with his loud, enthusiastic comments. A single yellow balloon floats on the green surface of the water.

As the three boats – Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish – line up for the race, another balloon, cut loose, drifts high over the foliage; become but a red dot, it disappears into the deep blue vault. Slowly the boats approach, their order from here indiscernible. The crowd, at first indifferent, begins to cheer but is quickly distracted by other matters. Someone has been tossed into the canal from the landing. The announcer keeps up his patter, making many jokes, to which the crowd sporadically responds. Almost as an afterthought the race continues. Before long the boats straggle past the reviewing stand, to a scattering of applause and jeers.

Race over –the Finns having won handily, the Norwegians a distant third – author continues on up Amiralsgatan, crossing Södra Promenaden. At the intersection a shop sign reads “Go On: Data Butiken.” It is 17:14, 26^o. Two long-legged girls in miniskirts, one blond, one brunette, jaywalk across the street, stopping traffic. A silver-striped lavender number 100 bus resumes its progress. At Baltzarsgatan author turns westward, a resplendent red-haired 30-something in black skirt and russet jacket looking him over as she sidles past. A blue Volkswagen bug scoots by, Mickey Mouse tied about its rear view mirror. At Kalendegatan we arrive at “Eviva,” whose sign reads “Underkläder / Strumpor,” underwear / stockings. In shorts and dark glasses a resigned, 28-year-old guy awaits his wife, his hands on the bar of a baby stroller. Up the street some distance musicians are taking warm-up licks. All in black pants and black shirts, they seem to be another group of Bolivian Indians. We pass them and rejoin Södergatan, heading again toward the Stor Torget. At Skomakaregatan we encounter yet another group of Indians, wired for sound, hard into their melancholy riff.

We have returned to the Rådhuset, before which a giant stage covered in black cloth has been set up for more music. Above it red letters read “FEST.” The city hall provides the backdrop, its black-streaked red sandstone still sunstruck at 5:30. Atop the clock tower sits a golden scale, judiciously balanced; higher up, catching the brilliant light, a copper wind meter in the form of a double ax; at the pinnacle, a scythe, added for extra good measure. In the interval since early afternoon the whole plaza has been furnished with long tables, covered in white paper, on which have been laid out plates of crayfish, bowls of potato salad, pitchers of beer. By each row stands a company placard. Middle-aged employees sit in the sun to enjoy an easy conviviality. Gradually the level of activity increases, a band starting up, vocalists adding at loud volume the sentimental strains of popular Swedish songs. Once into their cups, the sea of humanity sways to the music, dancing together in pairs and foursomes.

As the sun begins to decline behind its tall buildings, author departs Stor Torget, taking a street that leads toward the station, past a tent where a rock band chants the refrain “I love you.” Norravallgatan has changed its aspect, as author crosses it amidst a lively, tipsy crowd on the move to another musical venue. Having at last, in front of the station, completed a day-long figure eight, and having confirmed information regarding late evening departure for Stockholm, author sets out up Skeppsbron for serious outer harbor investigation.

Within two blocks the streets of this shipping zone are vacant. It is 7:30, the immaculate pavement still warm. We are quickly approaching a view of the Öresund. At the dock’s end we come upon a sign reading “Malmö City International.” As we round the corner, a bulky freighter, the Nordö Link, emerges into view. Atop its deck four trailer-trucks are transferring their cargo to the ship’s hold. In the next berth is moored the Swedish-German Malmö Travemünde. Through a crook in the levees that separate outer harbor from open sea there now appears a grey speck of a ship, as it wends its way into the harbor. Leaving behind this modern dock, we come to another, reading “Malmö Świnoughście,” a Polish sailor exiting its terminal. Facing back toward the inner city, as we stroll onward, the pale green grain elevators, the towers of St. Pauli, the hotels along the quay all disappear behind the tall curtain-wall headquarters of a shipping establishment, its top story faced with a web-like half circle of glass. Much along this dock side has been modernized, though, as we turn again toward the inner harbor, the names of side streets recall an earlier age: Tellus, Venus, Mercury, Mars. On the southern side of Carlsgatan late model Japanese cars are parked against a backdrop of traditional masonry, its red brick courses divided by black-tile-bordered white stone.

