Ch. 1 - Trollhätta - Page 2

"Here, on the rocky holms," said he, "it was that the warriors in the
heathen times, as they are called, decided their disputes. The warrior
Stärkodder dwelt in this district, and liked the pretty girl Ogn right
well; but she was fonder of Hergrimmer, and therefore he was
challenged by Stärkodder to combat here by the falls, and met his
death; but Ogn sprung towards them, took her bridegroom's bloody
sword, and thrust it into her own heart. Thus Stärkodder did not gain
her. Then there passed a hundred years, and again a hundred years: the
forests were then thick and closely grown; wolves and bears prowled
here summer and winter; the place was infested with malignant robbers,
whose hiding-place no one could find. It was yonder, by the fall
before Top Island, on the Norwegian side--there was their cave: now it
has fallen in! The cliff there overhangs it!"

"Yes, the Tailor's Cliff!" shouted all the boys. "It fell in the year
1755!"

"Fell!" said the old man, as if in astonishment that any one but
himself could know it. "Everything will fall once, and the tailor
directly." The robbers had placed him upon the cliff and demanded that
if he would be liberated from them, his ransom should be that he
should sew a suit of clothes up there; and he tried it; but at the
first stitch, as he drew the thread out, he became giddy and fell down
into the gushing water, and thus the rock got the name of 'The
Tailor's Cliff.' One day the robbers caught a young girl, and she
betrayed them, for she kindled a fire in the cavern. The smoke was
seen, the caverns discovered, and the robbers imprisoned and executed.
That outside there is called 'The Thieves' Fall,' and down there under
the water is another cave, the elv rushes in there and returns
boiling; one can see it well up here, one hears it too, but it can be
heard better under the bergman's loft.

And we went on and on, along the Fall, towards Top Island,
continuously on smooth paths covered with saw-dust, to Polham's
Sluice. A cleft had been made in the rock for the first intended
sluice-work, which was not finished, but whereby art has created the
most imposing of all Trollhätta's Falls; the hurrying water falling
here perpendicularly into the black deep. The side of the rock is here
placed in connection with Top Island by means of a light iron bridge,
which appears as if thrown over the abyss. We venture on to the
rocking bridge over the streaming, whirling water, and then stand on
the little cliff island, between firs and pines, that shoot forth from
the crevices. Before us darts a sea of waves, which are broken by the
rebound against the stone block where we stand, bathing us with the