southwards and across the Mainland, where we could hire a boat for the
Whalesback of Mousa. The leek-shaped Broch has a pair of romantic
legends attached to it, but they are too modern for interest. This most
perfect specimen of the seventy round towers[329] has been often
described, but no one seems to have noticed the similarity of the double
walls of the vaulted and many-storied bee-hive chambers, and of the
other peculiarities, with those of the pre-historic Sardinian Nurhágghi.
The “stepped domes” of dry stone, and the “concealments,” also reminded
me much of similar features in outlying Syria. Some ill-conditioned
party of “cheap-trippers,” or “devil’s-dust tourists,” has lately fired
the secular moss which clothed the south-western wall. On the way back
to Lerwick there is another ruin in Clickamin (also written Chickhamin)
Lake: interesting as the means of comparison, it has an addition
evidently more modern of extensive outworks, which Mousa Castle wholly
wants.
Unfortunately for myself, I had not time to call upon the late Mr Thomas
Edmonston of Buness, whose philological labours are so valuable to
northern students;[330] and to tell unpleasant truth, I was somewhat
surprised by the success of the nineteenth century in abolishing all the
old hospitality. We inspected the contents of the dark little room, the
anthropological collection of the Shetlands, which deserves a catalogue,
and other comforts of civilised life. Many Hjaltlanders have never heard
of it. The most interesting articles are the steatite pots from Unst,
and the ceramic remains, guiltless of wheel, collected in the Brochs.
There are also some rough “thunderbolts”--here the stone celt is
considered, as by the ancient Greeks, to be an ἀστροπελέυς. Hence
Claudian (fifth century) sings:
“Pyrenæisque sub antris
Ignea flumineæ legere ceraunia nymphæ.”
We ran into Thorshafn (Færoes) on September 4, when a shower of rain had
laid the fog. The “Isles of Sheep,” others say of “Feathers,” are
evidently built like Iceland, with submarine trap; and the deep narrow
“grips” between them, passages free from any danger except the
“vortices,”[331] which can be seen, suggest that they have parted into
long narrow fragments under the influence of subaërial cooling and
contraction. The deep black strata appear peculiarly regular, as those
of the western Fjörðs of Thule, streaked with lines of red ochre,
spotted with white guano, and not showing, in this part at least, any
signs of Palagonite or sea-sand. The leaf-shaped valleys, the
water-falls, and the natural arches, are familiar to us after
“Snowland;” the shallow turf lies upon the steepest inclines, and not
unfrequently it is torn off by the frantic wind with as much ease as a
rug is rolled up.
[Illustration: KIRKJUBÆ RUINS IN FÆROE ISLANDS]
The course lay abreast of Mygganaes (Midge Naze),[332] with its head to
the south, and projecting a long low tail cut by a “coupé,” like that of
Sark. We then opened Waagoe (voe islet), so called because imbedded in
the greater Stromoe. At the southern end, where once whales abounded, as
may be seen in prints of 1844, many “Battles of the Summer Islands” were
fiercely waged. We pass Gaasholm, Tind-holm, or Peak Island, a slice of
rock with jagged uplifted edge, here a common feature, the Koltar
(Coulter), which passably represents its name, and Hestoe the
horse-eyot. The latter is a common Scandinavian name for a feature with
a long straight dorsum, ready as it were for the saddle--witness the
Horse of “Copinshay” (Kolbeins-ey): the hunchbacks are mostly called
“hogs,” and the smaller outliers “calves.” The normal shape is a quoin,
bluff to north or east, and sloping with a regular green incline to the
water. There is no snow; the hay crop has been got in, and the
settlements are villages, not Bærs or detached farms. We ran within easy
sight of Kirkjubæ, which stands well out from its adjacent hovels; it is
the last Roman Catholic building in the islands, and the “Reformation”
left its sturdy walls unroofed. Visitors speak of an iron plate imbedded
in its masonry, and supposed to denote treasure, which is not likely.
The old Church still keeps up a mission-house and chapel at Thorshafn,
but we found the building void of priests.
Whilst the “haaf,” or outer sea, was calm as a lake, a cold and furious
southerly wind, the gift of the funnel between Sandoe and Stromoe, blew
in our faces, and when we had turned the southern point of the latter,
it again met us from the north-east. The capital Thorshafn is a small
heap of houses, or rather boxes strewed “promiscuous” on the ground, and
a large white church, whose belfry is adorned with a gilt ball and a
profusion of crosses. It has, however, a literary dean, and, better
still, a library. The site of the settlement is a spit of rock dividing
the harbour into a northern and a southern “hop”--the latter being
generally preferred. A green flag floating over a shed near the fort
denotes the quarantine station; planked boat-houses figure
conspicuously, and the roofs are more grassy even than in Iceland.
Willows, elder-trees, and currant-bushes, looking gigantic after the
stunted vegetation farther north, flourish in sheltered spots,
especially near the well-bridged brook in the southern part of the city.
Along the dorsum of the spit runs an upper road with a small central
square, looking as if a single house had been pulled down to make room.
Huge boulders have not disappeared from the thoroughfares, and the
latter are the most crooked and irregular of any that claim to be in
Europe; narrow, steep, and steppy--- narrower than Malta, steeper than
ramps at “Gib,” and steppy like Dalmatian towns, for instance Curzola
and Lésina: in places they are supplied with hand-rails.
The people are remarkably English in appearance, and perhaps an easy
reason may be found for the resemblance. They appear rather shy than the
reverse, and they notably lack Hazlitt’s “Scotch stare.” The women show
the bloom of infinite delicacy that characterises the complexion of
Iceland. The men, who unwisely shave their faces, still affect the
picturesque island-dress, a peculiar-shaped cap of dark colour with thin
blue or red stripes, long brown jacket, knee breeches of Wadmal, long
stockings, and untanned spartelles, or “chumpers,” the wooden-soled
clogs of “Lankyshire.”
We called on Hr Sysselmand Müller, and we left the Færoes with a
conviction that its capital is one of the “slowest” places now in
existence: the only possible excitement would be to buy a 560-fathom
“fowl-rope,”[333] and to dangle like the samphire-gatherer of dreadful
trade over the bird-precipices. “In a rope’s end between earth and
heaven, with the blue sky above you, and below you the still bluer sea
tumbling, between which two you swing to and fro like a pendulum,” one
might secure a novel sensation to take the place of many an _illusion
perdue_. A St Bartholomew’s Day of a hundred and fifty whales, a
massacre headed by the parson and the schoolmaster, must also have its
charms, but these events are unhappily waxing rare.
NOTE ON STONE IMPLEMENTS AND OTHER PRE-HISTORIC REMAINS FOUND IN THE
SHETLAND ISLANDS. BY THE LATE ROBERT COWIE, M.A., M.D.
Of the pre-historic weapons of warfare, or implements of domestic
economy, which have been found in the Shetland Islands, by far the most
numerous and important are the stone implements. These naturally divide
themselves into two classes, viz., the _polished_ and the _rude_. First
let us speak of the polished stone implement, celt, steinbarte,
battle-axe head, or “thunderbolt.” This implement has, for centuries,
been an object of search, not only for the antiquary and the collector
of curiosities, but for the native peasantry--the latter class regarding
it with superstitious awe, as a sort of household god, who brings luck
to the family that is fortunate enough to possess it. They term it the
“thunderbolt,” from a belief--everywhere found and dating from all
times--that the weapon has come down from the sky during a thunderstorm.
These “celts,” or steinbartes, as they are generally termed in
scientific language, again divide themselves into two varieties, viz.
(1.) the single-edged steinbarte and (2.) the double-edged steinbarte.
1. The single-edged steinbarte, which is by far the most common, is thus
very accurately described by Dr Hibbert, in his excellent work on
Shetland: “This variety of blade has one cutting edge, generally of a
semilunar outline, and tapering from opposite points to a blunted
extremity or heel. In some specimens both sides are convex; in others
one side only, the other being flattened. All the edges except the
broad sharpened margin are bluntly rounded off. The single-edged
stone-axes of Shetland vary much in their dimensions, being from four to
eight or ten inches in length; their breadth proportionately differing.
When the Shetland steinbarte was used in war, its blunt tapering
extremity may be supposed to have been introduced within the perforation
made into some wooden or bone haft, and afterwards secured by
overlapping cords, formed of thongs of leather, or the entrails of some
animal; twine of hemp not being then in use.”
From considerable personal observation, I can testify to the accuracy of
the above description, except that there appears to be in these
instruments greater variety in size than that indicated by the learned
Doctor; the largest single-headed steinbarte in the Lerwick Museum being
14½ inches long by 4½ inches at the broadest point, and the smallest 4½
inches long by 2½ inches at the broadest point.