As author rounds the third face of the imposing Slagthuset, a little airplane with a banner advertising the festival continues its circuit of Malmö. Turning westward, we face a magnificent building to the north of the station, its domed cupolas sheathed in green-corroded copper, its loading docks bearing the post and telecommunications logo. Arrived at Centralstation, across from which, in light cream outlined with white pilasters, sits the Börshus, we turn once more to perambulate the crowded eastern bank of the inner harbor. Crossing Suellsbron, we enter into Hjalmare Kajen, along whose margin several ships are moored. It is 8:00 o’clock. Armed sailors guard the Malmö gang-plank, as, on deck, three black-clad blond girls party with officers. Farther along, before the Göteborg, a single military policeman stands at attention. In an open space to the left of the ships, a folk band swells the ambiance with nostalgic songs, oblivious revelers milling about.

Author veers westward, following the contour of the outer harbor. The little speck of a ship has emerged as a freighter gliding past the light house on its way into port. Completing a new wharf, a three-sided, eight-story crane frames a warehouse labeled “Intentia.” Looking back eastward through the armatures of a little white bridge, we glimpse another grain elevator; standing against a cerulean sky, its face seems powdered cream and rouge. A tiny bird flutters through the frame and out again, diving into a pale grey horizon. It is 8:30, the sun fallen behind Kockums Submarine Systems, whose curved front is composed of reflective light blue windows against bands of darker blue. As we stroll past it, the Convention Center, still under construction, comes into view. Having traversed the long arc of Stora Varvsgatan, central avenue of a new industrial park, we enter a basin bordered with little wooden houses, counters set up in front of them for fisher-residents to distribute their catch. At this festive moment all is deserted, counters and houses alike. Doubling back from the harbor into Citadellsvägen, we confront the monumental Malmöhus, at either corner of which obtrude vast circular towers. As dusk settles, in a lot across from the citadel sits a silver Volkswagen bus of ancient vintage, hand-painted on its side in black, “We are on a Mission,” across its front, in green, “No Problema.”

*

Lodged in the more economical suburbs, author takes early-morning metro for Stockholm center, observing row on row of grey stucco apartment blocks, eight stories tall, on the side walks below them neither speck of dirt nor sign of life. Station steps, embankment, crosswalk have all been covered with graffiti in registration of a generational discontent with the social welfare dream. At water side things begin to pick up, the descended train resurfacing into the light of day. We are passing over the surface of Stadsholmen, the triangular island that houses Gamla Stan, the old town, to cross into Norrmalm, or Stockholm proper.

Arrived near the central station, one exits into a square dominated on the lower level by the Stadsteater, on the upper by the Kulturhuset. At the center of its traffic circle arises from a pool a 60-foot-high abstract glass sculpture, the rest of the space controlled by modern banks in curtain-wall construction. “Photo Quick,” reads a shop sign in white; “Bookman,” a second in red; “Persona,” a third in black. Author turns to head up Sveavägen, where office buildings on the left of the broad avenue have been arranged like enormous bookcases jutting out over its broad side walks. As we cross Kungsgatan, these modern slabs give way to seven-story stucco mansard-roofed edifices. Off to the right, in the shade, a semicircular arch connecting two neo-classical towers covers a side street. At Tunnelgatan one glimpses stairways rising in ranks to a much older building, its turret topped with a cupola, mounted by a spire. A middle-aged man in a thin-striped blue-and-white shirt, cigarette in hand, is walking a large dog. It is Sunday morning. We are traversing the length of a shallow valley between two hills. To the left, over the hilltop, one glimpses the upper reaches of a crane at harbor side. Tall stucco buildings continue to line each side of the avenue. On the ground floor of one, in the window of an art gallery, is displayed a revised Michelangelo creation scene: Adam, holding an Oscar, film covering his genitals, receives the spark of life from Marilyn Monroe as God, her fingertip about to touch his. Surrounding her is a chorus of angels: Clark Gable, James Dean, John Wayne, Elvis Presley. “Olympia, Men’s Fashions” says a sign upstreet, in reference to an earlier pantheon.

