Tent life with English Gipsies in Norway — A Closer Reading

A Gipsy Camp in Norway

The excerpts show Smith's fascination with the material culture of his companions. He describes their tent, its fittings, and a 'cooking apparatus' with the precision of a surveyor. The group's baggage includes 'bagage de luxe' and is transported by donkeys. Smith notes the Romani language, recording terms like 'churie' (shut-knife) and the phrase 'a churie monomania' to describe Zachariah's obsession. The author also documents the group's internal dynamics: Esmeralda's illness, Noah's liveliness, and the effects of 'extra good living' on their health. These details ground the narrative in specific, observable realities rather than romanticized stereotypes.

Encounters with Norwegian Society

Smith's interactions with Norwegians are mediated by his role as a traveler and his companions' presence. He meets a 'Prœsten Eilert Sundt,' a clergyman interested in Romani studies, and a Mr. L. who explains the telegraph apparatus to Esmeralda. The author notes local customs, such as the treatment of frost-bites with snow or reindeer cheese oil, and the 'perpetual Sunday' atmosphere of Veblungsnœs. He also records economic details: 'horse money' in Christiania, the cost of a 'passe-partout,' and the prevalence of chewing tobacco among oarsmen. These observations are filtered through Smith's own cultural lens, but they offer glimpses of Norwegian life in the 1870s.

The Author's Narrative Voice

Smith's prose is marked by a blend of earnestness and wry humor. He describes dosing Zachariah with 'brimstone and treacle' until he was 'a qualified inmate for Dotheboys' Hall,' a reference to Dickens. His tone is often self-deprecating, as when he notes the 'indefinable charm' of Veblungsnœs arising from 'its attempt at nothing.' Yet he also conveys genuine admiration for his companions' 'physical energy' and 'elements for rapid action.' The narrative is structured as a series of episodes, each with a clear sense of place and time, from the 'beautiful fjord' to the 'wild Norwegian fjelds.' Smith's voice is that of a participant-observer, never fully inside the Romani world but attentive to its rhythms.

Readers should approach this work as a document of its time, shaped by Victorian attitudes toward travel, class, and ethnicity. The excerpts reveal a text that is more about Smith's own perspective than about the Romani people themselves. Pay attention to the gaps: what is left unsaid about the companions' own views, or about the economic realities of their journey. The book rewards those interested in the intersections of travel writing, ethnography, and nineteenth-century social history.

There’s something about Hubert Smith’s tent—those canvas walls flapping against Norwegian wind—that stays with me long after closing the book. The way his Gipsy companions made a home of that impermanence feels oddly familiar now, like the quiet rhythm of wheels on London roads I found in Cycle Rides Round London — Text and Context. Both carry that same patient, unhurried noticing of place, as if the moving itself were the only fixed point worth remembering.