Continuing the paragraph just quoted, Dr Hibbert says: “Another kind of
steinbarte has been said to occur in Shetland, the sharp edge of which
describes the segment of a circle, whilst the chord of the outline is
thickened like the back of a knife. Probably its blunt edge was fixed
within the groove of a wooden or bone handle, so as to form a
single-edged cutting instrument.” This peculiar variety must have been
very rare indeed, for no one appears to have seen it since the days of
the Rev. Mr Low of Orkney, who wrote exactly a century ago.
2. The double-edged steinbarte is described as follows by Dr Hibbert:
“The blade of this instrument is a stone completely flattened on each of
its sides, and not more than the tenth of an inch thick; it is of an
oblong shape, having one blunted margin perfectly straight, and, with
the stone in such a position that the dull edge is the uppermost, we
have the form of a blade presented, in which the two narrow edges are
irregularly rounded off at their angles, so that one edge is much
broader than the other. Every part of the margin but that which
constitutes the summit of the outline is sharpened; by which means there
is a great addition made to the extent of the cutting edge. The blade is
5½ inches long, and from 3 to 4 broad.” This description does not
correspond with the specimens I have been able to examine. If they are
to be considered fair specimens, I would describe the so-called
double-edged steinbarte thus: An oblong flat piece of porphyry,
serpentine, or some similar stone, 5 or 6 inches long by 4 or 5 broad,
and about a third or a fourth of an inch thick, with a thin sharp edge
all round.
These instruments, many of which are very beautiful both as regards form
and polish, are generally formed of a peculiarly compact green porphyry
or of serpentine. They have been found in most of the districts of
Shetland, particularly in the parishes of Unst, Delting, Wells, and
Sandsting. The situations and numbers in which they have been found,
also present great variety. Some have been taken out of ancient stone
coffins, others found inside of or near to old “burghs,” while many have
been dug up in the common--some near the surface and others several feet
beneath it.[334] Most of them have been found singly, but in many
instances large collections of such weapons have been discovered. Thus,
in one instance, twenty-four of them were found in one spot, in another
eight, and in a third seven, the last-mentioned series being arranged in
the form of a circle.
Polished stones having the shape of spear-heads have also been found in
Shetland, but very rarely. They are said to be about four inches long,
having a groove apparently for receiving a wooden shaft.
Flint arrow-heads, although frequently dug up in Orkney, have not yet,
as far as I can learn, been found in Shetland.
2. THE RUDE STONE IMPLEMENTS.
While the polished archaic stone implements have been known during a
long period of modern history, the rude or unpolished have only very
recently been discovered, or at all events recognised; and for this
discovery we are chiefly indebted to the late Dr James Hunt, London; Dr
Arthur Mitchell, Edinburgh; and Mr George Petrie, Kirkwall, who
conducted archæological explorations in Shetland in the summer of 1865.
Vast quantities of such articles must from time to time have been turned
up by the peasantry; but it is only about this period they appear to
have been recognised--a circumstance somewhat curious considering the
many searches during a long series of years, made for relics of
pre-historic times, by various accomplished antiquaries. These rough
instruments present great variety both as to shape and size. Let us
endeavour to indicate the chief types.
[Illustration: Fig. 1.--Stone Implements found in Shetland.]
1. We have the club-like form, which is well illustrated by the
accompanying copies of Dr Mitchell’s excellent paper on the
subject.[335] This implement is generally of large size; one specimen
measuring 21 inches by 2½ inches at the greatest breadth, and weighing
6¾ lbs.; another is 20 inches long, 5 or 6 in diameter, but attains the
great weight of 14 lbs. Many of the small forms found in the
collections to be described appear to be fragments of this larger
implement.
[Illustration: Fig. 2.]
2. Next in importance comes a long, narrow, flattish stone--“from 11
inches by 3 inches, to 6 inches by 1½--thinned and somewhat rounded at
each end.” Stones of this variety, which are very numerous in the
collections already made, present a remarkable similarity. (See Fig. 2.)
[Illustration: Fig. 3.]
(3.) The third type, which is illustrated by Fig. 3, is “a broad, flat
stone, showing a tendency to be pointed at one end.” Dr Mitchell
considers most of these stones fragments of larger implements; but two
entire specimens of this type are to be found in a good collection made
by Mr Umphray, of Raewick Shetland. The great majority of the rude stone
implements found in Shetland belong to one or other of the types above
briefly noticed; but we have still one or two less common varieties.
[Illustration: Fig. 4.]
(4.) The fourth type, of which I have not been able to see a specimen,
is described by Dr Mitchell as “a water-worn stone, 10 to 12 inches
long, more or less cylindrical, but tapering at the ends.”
(5.) The fifth variety, illustrated by Fig. 4, is a curious and very
interesting spud-like instrument, of which only a few specimens have
been yet found.
We next have three or four very rare and exceptionable varieties. The
first of these is a cylindrical and apparently water-shaped stone, well
worn at each end, as if it had been used as a pestle in crushing corn,
or for some such domestic purpose (Fig. 5); the second a “flat,
four-sided stone, 5 inches long, 3 inches wide, and 1½ inches thick,”
with a groove on each of the long sides, so as to give it a constricted
appearance; and the third a piece of sandstone, or some such stone, with
an oval cup-like hollow in it.
[Illustration: Fig. 5.]
[Illustration: Fig. 6.]
These curious implements, thus briefly enumerated, have been found in
various districts of Shetland, notably in the parishes of Sandsting,
Walls, Dunrossness, and Unst. It is interesting to note the different
positions in which they have been found--_e.g._, (1.) On the surface of
the ground; (2.) in curious subterranean structures; (3.) in the heart
of a large tumulus; (4.) on the outside of stone coffins with urns in
them; and (5.) in the inside of a Kistvaen with a skeleton and a
well-polished celt.[336]
Most of them are composed of sandstone, but a few of clay slate, or of
micaceous schist. They apparently have been shaped chiefly by flaking,
but in some instances also by picking.
In connection with these archaic implements, three questions naturally
arise: By _whom_, _when_, and _for what purpose_ were they formed? Were
I able, this is not the place to discuss such difficult and important
questions. On excavating “burghs” and opening tumuli, such pre-historic
remains as fragments of rude pottery, pieces of charred wood, and teeth
and broken pieces of bones of animals, are frequently discovered.
LERWICK, ZETLAND, _24th March 1873_.
CHAPTER II.
THE LANDFALL--FISHING FLEET--TO REYKJAVIK.
After this interlude of Hysteron-proteron, we return to the steamer
“Queen,” which has pertinaceously bored through
“The Pentland, where the furious tide,
Runs white for many a mile.”
After sighting Cape Wrath, she bade adieu to “Earth’s proudest Isle,”
and dashed north-west into the Deucalidian or Deucalidonian Ocean, the
Mare Pigrum of the classics, the sea which Adam of Bremen terms
_jecoreum et pulmoneum_, because it has a heavy motion like those
troubled with asthma, in the same sense as Plautus speaks of asthmatic
legs--“pedibus pulmoneis mihi advenisti.” The Germans called it Libersê
(Adam Bremensis) and complained that the abnormal quantity of salt made
it a Mare Mortuum. Hence Hoffman von Fallersleben sings:
“De lebirmere
Ein mere ist giliberot
In demo wentilmere westerot
Sô der starche Wint
Giwirffit die Skef in den Sint,” etc.
The portentous waves remarked by old Icelandic sailors between Iceland
and America, are termed by them Haf-girðingar, or Seafens, and the Polar
wastes between Norway and Greenland were known as Haf-botnar (deep-sea
bay) and Trölla-botnar, because here was the abode of Tröll-carl and
Titan. The mighty breakers of the North Atlantic are known to
picturesque and poetical tourists, not to seamen, as “Spanish waves.”
The sky, before clear, was all cirrus and cirro-cumulus, and the slaty
green seas made the too lively “Queen” dance and reel with excitement.
The cabin table was put into its straightest waistcoat, and men avoided
the deck--on shipboard, as in maritime Iceland, once wet, you cannot dry
again. Our numbers shrank at mess, and the passengers seemed to become
like the royal and feminine Legs of Spain. Ghostly sounds issued from
the cabin; one “Caledonian stern and wild,” attached to a black dog, big
as a donkey and hairy as a bear, made fierce attempts to violate the
toilette tables and glared hideously at expostulation. Our only consorts
were spirting whales and audacious troops of numerous gulls--these
escorted us with sundry reliefs of guard as far as Iceland.