At Kungstensgatan we pass a travel agency called “Apollo” and continue on past Swedish Clothes, past Indian Cuisine, past a bookstore showing an ancient map of Italia Antiqua, beneath which The Scandal of Ulysses, a Swedish Werldsliteraturens, James Michener’s USA. Across the street, at the base of an orange stucco block surmounted by an immense turret, read the golden arches of McDonald’s, repeated many times. At the corner of Odengatan, between American and British flags, stands the entrance to Hard Rock Café. On this side of the street, just out of reach, hangs the Apple Computer apple in horizontal rainbow stripes, a bite taken out of it. “Lap Power” reads the new motto. It is 11:28, 22^o. On the opposite side a whole city block is composed of three stucco structures: the first in dark grey, the second in grey-maroon, the third in dirty salmon.

Having arrived at Frejgatan, we turn right, passing a miniaturized Volkswagen convertible bug in baby blue for sale in an auto showroom. As the street rises, a park on its left rises even faster, within it a church, the crucified Christ in stone on its front. At the next corner looms a dark yellow apartment building with light yellow balconies, two of them sporting white-and-yellow umbrellas. We have reached Tulegatan and mount higher to look back down over sun-reflecting parked automobiles. At the next intersection pedestrians are crossing; above them rise the spires of a church. “Copiering Copiering Copiering” read the yellow, blue, yellow words in a copy shop window; inside, a central supporting pillar has been painted red. At the corner of Roslagsgatan a flower store is opening its doors. Three sunflowers sit by its step in a white plastic vase. An orange sign advertises “Solrosor,” the first “o” embellished with rays.

We have entered a block of older ocher buildings with classicizing features. A seven-year-old blond girl dances in front of a car from which her mother is exiting. At Birger Jarlsgatan a sign reads “Balkan Holidays.” At Valhallavägen author begins a gentle ascent of a grey side walk bordered in grey stone buildings. Through an aperture on the right arise two grey smokestacks. We pass Europaklinik, the word “Vaccination” in its window. At Odengatan we turn back at an angle less than 90^o. Outside the Latvian Embassy, a six-year-old Asian girl studies an advertisement in Swedish for The Lion King, the Disney movie. We turn into Bragavägen, where cottonwoods shade a square surrounded by brick residences. At Östermalmsgatan we descend again. Ahead of a red bus, a 35-year-old stroller, in white tee shirt and khaki shorts, is pulled across the street at a racing pace by his large hound. At the corner of Rödmansgatan a clock, rotating on its vertical axis, reads a minute to 12. We pass Hair Explosion, Café OK, Wow Aerobics, entering into a broad plaza filled with ugly black sculpture, thence into Runebergsgatan with its handsome red-brick mansions. On the wall between two fashionable shops a graffito reads “Loser.”

Author enters into Kungliga Humlegården, the largest park in central Stockholm. Its ample spaces heavily shaded by tall elms, the park is sparsely populated: a promenader here and there; young couples sunbathing; two girls coasting down a slope on their bikes. Trailing a middle-aged woman in a yellow flowered dress, author descends a cinder walkway past a skateboard ramp to a circular plot, inset with flower beds and surrounded by benches. Reading against a blue sky is the towering bronze statue of the elder Linnaeus. Two seated bronze votive figures at its base have been offered black exercise shoes, one filled with pink and yellow flowers. On a dark green bench, in white, a graffito reads “Peach.”

We exit into Sturegatan to climb back up to Karlavägen, skirting The Blue Bar, its paraphernalia painted blue, the Galerie Blanche, its watercolors in black and white, to arrive at “ME,” a sign at the corner of Kommendörsgatan. We pass Bio Kosmetik, Spectra Physics, Galerie Linnaeus, in whose window sits a single volume entitled Svensk Dikt. Across the street, leaning against the park’s railing, four young people wait for a bus in the sun. Author turns into Karlavägen, a broad, high class avenue with an esplanade running down its middle, and heads toward the harbor again, past shops called “High Fidelity,” “Piano,” ”Mondi.” A red-haired girl in black pants and white boots stands beside her bike, as she takes bills from an automatic teller machine. Author purchases an International Herald Tribune. A black pickup truck crosses Karlavägen and heads into Sibyllegatan. We continue up the avenue, past the striped awnings of Thalia, the green-on-white sign of Persienn Gruppen, maker of window blinds, the flowered display case of Marias Håvård. We pass Karla Frukt, an expensive fruit, cookie and candy store; in its window display: Spanish gallia melons, Portuguese kiwis, French pralinés blancs, Danish apricos-marmelad, English cheddarettes.

