In The Forest

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Title:     In The Forest
Author: Hans Christian Andersen [More Titles by Andersen]

We are a long way over the elv. We have left the corn-fields behind, and have just come into the forest, where we halt at that small inn, which is ornamented over the doors and windows with green branches for the Midsummer festival. The whole kitchen is hung round with branches of birch and the berries of the mountain-ash: the oat-cakes hang on long poles under the ceiling; the berries are suspended above the head of the old woman who is just scouring her brass kettle bright.

The tap-room, where the peasant sits and carouse, is just as finely hung round with green. Midsummer raises its leafy arbour everywhere, yet it is most flush in the forest--it extends for miles around. Our road goes for miles through that forest, without seeing a house, or the possibility of meeting travellers, driving, riding or walking. Come! The ostler puts fresh horses to the carriage; come with us into the large woody desert: we have a regular trodden way to travel, the air is clear, here is summer's warmth and the fragrance of birch and lime. It is an up and down hill road, always bending, and so, ever changing, but yet always forest scenery--the close, thick forest. We pass small lakes, which lie so still and deep, as if they concealed night and sleep under their dark, glassy surfaces.

We are now on a forest plain, where only charred stumps of trees are to be seen: this long tract is black, burnt, and deserted--not a bird flies over it. Tall, hanging birches now greet us again; a squirrel springs playfully across the road, and up into the tree; we cast our eye searchingly over the wood-grown mountain-side, which slopes so far, far forward; but not a trace of a house is to be seen: nowhere does that blueish smoke-cloud rise, that shows us, here are fellow-men.

The sun shines warm; the flies dance around the horses, settle on them, fly off again, and dance, as though it were to qualify themselves for resting and being still. They perhaps think: "Nothing is going on without us: there is no life while we are doing nothing." They think, as many persons think, and do not remember that Time's horses always fly onward with us!

How solitary it is here!--so delightfully solitary! one is so entirely alone with God and one's self. As the sunlight streams forth over the earth, and over the extensive solitary forests, so does God's spirit stream over and into mankind; ideas and thoughts unfold themselves--endless, inexhaustible, as he is--as the magnet which apportions its powers to the steel, and itself loses nothing thereby. As our journey through the forest-scenery here along the extended solitary road, so, travelling on the great high-road of thought, ideas pass through our head. Strange, rich caravans pass by from the works of poets, from the home of memory, strange and novel--for capricious fancy gives birth to them at the moment. There comes a procession of pious children with waving flags and joyous songs; there come dancing Moenades, the blood's wild Bacchantes. The sun pours down hot in the open forest: it is as if the Southern summer had laid itself up here to rest in Scandinavian forest-solitude, and sought itself out a glade where it might lie in the sun's hot beams and sleep: hence this stillness, as if it were night. Not a bird is heard to twitter, not a pine-tree moves: of what does the Southern summer dream here in the North, amongst pines and fragrant birches?

In the writings of the olden time, from the classic soil of the South, are _sagas_ of mighty fairies who, in the skins of swans, flew towards the North, to the Hyperborean's land, to the east of the north wind; up there, in the deep, still lakes, they bathed themselves, and acquired a renewed form. We are in the forest by these deep lakes; we see swans in flocks fly over us, and swim upon the rapid elv and on the still waters. The forests, we perceive, continue to extend further towards the west and the north, and are more dense as we proceed: the carriage-roads cease, and one can only pursue one's way along the outskirts by the solitary path, and on horseback.

The saga, from the time of the plague (A.D., 1350), here impresses itself on the mind, when the pestilence passed through the land, and transformed cultivated fields and towns--nay, whole parishes, into barren fields and wild forests. Deserted and forgotten, overgrown with moss, grass, and bushes, churches stood for years far in the forest; no one knew of their existence, until, in a later century, a huntsman lost himself here: his arrow rebounded from the green wall, the moss of which he loosened, and the church was found. The wood-cutter felled the trees for fuel; his axe struck against the overgrown wall, and it gave way to the blow; the fir-planks fell, and the church, from the time of the pestilence, was discovered; the sun again shone bright through the openings of the doors and windows, on the brass candelabra and the altar, where the communion-cup still stood. The cuckoo came, sat there, and sang: "Many, many years shalt thou live!"

Woodland solitude! what images dost thou not present to our thoughts! Woodland solitude! through thy vaulted halls people now pass in the summer-time with cattle and domestic utensils; children and old men go to the solitary pasture where echo dwells, where the national song springs forth with the wild mountain flower! Dost thou see the procession?--paint it if thou canst! The broad wooden cart laden high with chests and barrels, with jars and with crockery. The bright copper kettle and the tin dish shine in the sun. The old grandmother sits at the top of the load and holds her spinning-wheel, which completes the pyramid. The father drives the horse, the mother carries the youngest child on her back, sewed up in a skin, and the procession moves on step by step. The cattle are driven by the half-grown children: they have stuck a birch branch between one of the cows' horns, but she does not appear to be proud of her finery, she goes the same quiet pace as the others and lashes the saucy flies with her tail. If the night becomes cold on this solitary pasture, there is fuel enough here--the tree falls of itself from old age and lies and rots.

But take especial care of the fire fear the fire-spirit in the forest desert! He comes from the unextinguishable pile--he comes from the thunder-cloud, riding on the blue lightning's flame, which kindles the thick, dry moss of the earth: trees and bushes are kindled, the flames run from tree to tree--it is like a snow-storm of fire! the flame leaps to the tops of the trees--what a crackling and roaring, as if it were the ocean in its course! The birds fly upward in flocks, and fall down suffocated by the smoke; the animals flee, or, encircled by the fire, are consumed in it! Hear their cries and roars of agony! The howling of the wolf and the bear, dos't thou know it? A calm, rainy-day, and the forest-plains themselves, alone are able to confine the fiery sea, and the burnt forest stands charred, with black trunks and black stumps of trees, as we saw them here in the forest by the broad high-road. On this road we continue to travel, but it becomes worse and worse; it is, properly speaking, no road at all, but it is about to become one. Large stones lie half dug up, and we drive past them; large trees are cast down, and obstruct our way, and therefore we must descend from the carriage. The horses are taken out, and the peasants help to lift and push the carriage forward over ditches and opened paths.

The sun now ceases to shine; some few rain-drops fall, and now it is a steady rain. But how it causes the birch to shed its fragrance! At a distance there are huts erected, of loose trunks of trees and fresh green boughs, and in each there is a large fire burning. See where the blue smoke curls through the green leafy roof; peasants are within at work, hammering and forging; here they have their meals. They are now laying a mine in order to blast a rock, and the rain falls faster and faster, and the pine and birch emit a finer fragrance. It is delightful in the forest.

[The end]
Hans Christian Andersen's essay: In The Forest

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