Boyhood in Norway | Page 3

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BOYHOOD IN NORWAY
STORIES OF BOY-LIFE IN THE LAND OF THE MIDNIGHT SUN
BY
HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN

CONTENTS
THE BATTLE OF THE RAFTS THE CLASH OF ARMS BICEPS
GRIMLUND'S CHRISTMAS VACATION THE NIXY'S STRAIN
THE WONDER CHILD "THE SONS OF THE VIKINGS" PAUL
JESPERSEN'S MASQUERADE LADY CLARE THE STORY OF A
HORSE BONNYBOY THE CHILD OF LUCK THE BEAR THAT
HAD A BANK ACCOUNT

THE BATTLE OF THE RAFTS
I. THE ORIGIN OF THE WAR
A deadly feud was raging among the boys of Numedale. The
East-Siders hated the West-Siders, and thrashed them when they got a
chance; and the West-Siders, when fortune favored them, returned the
compliment with interest. It required considerable courage for a boy to
venture, unattended by comrades, into the territory of the enemy; and
no one took the risk unless dire necessity compelled him.
The hostile parties had played at war so long that they had forgotten
that it was play; and now were actually inspired with the emotions

which they had formerly simulated. Under the leadership of their
chieftains, Halvor Reitan and Viggo Hook, they held councils of war,
sent out scouts, planned midnight surprises, and fought at times mimic
battles. I say mimic battles, because no one was ever killed; but broken
heads and bruised limbs many a one carried home from these
engagements, and unhappily one boy, named Peer Oestmo, had an eye
put out by an arrow.
It was a great consolation to him that he became a hero to all the
West-Siders and was promoted for bravery in the field to the rank of
first lieutenant. He had the sympathy of all his companions in arms and
got innumerable bites of apples, cancelled postage stamps, and colored
advertising-labels in token of their esteem.
But the principal effect of this first serious wound was to invest the war
with a breathless and all-absorbing interest. It was now no longer
"make believe," but deadly earnest. Blood had flowed; insults had been
exchanged in due order, and offended honor cried for vengeance.
It was fortunate that the river divided the West-Siders from the
East-Siders, or it would have been difficult to tell what might have
happened. Viggo Hook, the West-Side general, was a handsome,
high-spirited lad of fifteen, who was the last person to pocket an injury,
as long as red blood flowed in his veins, as he was wont to express it.
He was the eldest son of Colonel Hook of the regular army, and meant
some day to be a Von Moltke or a Napoleon. He felt in his heart that he
was destined for something great; and in conformity with this
conviction assumed a superb behavior, which his comrades found very
admirable.
He had the gift of leadership in a marked degree, and established his
authority by a due mixture of kindness and severity. Those boys whom
he honored with his confidence were absolutely attached to him. Those
whom, with magnificent arbitrariness, he punished and persecuted, felt
meekly that they had probably deserved it; and if they had not, it was
somehow in the game.
There never was a more absolute king than Viggo, nor one more
abjectly courted and admired. And the amusing part of it was that he
was at heart a generous and good-natured lad, but possessed with a
lofty ideal of heroism, which required above all things that whatever he
said or did must be striking. He dramatized, as it were, every phrase he

uttered and every act he performed, and modelled himself alternately
after Napoleon and Wellington, as he had seen them represented in the
old engravings which decorated the walls in his father's study.
He had read much about heroes of war, ancient and modern, and he
lived about half his own life imagining himself by turns all sorts of
grand characters from history or fiction.
His costume was usually in keeping with his own conception of these
characters, in so far as his scanty opportunities permitted. An old,
broken sword of his father's, which had been polished until it