Note 1 — Chapter II · Modern Norway
Reading edition
People who live in such a land must needs be proud of it, and the descendants of the Vikings believe that there exists in the world no fairer country than their beloved Norge.1 Maybe they are not far wrong. But these Northern people are not numerous, and they are not forced, for want of space, to spoil their landscapes by studding the country-side with little red-brick cottages, for all Norway contains not one-half the number of inhabitants found in London. Under such circumstances the feeling of freedom is great, and the Norwegians claim that, as a nation, they are the freest of the free. Recent events would seem to justify the claim. Only the other day Norway dissolved the Union with Sweden with little difficulty, and of her own free-will cast herself loose from the light fetters with which, for nearly a century, she considered that she had been bound.