Presently we sighted the “Stack,” a split rock with a bald white head,
and further to starboard the Bird Skerry, a low dome wholly unprovided
with lighthouse--how many a good ship, densely be-fogged, has run her
bows upon this Rock of Death, and melted away in the yeasty waves! At
6.30 P.M., we passed the “two solitary islands,” Ronan and Barra,
_alias_ Sulisker, of old Sulnasker, north-easternmost outliers of the
Hebrides. The former appears in hay-cock shape, the latter is a long
flat-backed “horse,” bluff as usual to the north, with a precipice 300
feet high. Both are uninhabited, and might serve for fancy eremites. To
starboard rises Fair Isle, half-way between the Orkneys and the
Shetlands, once belonging to the former, now to the latter. This rock
supplies the shops of Lerwick and Kirkwall with its peculiar hosiery;
and the primary colours, blue, red, and yellow, of the Etruscan tombs,
and the Temple of Ephesian Diana,[337] are those which Algiers, Morocco,
and the East, still know so well to blend. Mixed in the most daring way
they are never inharmonious, glaring, and grotesque. It is well worth
the artist’s time and trouble to investigate and determine the delicate
differences of proportion which can make the “Devil’s livery” so
brilliant and pleasing to the eye. “Ye Yle of Fare,” I need hardly note,
is supposed to have derived its art from the shipwrecked seamen of the
Spanish Armada. “Insula Bella,” says Buchanan; of which Brand remarks,
“I neither did see, nor was I informed of anything that affords us any
reason why this isle should be so appellatively taken and denominated
_bella_ or fair.” The Scandinavian name is Friðarey; otherwise we might
believe Fair Isle to be a congener of “Færoes,” from Fier, feathers, or
from Fær, a sheep, because _plena innumerabilibus ovibus_” (Dicuil).
* * * * *
_June 6._
Still, as the weather waxed fouler, the aneroids rose higher and higher.
We had exchanged an angry Auster, which filled the raw air with damp,
for a wrathier Boreas that tore the clouds to tatters. All the northerly
winds, which rarely outlast the fortnight in this capricious and
treacherous climate, are cold and dry, consequently heavy, whilst those
from the rain-bringing south notably want pressure. We are now
approaching the region of paradoxes, a practical joke of Nature, where
the Rule of Reverse seems generally to apply. Travellers tell us that
presently we shall see nine suns, which do not give the light and warmth
of one; sub-glacial volcanoes; fire issuing from icebergs--is this not a
dream of old Uno Von Troil?[338]--a summer without thunder which is
confined to winter; stone crumbling soft under the touch; stalactites
and stalagmites of lava, not of lime, Pluto doing Neptune’s work; rivers
now bone-dry, then raging floods; forests sans trees; fuel thrown up by
the furious sea; deep swamps clothing the high hill-slopes; lakes
supplying ocean cod; and wild ducks swimming the almost boiling springs;
a land where the men draw and carry water, and a population which,
thriving in the worst weather, sickens and dies of malignant catarrh
(the Kruym of the Færoes) when the heavens deign to bestow a rare smile.
Our only _passe-temps_ is that of calculating successive positions on
the chart. There to starboard lies Foula, which some write Fowla and
Foulah, and is evidently Fogla-or Fugla-ey,[339] fowl’s or gull’s eyot.
The claims of the “stately headland” to represent
“Thule, the period of cosmographie,”
have been discussed in another place. It belongs to Dr Scott (R.N.) of
Melby; it numbers about two hundred souls, and it rejoices in a revenue
of some £200 per annum--when fishing and crops are favourable. Like
other islands, it has its magic carbuncle. Beyond it lies Papa Stour;
Papey, the eyot of Culdees and anchorites: its natural arch will appear
familiar after Iceland. About noon we found ourselves off the Færoes,
and the rest of the day was spent upon the Ferry of the Northern Sea. We
steam all unconscious over the “Sunken Land of Bus,” in N. lat. 58° 2´
and long. 29° 55´; “Arctis,” a continent which has lately been revived,
and whose fragments are supposed to be Iceland, the Færoes, Greenland,
Spitzbergen, and Franz-Josef’s Land. This is a restoration, or
rehabilitation, of Unger’s Miocene Atlantis, which imitates Bailly’s “in
having taught us everything but its own name and existence.” Older
hydrographic books assure us that the western coast once “occupied many
leagues of extent, but that after being overflowed, it is now not more
than a league round when the sea is high. There was some years ago a
large island named Finsland here, which was full a hundred leagues in
circumference, and on which were many villages.” Similarly, Brasil Rock
(“Hy Brazile”) was placed in N. lat. 57° 10´ and long. 16°: we have also
the submerged land of Lionnesse (Leonnais) extending to the Scilly group
and the drowned city of Ys, for which mass was recited till the
beginning of the present century; the island of St Brandan, the
Masculine and Feminine Islands, the island Scoria with its archbishop,
and the island Antillia with the “Septem Cidade,” mythical features,
spawns of the old “Atlantis.” Hr Thorsteinnsson of Reykjavik showed me
the origin of Finsland, more generally called Friesland, upon a fragment
of vellum chart, dating from the sixteenth or seventeenth century,
almost “rotten with age,” and ignobly converted into a book-cover.
Evidently the “Isola Frislanda” of Messer Antonio Zeno, in A.D. 1380, is
a mere clerical or cartographic error for the Færoes appearing in the
shape of a large tract of ground close to and south-west of Iceland.
Every map of the period supports its existence.
* * * * *
_June 7._
As we approach Snow-land the north wind seems to fall, or rather, to
judge from the cirrous sky, it blows high overhead. Sailors in these
northern seas believe that after passing beyond the “roaring Sixties”
they begin to sail “under the wind.” In other words, they hold that the
Polar current, rushing to supply the ascending atmosphere established by
solar action at the equator, and forming the upper trades, describes an
arc which touches the earth about lat. 60°; whilst in the higher
latitudes of both hemispheres, the greatest force of the draught is high
overhead. So, on the summit of Tenerife, we stand in a perpetual gale of
upper trades, which farther north sinks to the sea surface and overflows
Europe.
Our situation was none of the most pleasant. An English vessel, also
unprovided with pilot and skilful crew, has lately been wrecked upon the
dangerous and inhospitable southern coast of Iceland. The clammy fog
enwrapping us like a wet blanket, made altitudes hopeless; the magnet is
here bewitched, seeming as if it forgot the pole; the old English
hydrographic charts used on board our ships are poor compared with the
French and the Danish; and we might have been drifted eastward or
westward under the influence of unstudied currents. We crossed the bows
of a big-sterned brig, but as she could not exchange a word with us, we
“Queens” could only say bitterly,
“Barbarus hic ego sum, quia non intelligor illis!”
Under the circumstances we envied Víkingr Floki his consecrated ravens,
birds which, since the days of Genesis, are always supposed to make for
the nearest land. Perhaps I should say before, as the “croaker”[340] has
lately appeared in the mythical seven days’ deluge, related by Sisit
(Xisuthrus), and was a very cannibal from the beginning, as well as a
bird of augury and sagacity. Sir William Thompson has thus ably
discussed the question of raven _versus_ magnet: “We have no certain
information of the directive tendency of the natural magnet being known
earlier than the middle or end of the eleventh century (in Europe, of
course).... That it was known at this date and its practical value
recognised, is shown by a passage from an Icelandic historian, quoted by
Hanstien in his treatise of Terrestrial Magnetism. In this extract an
expedition from Norway to Iceland in the year 868 is described; and it
is stated that three ravens were taken as guides, for, adds the
historian, ‘in those times seamen had no loadstone[341] in the northern
countries.’ This history was written about the year A.D. 1068, and the
allusion I have quoted obviously shows that the author was aware of
natural magnets having been employed as a compass. At the same time it
fixes a limit of the discovery in northern countries. We find no mention
of artificial magnets being so employed or even known till about a
century later. In a curious old French volume by Givot de Provence, of
which the MS. is in the Royal Library at Paris, there occurs the
following very interesting passage, which is the first allusion extant
to the use of needles in place of the natural magnets for the compass:
‘This same (_i.e._, the Polar star) does not move, and mariners have an
art which cannot deceive by the virtue of the magnet, an ugly brown
stone to which iron _adheres of its own accord_. When they look for the
right point, and when they have touched a needle on it, and fixed the
needle on a piece of straw lengthwise in the middle, and the straw keeps
it above, then the point turns just against the star undoubtedly. When
the sea is dark and gloomy that you can see neither star nor moon, then
they bring a light to the needle, can they not then assure themselves of
the position of the star towards the point? By such means the mariner is
enabled to keep the proper course; this is an art which cannot deceive.’
