"Hey Olav!" Liv called, catching up to her friend. "Your grandfather is a silversmith, isn't he? Did he make Egeleiv's bridal crown? It's so pretty!"

Olav Jonsson shook his head. "He didn't make it. His father did, back when he first came to Dalane."

"Wow, it's old! Did your mother wear it at her wedding?" Liv asked.

"Ja, and all my aunts in turn. Don't tell Egeleiv, but a curl of filigree is missing from the left side! Grandfather tried to fix it but his eyes have gone bad, and he wouldn't let me try."

Liv bobbed to the side to get a good look ahead. "Why's your father just carrying his fiddle in the middle of the troop? He's supposed to lead us, playing all the way!"

"This long a trek? Play the whole time? He'd wear his fingers down to nubbins, or so he says!"

Liv found a branch the size of a fiddle, hunted for a bow-shaped twig, then sawed away and hummed her favorite tune, dancing her idea of a springar step along the path. Olav drummed the uneven beat on his thighs and crooned a drone note.

The high knoll of Homme's Crest crept past on their right, slowly revealing the vista to the southeast where the land dropped away.

"Look!" Liv cried, pointing down at a glimmer in the distant valley. "Must be Lake Kviteseid-vatn!"

It wasn't Olav who answered but his big brother Torjus, coming up from behind. "Not the lake itself but an inlet. Called Sundkilen. Kviteseid-vatn is that glint shining further off. See? The lake runs behind the high ridge there to the right, stretching way up the dale beyond."

Liv stared into the distance. "So the ridge runs down almost into the lake?"

"Ja. Stabs right out into Kviteseid-vatn."

"You told me about that once," Olav said to his brother. "That word I heard you use for a ribbon of land--?"

"An eid. An isthmus. The isthmus of white. Kvite's Eid. What our parish is named for, Witless!" Torjus rumpled Olav's hair then strode off to catch up with his friends.

Liv and Olav lingered, peering into the bright distance. Down, down the ridge from Homme, barely glimpsed between the towering spruce and pines, the waters shone far off in the late morning light. A dock clung to the shore somewhere down there, Liv had heard, alongside a tannery and a general store -- the humble beginnings of the town of Kviteseid.

"Hey, they've gone on without us!" Olav cried. The two of them ran to catch up.

The bridal procession climbed to the next farm, Huvestad, where three housegirls came running out, garbed in fresh aprons, to join the merry troop. Up on the saddle of the ridge just beyond Huvestad they all stopped for a quick lunch of flatbread and cheese, jokes and laughter. The bride and groom hardly ate a crumb, and soon urged everyone back onto the trail. As they came down northward into the little dale of Råmunddalen, someone started singing a love song. Liv and Olav joined in, belting out lyrics of their own about a dwarf wooing a troll-hag until the older youths and maidens pelted them with pine cones.

At another hamlet, the path doubled back southward, picking its way through the flat boggy land bordering a small lake where Råmunddalen opened into the valley of Morgedal. At last Olav's father tuned up his fiddle and took the lead. Soon his sprightly melodies brought a spring back to the footsteps of the tiring folk. Liv skipped along to the music, wishing she could dance the springar as nimbly as Torjus was doing.

The fiddler turned to a bouncy melody when they came to Morgedal Creek, where folk hopped from stone to stone across the ford. Laughing at the silliness of it all, Liv took off her slippers, just in case, and hiked her skirts to keep them dry. Some of the stepping-stones shone wet from other people's mishaps, making them slick for those who followed, but she had no trouble until the last slab. She slipped on moss and would have fallen in if Torjus hadn't grabbed her elbow. "Thousand thanks," she gasped as the tall youth helped her up the bank.

"That is my noble quest, to save lovely maidens in distress." He winked and strode off.

Liv gaped after him. Lovely? "Hah!" She stomped off to join Olav.

(to be continued...)

BEHIND THE SCENE FACTS

Torjus: "TORE-yoose"

Sundkilen ("SOOND-chee-len") is three miles long, stretching southeast toward Kvitseidvatn ("KVEET-side-vaht'n"), which is twice as long. Most lakes in Norway (450,000 of them!) are long and narrow and deep, carved out by glaciers in the last ice age glaciation.

The name Kviteseid ("KVEETS-side") means white's isthmus, or isthmus of white. It applied first to a farm, then to the parish, then later to the municipal area. There may have been nothing but a dock at this point in time. The town grew after the digging of the Telemarkskanal far downstream, finished in 1892, opening the waterway to boat traffic. A tannery and a general store were the first community buildings erected.

Huvestad: "HOO-veh-stahd"

Råmunddalen: "ROE-moond-doll-en"

Morgedal: "MORE-geh-doll"

Photos by author in 2006.

Photo above chapter title: the view down from Hommesnip to Sundkilen, with a glint of Kviteseid-vatn in the distance.

Last photo: Morgedal Creek, looking upstream from the low end of the dale.