Arriving at the Karlaplan, author descends to a circular pool centered on a white jet. A single bell tolls 12:30. Taking a seat on one of two benches filled with old people, he scans the headlines: “First Humans in Europe”; “Election Fever”; “China Pours Cold Water on Hong Kong.” An attractive blond mother with her blond eleven-year-old daughter, the latter gesturing animatedly, stroll by. At the shallow pool’s rim is parked a blue baby carriage, silver bell and white steering wheel at its front, a camera at its back. Baby’s shoes and mother’s sandals sit on the pavement beside it. Attached to the carriage’s chassis is an orange balloon. Some distance off mother and baby wade in the water. As a fire truck careens by, three children, aged two, three and eight, strip naked to bathe, their pregnant mother supervising them. Now the father, in salmon shirt and blue shorts, materializes, stepping into the pool with them.

Author exits Karlaplan into Narvavägen, where a girl, one hand on a doorknob, is kissing her boyfriend. A girl in a black jacket and black helmet descends on a black moped. Author crosses from shady side of avenue to enter the brightly lit cobblestone forecourt of the Historiskamuseet. Across the way a tall Swede walks by in a tee shirt reading “Get Fat.” Joining a wave of promenaders, we take a bridge over the Djurgårdsbrunnsviken to Skansen.

Having arrived on the island, we leave behind on our right the Nordiskamuseet. Bicyclists descend a narrow pathway past sunbathers, rock music blaring from loudspeakers. Mounting higher, we enter this outdoor museum of historically reconstructed buildings. We visit a
seventeenth-century farmstead complete with cow barn, hay barn, pig pen; stable, kiln and grinding shed; storehouse, smithy, children’s playhouse. All is constructed of enormous blackened logs. In the main house we visit a gloomy dining room, dishes set on an unbelievably thick wooden table, its benches much too large for normal-sized people. In the bedroom, socks suitable for giants hang over the fireless fireplace. Leaving the farm behind, we approach the eighteenth-century Seglora Church, moved here from southern Västergötland. We stoop under the whitewashed arch of a low stone wall to be stared at by black and white geese sitting in its courtyard. The dark narthex is filled with neatly stacked maroon psalm books and black hymnals. From the outside the shingled church has more appeal, but not much. Moving on, we visit a nineteenth-century laborer’s cottage, its cheerful guide arguing against the cramped gloom of its interior.

As we exit Skansen, over its entranceway the clock is stuck at 12:00.

Author passes from the northern part of Stockholm over a small bridge to Gamla Stan, the Sveriges Riksdag just visible on the right through massive trees that mask it. On the left we leave behind the Medeltidsmuseum, the museum of medieval antiquities. The entire island is bathed in a luxurious soup of off-key popular festival schmaltz. We turn a corner and peer into the three-sided outer court of the Kungliga Slottet. Under a large bronze of King Gustav III, who imported high French culture into Sweden, two Americans dressed in Superman suits sing, very loudly and very badly, for a middle-aged, middle-class crowd, renditions of songs now 30 years out of date. Ahead, across an inlet that separates Gamla Stan from Södermalm, atop its ramparts, rise the cream stucco walls, brown dome and gold cross of the Sophiakyrka.

As author strolls the shady side of Skeppsbron, the wind picks up, creating a ballet among beachball-sized balloons tethered above a restaurant, triangular advertising pennons flapping so furiously that their legends are not legible. Among pedestrians bent against it the wind flips up blond hair, races through skirts, flaps shirt tails, cooling the sunny scene, as author exits the confines of the narrow-alley-bordered avenue into the broader harbor, preparatory to passage across to Södermalm. The wind dies down.

