"It lies," says Bjoernson,
"broad--bosomed between two confluent fjords, with a green mountain
above, cataracts and homesteads on the opposite shore, waving meadows
and activity in the bottom of the valley; and all the way out toward the
ocean, mountains with headland upon headland running out into the fjord
and a large farm upon each."
The feeling of terror, the crushing sense of guilt which Bjoernson has so
strikingly portrayed in the first chapters of "In God's Way," were
familiar to his own childhood. In every life, as in every race, the God
of fear precedes the God of love. And in Northern Norway, where nature
seems so tremendous and man so insignificant, no boy escapes these
phantoms of dread which clutch him with icy fingers. But as a
counterbalancing force in the young Bjoernson, we have his confidence in
the strength and good sense of his gigantic father, who could thrash the
strongest champion in the parish. He used to stand in the evening on the
beach "and gaze at the play of the sunshine upon fjord and mountain,
until he wept, as if he had done something wrong.
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