X. The Children of the Vikings
In winter I get up at night
And dress by early candle light.
In summer, quite the other way,
I have to bed by day.
If Stevenson had been a Scandinavian instead of a Scotch boy he probably would never have written that quaint rhyme about going to bed by day and getting up by night. The little people of Norway and Sweden—which together make Scandinavia—get so much night in winter and so much day in summer that it doesn't seem strange to them at all—this getting up by night and going to bed by day.
Scandinavia is so far north that in summer there are only two or three hours of darkness, in winter only two or three hours of daylight. In summer they spend most of the time outdoors. In winter they gather about the big fireplace, spin, knit, sing, play music and tell stories! These stories are about fairies and giants and Norse heroes who slew the giants and sailed those wild Northern seas. Sometimes when the stories are about big giants with ugly dispositions they get into one's dreams; and frightened little girls—I don't know about the boys—tumble out of their cots and climbing into bed with mamma, snuggle so close that, as a certain little American girl said, even the biggest giant couldn't "unsnuggle" them!
Yes, and they do have to climb;. for the beds of grown folks are built so high that you must use a stepladder as you do in a Pullman to get into the upper berth. Babies sleep in baskets hung from a pole fastened to the wall and have a lovely time teetering themselves every time they move.
The children have beautiful manners; never interrupt their elders and on getting up from the table say, "Thank you, dear father and mother, for the good food," and shake hands with them. From early childhood boys and girls learn to work. The hardest thing the girls have to learn is how to roll and bake the famous flat bread called knackbrode. It is made of barley meal rolled into sheets a half yard across as thin as paper and—the funniest thing—has a hole in the middle. For what do you suppose? So that mother can run a long pole through it and hang the bread from the ceiling. The boys