Having mounted the promontory of the island’s northern shore, we face backward for a view into the Saltsjön’s azure waters, for a view across the yellow, rust-red, ocher buildings of the Gamla Stan. It is 28^o. Farther up the hill, past a tunnel’s aperture, the ambiance becomes much starker; unadorned by signs, entrances to large hotels and restaurants suddenly present themselves. As a low retaining wall opens out alongside the little-trafficked Katarinavägen, we look down a hundred meters into Stadsgårdsleden, the harbor side drive, where a single file of sedans snakes past like a chain of DNA. We look down too upon an orange-hulled ship, a heliport at its prow. Facing it is a blue-hulled tanker.

Opting for more direct access to the life of Södermalm, author turns southward into Renstiernas Gata, where a classic Nordic scene emerges: a street converging in perspective, its building fronts rising from massive granite outcrop in beige, salmon, and yellow brick, all bathed in the lachrymose sunlight. The arena darkens. We have come upon a dress shop called “PLUTO,” its letters reading downwards. Within a hundred yards we come upon a restaurant called “DIONYSUS,” its tables set out on the sunny side of the street.

At Ringvägen, as we turn right, a white-striped bus approaches from the opposite direction. Along this tree-lined boulevard every corner has its café: couples sitting over beers; an older man alone; a young mother and her baby, standing up in its carriage, its face smeared with ice cream. Turning north into Götagatan, we enter a middle-class district of lively economic enterprise. A guy in a black jacket, black tee shirt, red pants lights a cigarette and hustles across the broad avenue, dodging traffic. It is 17:15, 25^o. As it narrows and begins to ascend a hill into an upper-middle-class neighborhood, we continue on up Götagatan, cresting a rise lined with guitar and piano stores, where we begin our descent once more, Norrmalm visible over Stadsholmen. At Hornsgatan author turns left, heading directly into the setting sun. As he crosses to the northern side of the street to observe its southern façades, a beautiful girl, also crossing the street, observes him. Author in turn observes her, as the sun’s deep rays penetrate her dress, accentuating the motion of her long legs.

At restaurants along the way sit overweight Swedes eating full meals at half past five. A woman on her way to the supermarket pulls a wagon, her two blond children seated in it facing sideways. In the window of a second-story apartment a globe represents the world. Author takes a table at a small café, his back to the late rays of the sun. As they approach him, facing into the light, local denizens must squint, author studying them at his leisure. Next door, on the sign of an ice cream shop, a blond angel bears four cones: red, blue, yellow, brown. Another beautiful girl sidles by. From beside the curb a black car pulls out to join the flow of traffic, leaving behind three red cars parked ahead of it. A middle-aged man in grey hair, grey shirt, grey pants, crosses the street, gets in a four-door red sedan and drives off.

*

Having arrived at Luleå, on the coast of the uppermost reaches of the Baltic Sea, author pauses along its harbor to gaze out over the water. A town of 70,000, Luleå was founded in 1621. His overnight train has reached this small, metallurgical center at 8:08 in the morning, on the third of a three-stage journey from Stockholm. Aside from the municipal government, which employs 6200 people, Swedish Steel employs the most, at 2600. To the south military jets take off from the Luleå Flygstation, skimming across the horizon. It is a municipality with a low average age. The town has all the signs of prosperity observable elsewhere in Sweden. Individual income, however, is higher than the national average. To cross the harbor road one takes an escalator up to an overpass, all enclosed in a glass gallery against the winter wind and snow. The harbor side mall is bright with modern appurtenances: new cobblestone walkway, pretty flower pots, clear globed lamps, aluminum benches. The city is able to offer child care to all families who need it. Behind rise new apartment buildings, each in a different pastel hue, each with nautical elements in its design: porthole-shaped windows, a balcony in the form of a captain’s deck facing the harbor. Its twelve libraries have a book stock of 513,000. Author, at 8:30 the only stroller on the walkway, is joined by a jogger in white exercise suit and black headband. From its airport, the fourth largest in Sweden, direct flights leave for Murmansk and Archangelsk. Two more fighter planes take off in the background. The surface of the water is grey.

