south. All sorts of traditions about the speed and wonderful racing
powers of the boats are current in Nordland, and romantic tales are told
of some of them. The best boats in Nordland now came from Ranen, where
boatbuilding has made great strides. To build a good boat with the
correct water-lines requires genius, and cannot be learned
theoretically; for it is a matter of special skill on the part of the
builder of each boat. Ill-constructed boats are sometimes put together
but they are, of course, unsatisfactory and sail only moderately well.
The Nordland boat-builders have long since discovered the high fore and
aft, sharp-keeled boat, to be the most practical, with one mast and a
broad, prettily cut square sail admirably suited to what is most
required, rapid sailing in fore and side winds, though less so for
tacking. The boat is exactly the same shape under water as the
fast-sailing clippers for which the English and Americans have of late
become famed. What it has cost the Nordlanders to perfect the form that
now enables them almost to fly before the wind, away from mighty curling
billows which would bury the boat, if they reached it; how many
generations have suffered and toiled and thought over, and corrected
this shape under pain of death, so to speak, for every mistake made! In
short, the history of the Nordland boat, from the days of men who first
waged war with the ocean up there, to this day is a forgotten Nordland
saga, full of the great achievements of the steadily toiling workman.

One winter's evening in January, a little while before the fishing
began, I heard a story told by a man of one of the large boats' crews
who were then spending the night at our house. He was started by two or
three of Komag-Nils' stories, and wanted to show us that where he came
from, down at Dönö near Ranen, in Helgeland, there were as many and as
wonderful stories and boats, as with us in Nordland. The narrator was a
little, quick-speaking fellow, who sat the whole time rocking backwards