ABSTRACT
Using Moretti's proposal, this chapter explores the way in which the setting of Norway facilitates special attention to the supernatural and the 'other-worldly' in writing by nineteenth-century women travellers. Established in travel writing by women in the mid-century, the trope of Norway as associated with supernatural occurrences becomes a dominant structural feature in popular fiction of the late nineteenth century. Mary Wollstonecraft's account of her travels in Scandinavia was one among very few texts by British women before the Victorian period. According to Jean Mains, women travellers were prompted to visit Norway by the introduction of regular steamship sailings, the development of the railways, and the building of hotels to accommodate gentlemen 'sportsmen' who travelled there to go hunting and fishing. The chapter draws attention to Norway's wildness with reference to its difference from England. Crompton Roberts's account of their journey indicates the extent to which Norway had become part of a general tourist itinerary by the 1880s.