We head for the industrial side of the harbor, skirting a marina filled with small pleasure boats; “Matahari,” reads the name of one, “Cassandra,” another. We are passing a lumber yard, a spur off the railway line feeding into it. At 9:00 o’clock on the dot a driver dismounts from his Timberrail truck to report in with a bill of lading. In long yellow hair and silver earring, he wears yellow-striped red overalls. We follow a deserted railway spur to the point where it joins the main track. A single gull caws and flaps out over the harbor. A man cycles past in cap, grey jacket and round glasses, through which he peers at author, who, with his 40-pound backpack, must seem something of an oddity. Seeking a place to stow his burden before setting out farther (it has also begun to sprinkle), author turns back toward station. Beside the tracks, complementing the rust-red of the rail cars, grow slender stalks with magenta wild flowers atop them. From beyond the station arrives a yellow track-sweeper, its plow lifted high in the air. It begins to churn the dirt between cross-ties, coughing up a steady billow of ocher dust. Taking the overpass, a white truck crosses the tracks. Higher still another military jet veers over the rail yards. Station in sight, author pauses at its outskirts to take advantage of a free bench. Divested of backpack, he sits to summarize his conversation with compartment mate on the last leg of his recent trip. He speaks into his black, hand-held recorder.

This young Swede, twenty-six years old, has taken a break between high school and college to do his compulsory military service – he is an officer – and to travel. He has been to India, Nepal, Bangladesh. He has spent three weeks in Egypt. He has traveled to Eastern Europe with a large group of youthful tourists in three pink buses filled with beds, “twenty-four inside and more on top.” With a stolid, straightforward sense of himself, he is charmingly direct. “There are more important things than making money,” he says, citing the example of his grandfather. At 84 years old the elder man lives by a lake alone, without toilet or running water. Every day he gets up, washes his face and confronts nature. “Modern life is too impersonal,” says the grandson, who is about to begin a course in civil engineering. Hesitating before author’s tale of the inevitable computerization of industry and commerce, he comments critically: “People will be put out of work by this. Though,” he adds reflectively, “other jobs will be created.” With a sense of appropriate modesty, coming as he does from a country that has not sacrificed many lives for world peace, he promotes the philosophy of pacifism. Likewise, with certain misgivings, he supports the system of socialism. “High taxes for good benefits,” he says in summary. His own college education will be paid for by the state. Though he could have attended the university in Göteborg or another urban center, he has chosen to study in Luleå. A cross-country skier, he wants “a real winter.”

As author speaks, a train with three engines enters the station, two white, one black. They are pulling a long line of ore cars, three dozen and still counting. From the sound of the cars they would seem to be empty. Perhaps the train is heading back to Kiruna. Beyond these tracks, arched over others, stands a yellow crane. Caution lights line the outgoing track. Back in the direction from which the ore-train has come, a blue engine has stopped on a siding, its red tail lights shining against the soft grey-green background of fir trees. A gull cries against the stillness. Having left his pack in a station locker, author turns into the town, crossing Florakullen, a small park, through which he traces a curved path bordered with beds of fragrant flowers in red, yellow and blue. Behind them, on a knoll topped with low conifers, stands a canted bronze statue of a nude girl holding a volleyball. Exiting into Hermelinsgatan, we turn left into Storgatan. Within a block this Main Street has become a mall.

Having arranged for a personal tour of Svenska Stål with the help of Anna, a gracious, imaginative 20-year-old girl at the tourist office, author returns to Storgatan, where he takes a seat in a fast-food restaurant to review the copious output of local chamber of commerce literature. Atop the milk shake maker sits a brown bear in brown dark glasses. A pre-noon crowd, entering one by one, places its orders with behind-counter waitresses in uniformly white shirts, red skirts and blond hair. Listed under “Dagens Lunch,” on a small whiteboard lettered in black magic marker, is the special, “Chickymål,” a popular offering. Author decides to partake himself.

Lunch finished, he promenades the mall. A chess game is in progress on a giant side walk board, its tiles eighteen inches square. Today’s competitors are both middle-aged: one balding, in gold-rimmed glasses, the other bearded, in maroon athletic suit. The eighteen-inch-tall metal pieces have been painted black and white. It is cool, increasingly overcast and now windy. Observers, huddled on benches, line two sides of the board. Few of the town’s denizens have yet adapted their dress to the new weather conditions. A girl walks by shivering in bare midriff. Teenies pass in sailor’s jackets and shorts. Above the scene, strung from one side of the street to the other, dirty, tattered Swedish flags flutter.

