Читать книгу Feats on the Fiord - Harriet Martineau - Страница 4

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Miss Martineau's Norwegian romance won its way long since into the hearts of children in this country. The unhackneyed setting to the incidents of the tale distinguish it from thousands of more ordinary children's stories; nor is there any other tale so well-known having its scenes laid in the land of the fiords. It is quite safe to add that perhaps no other author has felt so strongly and communicated so convincingly the mystic charm of these northern lagoons with their still depths and reflections, their inaccessible walls of rock and their teeming wild-fowl life.

This mystic charm is deepened in the book by the thread of popular superstition which runs throughout the episodes and, in fact, gives rise to them. Miss Martineau's dénouements were calculated to shatter the follies of belief in Nipen and other supernatural agents; but her own crusading traffic in them rather endears them to the imagination of the reader and certainly supplies a fascination which the most sceptical of young readers would be sorry to miss.

The author also brings home to the youthful mind the wonder of the physiographical peculiarities of northern latitudes. The book opens with the long nights and ends with the long days. The midnight sun and the northern lights play their parts, whilst the beautiful simplicity of farm-life in the Arctic circle is unfolded with authoritative interest.

As for the hero, young Oddo, he is a prince among dauntless boys, yet he never oversteps the bounds of true boyishness. He would be a hero anywhere; but as a leading character in this romance, combined with all the charm of natural effect in which he moves, he makes Feats on the Fiord a book to be classed among the few best of its kind.

F. C. TILNEY.