This passage shows clearly that magnetised needles were actually
employed for nautical purposes as they are at present in the twelfth
century.” This interesting quotation concerning the Marinière or _La
Grenouille_, was obligingly sent to me by Principal D. M’Farlane of
Glasgow.
About one P.M. the sea became unaccountably smooth, and as the wind drew
round to the north, we judged that we were under the lee of the land.
Presently it was whispered that a white gleam of shore had appeared and
disappeared over the weather-bow, and that we were running into shallow
water, rendering lead more necessary than look-out, whilst upon all ears
fell ominous sounds:
“the surf that sings,
The bar that thunders, the shale that rings.”
The fog suggested the old traveller’s description, “subito collapsi
sumus in illam tenebrosam rigentis oceani caliginem, quæ vix oculis
penetrari valeret;” and the sea became a “mare tenebrosum” of the most
repulsive aspect. We had intended to make our landfall at the
southernmost extremity of Iceland, Portland Head, some forty-five miles
to the west. But at six P.M. the water, blackened by the uliginous
discharge of an unknown stream, and the dimly-seen pale-grey breakers
furiously lashing the low-lying strand, and blurring it with water-dust,
told us where we were. Immediately in front of us lay the carse, or
alluvial lands, the _déblai_ of those scarped walls that first issued
from the deep: here begins what is technically called the Siða, “side,”
or sea-shore, the long narrow strip of habitable land between the
mountains and the beach. Its western limit is the river Kuðafljót: this,
the broadest in the isle, and ridiculously termed “Nile of Iceland,”
derives its name from Kúði,[342] the little Norwegian boats which
ascended it in the olden day.
We now ran cautiously westward. The southern shore, harbourless as the
corresponding part of Sicily, has in many parts, like Norway, two
coasts, an inner and an outer; the latter composed of reefs and islands,
and somewhat resembling the true or old, and the false or new, shores of
tropical Africa, for instance, about Dahome and the Slave Coast. Slowly
rose on high, towering through the mysterious gloom, the grisly, black,
and scarped form of Hjörleifshöfði, a ghostly castle upon a Stygian
strand. But such weather would deform the fairest face that earth can
show--would reduce the approach of Venice and of Wapping to an absolute
level: as I afterwards saw it in clear sunny weather, Hjörleifs Head is
by no means without a certain grim beauty of expression. The huge
escarpment is a noble monument to him, who “fell by the basest of
slaves” (Irishmen) because he “did not sacrifice to the gods.”
The scene now develops itself and becomes imposing in its cruel
hideousness. We are off the eastern Jökull, so called in
contradistinction to the western Jökull, now best known as
Snæfellsjökull. It is truly Iceland, “everlasting frost,” as oft-quoted
Pindar sings, “and fountains of unapproachable fire.” Beyond the ghastly
greenish waves, and the low base of black, bleak, and barren shore,
appears a contorted _silhouette_ of broken basaltic blocks, a line of
“Kárá Bábás” (Black Papas), rising in towers and battlements, and
setting off the dead whiteness of the hogsbacks above, gleaming whiter
still from their background of angry, watery, purple cloud-rack. The
mighty mass starts from the south with the Mýrdals (mire-dale) Jökull, a
tract of eighty-four square miles, which often gives a name to the
whole; it then connects with the Goðalöndjökull, running east and west
about fifteen to twenty miles long, by twenty to twenty-four broad, and
utterly unexplored, save only the Kötlugjá;[343] thirdly, rising some
way to the westward, the Eyjafjalljökull floats in air, the mighty
beacon which guides to his landfall the sailor voyaging from the south.
Here the southern or warmer exposure, which Dr W. Lauder Lindsay saw
almost bare as late as June 13, shows snow only in the huge rifts
gashing its black tormented flanks; whilst its head is crowned with a
silvery aureole, possibly the reflection of the northern side, and
contrasting sharply with its canopy of slaty-blue sky. The aspect of all
this _nevada_ makes the discoverer’s heart beat fast, but the tremendous
chasms in the basalt suggest peculiar difficulties.
Still our weary skipper, indefatigable withal, was doubtful about his
position, when Professor Paijkull’s volume lying open upon the deck
enabled all to recognise the southernmost point, Portland Head (W. long.
G. 18° 54´; N. lat. 63° 22´). The broad and high escarpment is faced by
three diminutive outliers, and the largest of these is known as
Dýrhóla-cy, door-hill-isle; the Napoleon book translates Dýrhólar by
_tumulus des arches_. Except that the port-holes number two, it exactly
resembles the Doreholm of our Shetland Islands, prefixed by Pinkerton to
John Brand’s “Brief Description.” A little to the east lie the
Reynidrángar (rowan-needles), a sister formation of drongs, but curving
south-eastward and not south-westward.
The freezing wind evidently blew directly from the mighty mass of
snow-roofed glaciers lying immediately behind the shore, and it was
midnight before we had covered the thirty to thirty-four knots
separating Portland Head from the Vestmannaeyjar archipelago. The only
sensible remark made about these “Irishmen’s islands” was by an ancient
seaman who, transferring his quid to the other side of his cheek,
declared that they were exactly like a “toon with ill-liggit sta-a-cks.”
A small but enthusiastic knot of passengers did not turn in before five
A.M.; they were rewarded by seeing sundry cockle-shell craft, the
Norwegian steamer making southwards, and a peak which they determined
satisfactorily, for themselves at least, to be Hekla.
* * * * *
_June 8._
The morning, if we can so call it where night is negative, not positive,
broke clear and cold, the north-westward savouring strongly of
Greenland; and under the rosy sky the western horizon was a white
streak, as though the gleam of an iceblink,[344] adding a strange Polar
charm. After Eyjafjall there is a complete change of feature; the sea
faces a great alluvial plain cut by many broad streams, which breaks
inland into waves of rolling ground, with dots denoting hill and
hillock, and which ends northwards in blue-black ranges jagged with many
a detached peaklet. A host of gulls and terns[345] put in an appearance:
I afterwards passed twice along this line, and found it almost desert of
feather. Our Cockney gun again amused himself by slaughtering and
maiming as many unfortunates as he could--it is only fair to own that
this wanton cruelty was not looked upon with a favourable eye. The
sable-crested and silver-breasted eider ducks with their brown wives
fell easy victims. The same fate overtook the black diver (_Colymbus
Troile_) and the Lundi[346] or puffin (_Mormon Fratercula_ or _F.
Arctica_), called sea-parrot, probably from the disproportionate painted
beak which, however, does not lodge a talking tongue. They could hardly
rise in the smooth sea, for their wings are short as if they were a
transition to the penguins; but they scuttled away, paddling with their
web-feet as fast as we approached them. The feathers of the Lundi are
collected for stuffing, despite their prodigious growth of pediculi. It
is the Shetlanders’ Tommie or Tom Noddy, the Norie of the Orcades, the
Priest of Scotland, and the Pope of Cornwall. Some travellers strongly
recommend puffin-pie stuffed with raisin pudding and baked, but the oily
flesh has a bad name as diet: its chief uses are fuel and fish-bait. Yet
the “pope” or “priest,” the half-fledged bird, is pickled and eaten in
our islands. The Arctic Skúa (_Lestris Thuliaca_, Prey., or
_Stercorarius parasiticus_), the Shetlanders’ Bonxie, kept out of our
reach as it chased and plundered its feathery brethren. It derives the
opprobrious “_Stercorarius_”[347] from a mere scandal, and
“_parasiticus_” from its habit of harrying the tarroch (_Rissa
tridactyla_) and the “graceful sea-swallow,” which Mr P. Miles holds to
be game (_Sterna macrura_). The Icelanders call this “víking of birds”
from its cry, Kjói (pronounced _Kiowi_); and the Færoese Tyovi, “the
thief.” The white-robed Dominican, with its black scapular, has a strong
wing, and the sharp, crooked claws which garnish the web-feet, make him
a raptor addicted, they say, to attacking newly-dropped lambs. The
gannets or solan geese (_Sula Bassana_, whence probably Sulisker, the
Suleskerry or flat, insulated rock never awash) fell before the shot,
but after a short sickness they rose struggling, and winged their way
towards land. These interesting birds, made conspicuous by their
cream-coloured heads and black primaries, form Indian files or wedges
when travelling from place to place, and separate where the tide-rip
shows the sea to be unusually fishy. The “_Pelicanus Bassanus_,” though
connected by name with the Bass Rock, abounds about the Cape of Good
Hope and Madagascar. It is a fowl of many titles. Here it is termed Súla
or Haf-súla (deep-sea Sule); whence our solan, misnamed goose; and the
Dutch know it as Jan van Genter--whence our “gannet” (?) Its fine shape
and flight have probably given it a place amongst the “_singularia
naturæ et providentiæ_,” with which the good Bishop Pontoppidan has
supplied these northern regions. Hence, according to Meyerus (_de
volucri arborea_), the _conchæ avitificæ seu anatiferæ_, birds growing
like African oysters on trees: this fable finds a pendant in Los Pateros
of Manilla, duck-hatching establishments where men incubate the eggs. Mr
James Wilson, speaking of the Solan goose (_Sula alba_) of St Kilda,
computes that the 200,000 birds forming the colony consume between March
and September 214 millions of herrings. Jerome Cardan (Travels in
Scotland) found the “Soland, perhaps Pliny’s sea-eagle,” a bird of
general use. In spring they supplied the garrisons with fuel, to say
nothing of fish; they patiently endured their young to be taken from
them; they have quantities of fat under the skin used for dressing wool
(_hac lanas inficiunt_), and a “certain small gut” yields a grease which
is excellent for pains in the hip-joint. “The profit this bird gives is
manifold, viz., from sticks, feathers, fat, and young ones; and it is
said to amount to 500 golden crowns yearly”--an extinct industry!
