BUSINESS GIRLS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 184, 5 August 1936, Page 15

BUSINESS GIRLS.

LUNCHEON TALK ON NORWAY. The speaker at the fortnightly lunhceon talk of the business girls of the city, which was held in Milne and Choyce's reception hall yesterday, was Miss L. M. Cranwell, M.A., botanist at the Auckland War Memorial Museum, who lias recently returned from a trip abroad. The subject of the address was Norway.. Speaking of the language, "standard" Norwegian, said Miss Cranwell, was close to Danish, but the maal, an artificial language, made up by a Norwegian, has had many adherents. Ibsen, with his usual sharpness, characterised it as "the chatter of monkeys"—the sort of remark which, however true, did not tend to endear him to his countrymen. The Scandinavians for the main part talked freely together, as at the International Botanical Congress in Amsterdam, without seeming, to. niodify their own speech (Norwegian,' Swedish or Danish), but considerable difference in the spelling occurred.

The traveller was drawn to Norway through hearing of her wonderful scenery and her pleasant people, especially through the writings of Ibsen and Bjorsen, both of whose graves Miss Cranwell saw in Oslo, of Knut Hamsan and of Sigrid Undset. The last two are Nobel Prize winners popular all over the world. Hospitality of Women. In describing Norway Miss Cranwell said it was a mountainous plateau country, which, though only 1100 miles long, liad a beautiful fjord coastline oi over 12,000 miles. It had v an average width of 260 miles, but Sweden reached through almost to the sea behind the Lofoten Islands. Fjords like Hardarger (the garden of Norway, with its profusion of cherries, raspberries, strawberries and gooseberries, all wild) might be 70 miles long and hundreds of feet deep. Yoringsfos, the biggest waterfall, was over oOOft high. It swooped down towards Hardanger, and a marvellously constructed cliff road ran near it. In this valley Miss Cranwell, accompanied by Miss L. B. Moore, of Auckland, spent happy hours haymaking with peasant women, who, though they had little to offer save wafer thick wheat'en bread and a taste of coffee, were still the soul of hospitality. Their wealth lay in a few cows and goats grazing on the moun- i

tain grass at the saeters about 4000 ft directly above. These particular women had 11 white sheep and one black one, from which they made their quaint black and white gloves and ski-ing "socks for Hale to fjord tourists.

Miss Cranwell approached Norway by boat through the Swedish skerries, the old strongholds of the Vikings, and in Oslo saw the three famous Osaberg ships, almost perfect after 800 to 900 years, except where their masts ha rotted off above the surface of the peat. Many parts of Norway lay above the tree-level, but in the lowlands grew pine forests, and everywhere the_ wild flowers were a joy to behold, especially beside the lakes and the Hardanger snowfields and glaciers which Miss Cranwell crossed between Finse and the fjords.

The people were tall and fair, as a lule, keen on sport and very progressive. The jealousies between Qslo on the east and Bergen (a much more mixed community) on the west were most amusing, and reminded one very much of similar things in Now Zealand. While Norway had an Ibsen to hold the mirror up to his people, we, of course, had nothing of the kind.

Mr. Robert Milne presided at the luncheon. and thanked Miss Cranwell for her address.