'GOD'S PEACE' 343
like a hen it gathers its chickens under its maternal wings ; it forgets that it is busily developing into a provincial town with banks and export trade. Once again it becomes its own self, quite the old town.
When I meet the tingling sledge caravans with merry, fur-clad men and women, when I hear the gaily ringing laughter and the shouts from the children tobogganing down the snowy slopes of Rough-Hill, when I see the fjord black with skating figures, and when in the evening I hear songs and dance music pour out through the festively-ht windows, I remember the severe winter of many years ago. After the town had laboriously dug itself out of the snow, it went to the fjord and kept carnival through weeks and weeks.
It stands out in my memory most fantastically, through a large gateway built of evergreens one got into a long ice-street cosily cut out amongst walls of snow. Suddenly one stood on a big, open place, brilliantly lit by torches, and surrounded by tents illuminated with coloured lanterns. Tents, in which they ate and drank, sung and danced. From the square other streets have been cut into the snow mountains. One passes by caves shining with blue lights, snow-men with glaring fire-eyes, tiny booths with train-oil lamps, and old women frying eels and pancakes, also a big warming place called 'The Glowing Oven.' Afterwards one got into a wood of fir-trees, where people crowded round a merry-go-round with sledges, which pos- sessed the enlivening quality that on each round a