We ran along the shore of Krísuvíkrberg, with precipices some 200 feet
high fronting the leprous splotch upon the conical and jagged highlands
that denote the Krísuvík Sulphur Mountain. This formation accounts for
the sandstrips, which look notably yellow after the black lowlands to
the east; and the colour is rendered brighter by quantities of
comminuted sea shells thickly spread on the shore. This south-western
projection is one vast “Hraun,”[348] or cold lava-field, a land
seemingly afflicted with “black death,” yet it rejoices in the title of
Gold-breast Canton (Gullbringu Sýsla); the plentiful fisheries
representing the precious metal. At nine _A.M._ we ran by the “Karl”
(carle or old man),[349] a detached mass standing boldly out from the
lava-crested coast; it has a ridge and steeple, which, especially when
seen from the west, justify the English “Church Rock.” Here, like the
great lava lip beyond, its flanks are white with the guano of the
Filungr or Fulmar[350] (_Procellaria glacialis_), foulest of sea-fowl.
Beyond it is a bunch of volcanic cones and tumuli, spiracles and
hornitos, all bare rock, or clothed with lapilli; one grass-clad crater
appears to be of considerable size, and we easily count four distinct
_coulées_ or discharges spilling over the Palagonite cliffs.
Behind the leprous Karl lies Reykjanes, or Reeky Naze, so named with a
reason. A puff of steam rose high in the air, suggesting, as I read with
astonishment in the _Scotsman_ (June 17th),[351] that “a new Geyser had
burst out at a point a short distance inland, and about twenty miles in
a south-westerly direction from Reikiavik, throwing up a vast column of
water to a height of at least a hundred feet.” The “same outburst was
observed in full play on the homeward voyage of the ‘Queen’” (June 11,
1874), and was held to be “premonitory of an eruption of Hecla.” Had the
writer looked at the large map of Iceland, he would have seen four blue
circlets placed behind Reykjanes to denote warm springs; they are
supposed to be the work of the Skaptarfells eruption, which, in 1783,
threw up Nyöe, “the new island.” The map of Iceland in Pontanus (1631)
shows at this place a “fons commutans lanas nigras in albas.” I may
observe that in the first place we saw only steam, not water, or rather
that we were too far off to distinguish anything but the former.
Secondly, the weather was exceptionally still and rainy; and the damp
air, deficient in barometric pressure, allowed vapours to rise high,
whereas, under opposite conditions, they would be dispersed, or hug the
ground. The Geysirs are said to rage more furiously in wet than in dry
weather; and on arrival at Reykjavik we distinctly observed the fumes of
Laugarnes, which suggested the name “Reeky Bay,”[352] standing up in a
tall, transparent column--it was not seen from the town during the rest
of my three months’ stay. I twice voyaged past the site of my friend’s
“new Geysir;” every glass was pointed shorewards, but none succeeding in
detecting the least trace of water or vapour. In 1862 Mr Symington (p.
46) observed “steam rising from a hot sulphur spring on the coast” near
Reykjanes. Finally, as will be seen, Icelanders who have visited the
spot describe the features as “Hverar,” caldrons, boiling fountains; or
as “Laugar,” baths, tranquil waters.
The Fire Isles being hidden by fog, our attention was drawn to the
mosquito flotilla of fishing-boats around us, each confined to its beat
by the various buoys and buckets. The general appearance of the craft is
that of the Shetlands; Mr Spence compared them with the “Westræ skips,”
but the Icelander is not nearly so solid as ours. The largest carry two
low masts, both strongly supported by backstays; they are clinker-built,
high at stem and stern, with a sharp projection for the rudder, which
fits loosely into two iron eyes, and which often proves worse than
useless. A transverse section forms the letter V; the planks belly out
little, probably for facility of hauling up: the latter process,
especially when the sun is hot, renders them exceptionally leaky, and
want of care causes them to last for a very short time. There is no such
thing as a decked boat in sight; the total of sixty-one to sixty-three
which exists in the whole island being almost confined to shark catching
on the north coast, whilst there are 3092 open boats, with from two to
twelve oars. Row boats are preferred on account of the number of hands
they feed; and hence the unusual loss of adult males, which is said to
average forty per cent. drowned. At all times the crews must run three
to six miles out before arriving at their ground, and repeat the task
after work--a vast waste of time and toil. The craft has plenty of what
the French call _pied_, and will not hesitate to cross the Faxa Fjörð,
some fifty miles broad. The ballast is composed of basalt blocks, and
the numerous sails are mere strips of cloth, for greater convenience of
lowering. The oars are remarkably narrow, the rule even in “The
Islands,”[353] a precaution rendered necessary, it is urged, by the
strong currents. I strongly suspect it to be the mere effect of
“father-to-son” principle. Below the handle, the shape is a heavy
square, on the principle of the Rhine and the Kaikjis on the Bosphorus.
The oars fit into coarse thwarts, lined with hoop-iron, or they play
upon rude wooden pins doubled to the fore. The stroke is very long and
slow, hardly to be recommended for Oxford and Cambridge; and of course
feathering is impossible. Iceland nets are ridiculously small, and are
floated by gourd-shaped bottles of Danish manufacture, closed at the
mouth: these glass balls are also used by Norwegian fishermen. At the
capital there are no lighters; farther north they will show themselves,
shaped like the fisher-boats, but many-ribbed as herrings. Evidently the
first want is a decked vessel of from twenty to thirty tons, which would
employ fewer hands, and show better returns.
The smaller craft are four-oared, and at the landing-place we shall find
two-oared boats: not a gig is to be seen, and the highest authorities
must embark and disembark, if they cannot borrow from a man-of-war, in
these receptacles of slime and filth. The seat is a mere perch,
decidedly not comfortable; baling with the little wooden scoup is hardly
ever thought of, and all are equally wet and greasy. We read in the
Sagas of “long ships,” of dragon ships, and of merchantmen, whose common
complement was some thirty oars: the figure-heads of the Vikings were so
frightful that they terrified the Land-vættir, or local genii; and the
decks were protected by awnings, and “girdled for war” by shield being
laid to shield on rims or rails.[354] Truly, the mariners of Iceland
have lost much by staying at home in ease; and piracy evidently had its
advantages.
The crews of these outlandish “skips” are as degenerate as their craft.
Silken kirtles, gilded helms, and spears inlaid with gold, are as
unknown to them as the “Bisons” and “Serpents” which caused “a furore
Normannorum libera nos, Domine!” to be inserted into the monkish litany.
The men are good for fine weather, but in danger all become captains;
very different from the Danish sailor. The comfortable primitive costume
is gone; the Stakkr, hide blouse or jacket, extending from the neck and
fastened round the waist; the large Sæskór, or water-boots; and the
Leistabrækr, or stocking breeks, also lightly laced about the middle.
