First published in 1882, the book tells, in an engaging humorous and deadpan style, the adventures of three friends who set out to fish and shoot through one long summer, traveling by canoe and camping along the way through
Espedalen to
Jotunheimen, a mountainous area. This amusing party make light of the rigours of outdoor life in Norway and enjoy every minute of their idyllic tour, with pristine lakes full of large eager trout, which have never seen an artificial fly, heather hills rich with
ptarmigan and
reindeer, the characters among the Norwegian country folk they encounter. A typical sentence from the book: "It continued raining in a nice keep-at-it-all-day-if-you-like kind of manner, so we resided in the tent, and read, and indulged in whisky and water for lunch to counteract any ill effects of the reading – for some of it was poetry." ==Publication history==