We are entering the precincts of Svenska Stål with Mats Widgren, a guide from the company’s educational division, who has come to town in a van to escort author. Stopping at the gate to pick up an extra helmet, we proceed the length of the plant to the beginning of the steel-making process, past blast furnace, rolling mill, coke-oven, past a huge stockpile of coal, on to the mooring for freighters. Ahead of us now, on a wide avenue that separates steel mill from finishing plants, is a huge yellow truck bearing slag. Quickly we approach a long conveyor belt transporting coal from the wharf side to a large aluminum-sheathed building. In the coke-oven plant coal is converted to coke. “The white cloud billowing behind it,” our guide tells us, “is the smoke from the coke-making process.” When the resulting gas has been collected and purified, it is used as fuel for the blast furnaces, for the steel works, and for the coke-oven plant itself. Author tells guide that his father worked for U.S. Steel.

We have arrived at Svenska Stål’s private dock, situated at the mill’s extremity, on an inlet off the Gulf of Bothnia. Thus the coke-oven is both an energy and a chemical plant. Ahead of us stands the black-hulled Concar Victory; two green cranes are unloading its black cargo. Coal that is brought in by ship must arrive before December, for after that date the iced-over waters of the northern Baltic Sea are impassible. “Where is this coal coming from?” asks author. “Australia and North America,” the guide responds. The coal is then transported to the vast stock. Turning to retrace our route, we pass the coal stockpile. This area comprises about twenty acres (twelve football fields). A gigantic blue crane with projecting arm is working to increase the height of the already high bed. It contains 600,000 tons of coal. Meanwhile, a yellow two-story earthmover systematically packs the surface. This constitutes 60% of the plant’s annual consumption. “Now the coal,” says our guide, “is transported into a buffer, which mixes seven different varieties.” Coal is charged into the ovens from the top. “From there it travels by means of another conveyor belt to a filling wagon.” The walls of the ovens have a constant temperature of about1300^oC. “There it is distributed into 54 different ovens.” After eighteen hours, when the charge has reached 1050-1100^oC, the carbonization is finished and the oven can be “pushed” (i. e. emptied).

We have arrived at the parking lot in front of the ovens, where red hot coke is about to be “pushed” into a cooling wagon. When coal is heated in a closed chamber, volatile matter is distilled from it in the form of gases, and the coal becomes coke. Fuming, it empties forth from a holder half a meter wide, seven meters tall, dropping like volcanic magma into the wagon. It is then used as a reducing agent in the blast furnace. Red, yellow, hot; “more than 1000^o,” our guide comments. Black smoke and flames swirl off its surface, as the cooling wagon moves along the track to accommodate the rush of burning cakes. After carbonization has been completed, the doors at both ends of the oven are opened, and incandescent coke is pushed out into a quenching car. “Twenty-seven tons,” our guide remarks, “have just come out of one oven.” The event concludes with a tremendous conflagration. From there the coke is transferred quickly to a quenching tower. Black smoke billows up against the sides of the oven, on up through the tracks of the distributing train above. There it is cooled with 50 cubic meters of water. At the end of the car where it has fallen, the coke is still flaming. “The cab of the train,” says the guide, “is operated from a distant station.”

To keep the temperature in the battery constant, one oven at a time is pushed according to a schedule at intervals of five, e.g. Oven 1, Oven 6, etc. The water has hit the coke and is flooding out in steam, madly billowing: white, grey, darker grey. It fills the entire arena between two smoke stacks and the black tower from which the water has been dropped. Next the coke is brought back to a cooling ramp of heat resistant tiles, from which it falls to a conveyor belt. We look down over the edge to observe, 25 or 30 feet below us, the belt onto which it soon will fall.

The yellow cab is now returning with its three-bayed conveyor truck of water-cooled coke. The crude gas formed during carbonization passes through a gas purifying plant, where a number of by-products are recovered, am