The moderns are clad much like our fishermen; they have, however,
sensibly preserved the long-flapped “sou’wester,” now “out of fashion”
in Great Britain. They seem to rejoice in wet feet, wearing three or
four pair of coarse woollen socks, which serve to retain the water. The
only peculiarity of their dress is the Iceland glove, which even the
shepherd and the mountain-guide will never doff. For the convenience of
a dry and clean side near the palm, it has two thumbs, one projecting
from the little finger, as if all were _sexdigitati_, like the Shaykhs
of the Fazli clan near Aden. Little or no provision is taken on board,
and the chief luxury is snuff, the pinch being spread in line from the
root of the thumb upwards, somewhat after the style of the original
Scotch “sneeshin’ mull;” at times the flask is raised to the nose, and
poured in till that member, which ought here to be placed bottom
upwards, is filled. These water-ousels reap golden harvests of cod
during the season, sometimes clearing per diem ten rixdollars a-head;
and if you hire a Reykjaviker two-oar for the afternoon, you will not
pay less than $5. They are rarely long-lived. Privations, fatigue, and
hardships, wet feet, poor food, and defective hygiene soon get the
better of the “_triste laboureur de l’ocean_:” weakened by psora and
ascarides; by obstinate coughs, measles, and hypochondria, he soon
becomes a victim to chronic rheumatism, which will bend the fingers
permanently back, and he dies early of visceral or pulmonary affections,
gout, or paralysis. Better a life of a canvas-back shooter on the banks
of the Susquehanna.
After Reykjanes we bore north (magnetic) along a shore exceptionally
populous: farmsteads and chapels, each perched upon its own knoll, and
not unlike the clachans of Lewis, formed a straggling line, black and
gloomy, surrounded by walls of dry stone. We turned eastward off “Skagi
Point,”[355] a long thin lingula with a beacon at the tip, and with a
dwarf _enceinte_ of dry stone inland, probably a look-out in the old
Víkingr days. Steaming across the big back-bay towards the next
headland, Suðrnes, afforded us for some moments an agreeable surprise.
Right over the gulf called Faxa Fjörð, and distant some forty miles,
rose a long broken dorsum of snow-range, not unlike the Friuli section
of the Carnian Alps, the continuation of beautiful Cadore, as seen in
winter from the Rive of Trieste. Here, however, the projection, a sister
to that of Reykjanes, was terminated by the crescent-shaped head of
Snæfell, the western Jökull, whose two cusps at once denoted the extinct
crater-cup. The _névé_ towered in the lift, catching a golden gleam
which beautifully burnished the virgin silver, whilst above and below it
slaty clouds were based upon a darker sea now smooth and mirrory as oil.
The travelled few on board pronounced the spectacle grander than Mont
Blanc from the Hôtel de la Russie, Geneva, but the fair vision was
transient, and presently a _bonnet de nuit_ of chilly lowering mist
settling down made it a “Pileatus.” To the north-east, and far nearer,
stretched the long sea-arm Hvalfjörð, an inverted arch, with its two
giant steeples Akrafjall and Esja, whilst the scarps of Skarðsheiði
formed the bottom of the great _cul de sac_. Passing clouds of
pseudo-columnar shape, here a common feature, simulated volcanic smoke;
mountain head and shoulders were streaked with snow, whilst at their
feet brooded the sea-fog, a horizontal line of blue mists broken and
detached. Presently the rain came on again, and perforce we confined our
attention to the features close ahead.
The pilot now boarded us, leaving his cockleshell in charge of his mate,
an angry water-rat with otter-like features, the usual fishy eye, and
gold ear-rings, the general usage. We made straight for the little
archipelago, which in this weather appears part of the mainland. The
nearest item was Akrey: as craft in harbour can be seen to the
south-east, and that direction leads straight to shipwreck, “Cornfield
Isle,” a mere grass-grown bulge of rock, has an outlying buoy to the
north-east, warning us off its long projecting point. The next feature
left to port is Engey of the eider duck, a mound provided with the long,
curving and knobbed tail of a scorpion. Then came Öffirs-ey,[356] a bit
of turf-clad basalt, in places sub-columnar: a red buoy, “stone-men” and
a beacon, give warning that its spit is also dangerous. About Öffirs-ey
and Akrey are two islets, the Holmar: the larger and outer, _bombé_ and
slightly grassy, is the Sker (skerry), or Selsker (little-farm-skerry);
and the other, dignified by the name of Grand Holmr, connects, like
Öffirs-ey, with the shore at low water by a traversable natural
causeway. The other islets are Viðey (wood or withy eyot), which we
shall presently visit, and Lund-ey (puffin eyot), at the mouth of
Kollafjörð (ewe firth): there are also sundry shoals and banks scattered
about to the north and west, making the outer roads of Reykjavik safe
enough except when the storm-wind blows from the north-east or the
east-north-east.
The amount of shipping surprised us when we remembered that the first
steamers appeared here in 1854-55. In the roads lay a French frigate,
“Le Cher,” Capitaine Alfred le Timbre, looking taunt and gay: her
consort, “Le Beaumanoir,” Capitaine Maylet, will soon come in from the
east. The Danish gun-boat “Fylla,” the waiting-maid of Frygga, had
lately been outside sounding in preparation for the telegraphic cable:
she is a sister ship of the “Diana,” which also flies a pennant, and
which to-morrow will land the governor of the island. The “Jón
Sigurðsson” had just left, and the “Yarrow” lay inside amongst eight
square-rigged ships bearing the flags of various nationalities, whilst,
drawn up ashore, was a Noah’s ark, in the shape of a Danish galliot,
almost circular, like the old Dutch dogger or the modern Russian
monitor. Five to six steamers in port argued well for progress within
the last twenty years, and presently we shall see the “Heimdall,” called
after the giant foe of Loki.[357] This school-ship for the Danish navy
is a frigate (Captain Skowstrŭp), freighted with thirty-six cadets--a
rather noisy lot. An English yacht which floats like a sea-bird will
also astonish the natives.
The aspect of Reykjavik from the sea is more unlike its description by
travellers than, perhaps, anything that I have yet seen--even Humboldt’s
Tenerife. One expects, after the Haurán-like profile of the coast, to
see a “Giant City of Bashan” rising from the waves. Old sketches suggest
the “negative features” of John Barrow, the miserable show of a few
tarred pent-roofs topping the black shingle, but free trade has changed
all that. Even on this dull day, when it looks its worst, we cannot call
its aspect “_triste, morne, désolé_.” Where, again, are the gaudy
colours noticed by Mr Bryson? We see nothing but dingy-white,
dull-gamboge, verging on rhubarb, slate-grey, and tar-black, a perfect
contrast with the Norwegian town--
“Where tawdry yellow strives with dirty red.”
At both extremities, east and west, the ground is stony, and
rudely-formed basaltic pillars line the water, guarding ragged scatters
of fishermen’s huts. The right point (west) is called the Hliðar-hús
(lith-house), a classical name. On the left a grassy earthwork and a
flagstaff still remain to remind us of a quaint passage in local
history. Icelanders are much given to boasting that their island, which
contains the population of a third-rate English town, was never
conquered; that Thule is still _invicta_. Yet in 1809, Mr Sam. Phelps,
of London, a soap boiler, who considered himself aggrieved by the
authorities, landed a dozen jailbirds from Gravesend, and forcibly took
possession of the capital. He established an independent republic under
the wing of England; and his Cromwell was a Danish seaman, Hr Jörgen
Jörgensen, “Protector of Iceland, and Commander by sea and land.” This
Dictator, a bad Masaniello, seems to have acted with peculiar energy: he
threw up the redoubt; armed it with six small cannon, brought from
Bessastaðir; and hoisted over it the flag of independence, three slit
cods (stockfish) argent in an oval garland, on a champ azure. Better, at
any rate, than Yarmouth, with its three bloaters! The ridiculous affair
was squashed by an English frigate, the “Talbot” (Captain Jones): the
earthwork was disarmed, and the guns were thrown upon the beach; whilst
“Mercator Phelps,” as Bishop Pètursson calls him, Jörgensen, & Co., were
removed to England. It was the second time that the island, “bound in
with the triumphant sea,” nearly fell to the “Britishers’” lot.[358]
Christian II. was upon the point of pledging it, as the Orkneys and
Shetlands were temporarily transferred to the Scottish Crown, but he was
deposed before the bargain was struck.
Between the points lies the inner or boat harbour, clear water in which
floats a crop of “sea-ware,” especially the long, tufty hair of the Hoy
or Haar-teari (_Fucus aculeatus_): it is supposed by some to have named
the Færoe Islands. But, however clean the water, it is considered too
cold for _uso esterno_; and the English eye at once misses the machines
and sheds and other appurtenances of a bathing place. The ripple is
confined by unclean black sand, strewed with boards, nets, and offals of
all kinds, especially thorsk or cods’ heads. There are fair
landing-places, plank pierlets, kept steady by caissons full of stones,
and not removed in winter: the traveller may see the same style all
round the coast, and perhaps he will remember making Venice through the
“Murazzi.” The principal buildings, beginning from the right as you face
the town, are the Glasgow House, the Bridgehouse, the Post-office, the
Club, the merchant stores, and the coal-depots belonging to the
Government and to Mr Slimon. Behind rises the steepled Dóm-Kirkja
(cathedral), and we see with pleasure that the College, _alias_ the
Latin School, is larger and more important than Government House. The
tenements mostly face the beach; the roofs, pitched steep against the
snow, are slated or boarded; tiles are common, and turf is preserved
only by the poorest. They are built of planks like Valparaiso,
earthquakes being not unfrequent; but I could hear only of one fire--a
notable contrast to the “Vale of Paradise,” where the stone house is
impossible, and where being burnt out is purely a question of time.
