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If travellers for the most part have not been very favourable in their accounts of Denmark, they have been still less tender of Norway. They have often confounded it with Lapland, and have given descriptions of its inhabitants, and their manners, which are hardly applicable to the savages of that country. The notion that is generally entertained of the extreme coldness of the climate here is no less unjust. It is true, that in a kingdom which extends thirteen degrees from north to south, the temperature of the air cannot every where be the same: accordingly the most northern parts of Norway, those which face the east, and which are not sheltered by the mountains from the fury of the north winds, are undoubtedly exposed to rigorous winters. But almost all that length of coast, which is washed by the sea towards the west, and which forms so considerable a part of Norway, commonly enjoys an air tolerably temperate, even in the middle of winter. Here are none of those “desolate regions, where Winter hath established his eternal empire, and where he reigns among horrid heaps of ice and snow,” as ignorance hath often led travellers, and a fondness for the marvellous induced poets to speak of Norway. It is seldom that a very sharp frost lasts there a fortnight or three weeks