Above the west point is the Catholic chapel and a windmill; the winds
can never be very violent, or this thing would soon be blown up like a
tent high in the air. The opposite rise is garnished with another
windmill, also lacking steerer; and with a double-storied tower of solid
masonry, called the Observatory. The surface of the upper country has
that dull, dark-green tint, so difficult to shoot against, and so
characteristic of the Emerald Isle in early autumn. The people complain
that the rains have been scant this year, that hay will be scarce and
dear, that the fishing season has been bad, and so forth. The inland
view is bounded by a long, unbroken range, which we shall see on the
first clear day.
All Reykjavik assembled to gape and chat upon the shore, whilst a
torrent of strangers poured on board. They were assailed with questions
by the tourists, and the answers were satisfactory as usual. The Hotel
had been abolished. The Club did not receive guests; never a room was to
be had for love or money. We must pitch tents upon the beach--pleasant
during this weather, a bad November in England! There was hardly a
riding-pony within fifteen miles, although some four hundred were
awaiting embarkment. Guides were unprocurable, all hands at Reykjavik
being thoroughly engaged, and the telegraph scheme making even the
idlest unwilling to take temporary service. No one would change
sovereigns for rixdollars. At the same time, if we would put ourselves
unreservedly in the hands of our kind and courteous informants, who were
of the horsiest, we might possibly find lodgings, ponies, guides,
dollars.
Before landing, I discipline myself severely. From London and Edinburgh,
even from Leith, the fall to Reykjavik being heavy, the traveller’s eye
is apt to view everything through a jaundiced medium, and the
consequence is undue depreciation. Everywhere, and at all times, it is
difficult to find a standing point of comparison from which to prospect
persons and things, and which shall be fair to the subject, and
intelligible to the reader. One man sets out with “the City” in view,
and is called a “Cockney traveller;” another and a numerous class looks
at matters through the spectacles of civilised life in England, perhaps
the easiest way when writing for Englishmen; whilst those who have seen
much of the world make themselves unintelligible and unpleasant (myself,
alas!) by drawing parallels between scenes unknown or unfamiliar to
their Public, who resents the implied slight accordingly. Hence it is
generally said that works of exploration are mostly read only because
they must be read, and that the book which treats of the land best known
to us is that which gives the highest enjoyment. For here we have the
pleasure of comparing the impressions made by the same things upon the
writer’s mind and upon our own, a process far more personal and more
satisfactory than mastering mere discoveries or pursuing a tale of
extraordinary adventure, which we often only half believe. And when
reading travels in absolutely new lands, we feel that we are reading the
opinions of another man, without the concurrence which alone can check
them. But the veteran voyager is a practical “Pantisocrat,” and he must
especially adopt the advice of Juvenal:
“Audeat ille palam qui vidit, dicere vidi.”
And nowhere is greater care required than in studying a mother-city, the
characteristic of its race, the living photograph; the manifest
expression of its manners and customs, and especially of its
short-comings. “Capitals represent doctrines.” Apply this to the old
drab-coloured utilitarian London, now happily passing away, with its
boxes of mean brick and of hideous “stone-colour,” where every man’s
house, reckless of order, regularity, and economy of space, was his
castle, small, dull, and dry as the educated mind; with its Belgravian
“palaces” and wretched porticos, which an hour with a crowbar would
demolish, expressing a rental more than sufficient for a “_hôtel entre
cour et jardin_” in Paris, Vienna, or Rome; with its utterly tasteless
and artless works of art which sadden the civilised eye, looking, a
foreigner observed, as if the foul fiend had scattered them flying; with
its slushy and greasy streets, the richest population in the world being
apparently too poor to keep them clean; and with its shops exposing,
even in Bond Street, corpses of poultry, sheep, pigs, and cattle for the
use of carnivorous denizens. We can hardly wonder when the “wild-cat
correspondent” of the Yankee paper describes it as “a vast wilderness of
dingy brick and stone, of huge half-empty palaces and roaring torrents
of humanity--a money-snatching metropolis where vice and poverty herd
and breed in filthy alleys behind the abodes of the great and wealthy.”
We bid adieu to the “Queen,”
“That white-winged monastery moving still,
Of rugged celibates against their will.”
She leaves for England on the sixth day, and thus five of our
fellow-passengers hardly find time for the shortest scamper across
country. Her captain and her crew have claims upon our gratitude; we are
unanimous in declaring that all are good men and true, and in
recommending them to the author of “Ship, ahoy!” The old traveller ever
prefers the English steamer, even at a sacrifice of comforts. He will
find fair-weather sailors all the world over, but in the day of danger
he will repent having added unnecessary risk to his travels. The French
decision upon the conduct of the “Ville de Havre”--a disgrace to a
civilised people--is another reason for carefully avoiding foreign
craft. Under English, of course, I include Scandinavian and American
(U.S.), and carefully exclude the average Latin race. Yet it is only
fair to say that the P. and O. boats in the Mediterranean have found it
an excellent plan to engage Italian sailors, officered, of course, by
Englishmen. The crews are quiet and trustworthy, thrifty, and
hard-working; a strong contrast with the turbulent, drunken,
ne’er-do-weel which in these days too often represents the old
man-o’-war’s man. In England, a sentimental regard for the name “Jack”
prevents our seeing the immense deterioration of the class owing to the
mixture of “tailors” and good-for-nothing landsmen: my colleagues of the
Consular Service will, however, I think, agree with me that foreign
port-towns would be benefited if many of the so-called “British sailors”
were never allowed to put foot ashore.
CHAPTER III.
REYKJAVIK[359]--THE SUBURBS--THE LODGING-HOUSE--THE CLUB AND THE WAY WE
SPEND THE DAY.
The latitude of Reykjavik--the residence of the governor and the Supreme
Court of Judicature, the episcopal see, and the chief mercantile
station--is N. 64° 8´ 26´´,[360] a little higher than Norwegian
Trondhjem (Thrándheimr),[361] which English books and maps will write
Drontheim, and about that of Archangel. In the map of Pontanus (1631) it
does not appear. About A.D. 1760 it became the chief port, although till
seventy years ago it was a mere scatter of fishermen’s huts sheltering
some 700 human beings. Travellers of the last generation, Hooker (1809)
and Mackenzie (1810), show the extent of improvement: in their day the
townlet had only two streets--much like the Cowgate and Canongate of the
last century. One line of buildings fronted the sea and another set off
from it at right angles. Now we have a fair north-of-Europe port. It has
lately risen from the 1000 or 1600 which travellers generally give it;
the stationary population, according to the census of 1870, was 2024
souls; at this season, when the fair is approaching, we may add as a
maximum 500. I need hardly say that the 50,000 of our hydrographic books
is a misprint.
The sacred pillars of Ingolf’s Hall (öndugis súlur[362]), unduly
translated “door-posts,” or “wooden door,” probably chose Reykjavik
because it is the largest anchorage-ground in this “Canaan of the
North,” and his thralls were justified in reproaching their lord for
preferring so rugged and barren a corner to the more fertile regions
farther east. The harbour is dangerous only when the wind blows off the
Esja _massif_, forcing ships to run out seawards, and the tides of late
years have not flooded the town. The picturesque background will be
described when we can see it. The site is on the northern side and near
the point of the Seltjarnanes (Seal-tarn-naze), a peninsula, whose
lowlands are digitated by the prevalent winds and driving seas.
Henderson very poorly describes the town as “situate between two
eminences that are partially covered with grass:” it is built on both
gently-sloping sides of a dwarf river-valley draining the Tjorn (tarn),
a lakelet to the south, about 800 yards long by 400 broad. The ditch
which has evidently been much larger, and which some propose to deepen
into a port, is crossed by some half-a-dozen bridges, one with iron
rails painted vermilion; it is in the foulest condition; but here
cleanliness is not next to godliness. Throughout Reykjavik a smell of
decayed fish prevails, making strangers wonder how it escapes pestilence
and plague; and the basaltic dust raised by the least breath of wind
causes hands and face to be grimy as at Manchester or Pittsburgh.
The mass of the settlement lies in the dwarf hollow of the streamlet,
somewhat protected from the blasts, and straggles up both slopes of the
rivulet-valley. But for this it would be unpleasantly windy; and, as is
said of Landudno, between two waters is nearly as bad as between two
fires. The neighbourhood is a lean neck of flat and barren ground, with
the sea to the north and south, whilst, in the former direction, the
great Hvalfjörð inlet sharply cutting the Esja and the Akranes blocks,
and backed by the snowy Skarðsheiði, acts as a wind-sail. The same
reason makes the rains exceptionally heavy. The shape is long-narrow for
sea-frontage rather than deep, and the orientation is puzzling as that
of Hebron.[363] I shall call the right flank of the valley east and the
left west, although the correspondence is by no means exact. Along the
shore runs Harbour Street (Hafnar Stræti), with the north side open to
the bay: here are the chief stores and shops, the warehouses and
coal-depots, the Club and the Post-office. At right angles, and to the
west, a High Street (Aðalstræti) stretches some four hundred yards to
the tarn: it begins from the head of the chief pierlet, passing under
the archway of the Bryggju-hús (bridge-or pier-house),[364] a place of
customs, whose occupation long gone is now returning to it. Broad enough
to dwarf the houses, macadamised and straight, like all the best
thoroughfares which cross one another at right angles, it sounds hollow
to the tread, as if walking upon a boiler--the “Rimbombo,”[365] as
Italians call it, not uncommon in newly made ground, which propagates
sound. It is traversed here and there by impure gutters, which are
unwisely covered with iron-cramped boardings: I rejoice to hear that
they were cleaned out for the royal visit. High Street abuts upon a
square and whitewashed wooden building, labelled Hospital in white
letters on a blue ground: here is the chief pump which works a well 12
feet deep, and revetted with dry stone. The first aspect of the gabled
_tout ensemble_ strongly suggests Aldershot.
Turning to the left we reach the Austurvöllr,[366] or Eastern Square, a
kind of Parsons Green, with three built sides, the fourth being still
open towards the tarn. It is the regular camping ground for inland
travellers who pitch their dwarf tents and peg their ponies where a
handful of grass can be nibbled. Here is the “Cathedral,” whose
adjoining cemetery has now disappeared. The houses are built with the
scant regularity of a Brazilian village; they face in every direction
towards the sea, or towards the rivulet-valley, and rarely southwards as
they should do for the benefit of sun. With rare exceptions, they are
all wooden frameworks of joists, filled as in Germany with basaltic
slabs, and mortar blue with dark sand; the walls are boarded over, as
without the stone they would be unsupportably cold and hot. They are
short-lived like the “skips,” requiring frequent repairs, and rarely
lasting beyond thirty or forty years: their endurance depends greatly
upon the quality of the wood; the maximum of age would be nearly a
century, but only when the timber is not mixed with turf and peat,
which, crumbling under sun and frost, causes early decay. Barents’ house
(built 1597), “in the wilde, desart, irkesome, fearfull, and cold
countrey” of Novaya Zemlja, was lately found (Captain Carlsen, 1871),
uninjured by the dry air. On the other hand, the excessive damp renders
danger of fire nugatory, compared with the wooden match-boxes called
houses at Constantinople. It is to be wished that the tenements could be
“telescoped” during the hot weather, as most families pass the whole
year in town. Many of them are revetted on the weather-side with
imported slates, and all are numbered, even as the thoroughfares are
provided with names. There is far more open ground than building, each
“plant-a-cruive” being girt with planks or rails, useful for drying
clothes, and showing no want of wood. The best plots are surrounded by
wire, often a single strand, which has extended to the country parts, or
by walls of dry stones; the latter shelter the sterile dock, with here
and there a stem of angelica, not unlike a wild artichoke. The land,
neatly hoed in straight lines drawn between two pegs, and raked by the
women, is planted with “Garden sass,” especially parsley and fennel,
kail and turnips; fine cauliflowers, cabbage and potatoes; the latter
will not ripen till the end of August, when snow has left the
mountain-tops. Radishes must be set in boxes guarded by wooden hurdles
or by nets to keep off the birds; they are fair-sized but hollow and
flavourless. The rare flowers are chiefly geraniums and fuchsias,
pansies and marigolds; but as in Norway and the North generally, flora
flourishes best in pots behind the little half-blinded windows; here the
oleander will be a whole foot high. Of fruits, we find chiefly the hardy
currant, and a few gooseberries and strawberries, with a southern
exposure, mostly protected by glass. In 1810, it will be remembered,
there was “not a single garden or vegetable of any kind growing in the
place.”
On the right side of the main drain, and higher than the “Pelouse,”
rises the Latin School, ridge-roofed, tiled, coloured rhubarb-yellow,
and provided with a shallow façade of three windows, as many being
pierced in both wings. To the south is the College Library, a plain
building of large basaltic blocks, partially whitewashed; the glass
panes look as if they carried the dust of ages. Farther down stream, and
a little above the right bank, is Government House, a substantial barn,
also of whitewashed stone, fronted by a well drained slope, and a bit of
meadowland, courteously called a garden; its dignity is denoted by a
tall flagstaff. It was originally an almshouse, and a tugthús (jail);
old travellers tell us that, as the poor preferred its comforts to their
wretched homes, it was not easy to keep certain citizens out of it.
Count Trampe, a governor whose hospitable name is well remembered,
especially by travellers, left it a one-storied building; the present
occupant added a second floor. The houses on a level with the open drain
below are to be avoided; the air during a sunny day is like that of a
hot-house without the perfume, and the nights are stifling to an extent
for which a stranger is not prepared. Here is the photographic
establishment of Hr Eymundsson, who saves his guests expense as well as
trouble.
The houses of the “honoratiores,” the “upper ten,” are in the sole of
the valley, and the east is here the “West End,” boasting of the Palace,
the Library, and the High School. Lower down lie the Bishop Pètur
Pètursson; the Chief-Justice Hr Jonassen; the Land-Fógeti, or treasurer,
Hr Thorsteinssen, who is also Bæar-Fógeti (Danicè, By-foged) or mayor of
the city; the Land-læknir, or head physician of the island, Dr Jón
Jónsson Hjaltalín; the French Consul, M. Randrŭp; the editor of the
local paper, Hr Procurator Guðmundsson; the Postmaster, Hr Finsen; and
the college professors. The principal building on the west or left bank
of the river-valley is the old “Glasgow House,” which has passed through
various phases. It was originally built by Messrs Henderson & Anderson
for a dwelling-place and warehouse, as shown by the belvedere, the
crane, and the dwarf tramway. When that firm came to grief by trusting
to native agency, it became a hotel: hence the “Iceland Reader,” by Hr
Lund says:
“Thar er gestgjafa hús” (here you will find a hotel);
“Thað er ekki slæmt” (it is not a bad one).
But the hostelry followed the rule of all such civilised appliances in
these regions--failed, and was sold to a Norwegian house. It fetched
$6000 (rixdollars), and was a good bargain to the purchaser; various
debts were recovered, to the tune, they say, of nearly double the value.
It is too big, the ceilings are too high, and the windows admit far too
much air.
The most characteristic part of Reykjavik are the suburbs of the
Tómthúsmenn,[367] or empty-house men, mostly fishermen who have no
farms, and consequently no cattle. We will visit the west (not West)
end built between a swamp abutting upon the sea, and the normal knobbed
meadow-land, where a few cows fight against starvation. It is cut by a
bit of made road, and another runs east to the Laxá or Salmon
River--these are the only Macadams in the island. The by-streets of our
suburb become mere lanes, and the _impasse_ is far more common than the
thoroughfare. The few good houses of wood are raised upon foundations of
basalt or brick laid edgeways, which keep out the damp like the piles of
Fernando Po. They are entered by dwarf ladders, instead of the usual
sandstone flags imported from abroad. These “magalia” will float off to
sea unharmed, like Gulliver’s cage, and not break up for a long time.
The empty-house men, who far outnumber all the other classes, adhere to
what represents the Irish shanty, the cabin of the Far West, and the
Eskimo’s earth-covered hut. The primitive fashion, preserved even in the
capital, is an oblong parallelogram of basaltic blocks, alternating with
peats by way of mortar--_cespite pro cæmento adhibito_--where tons of
mussels and shell-fish[368] cumber the shore. The houses look as if
shoving shoulders together against the wind, rain, and snow. The walls
are sunk in the surface to the extent of a few feet, beyond which the
ground is never frozen;[369] they are raised three or four feet high,
with the same thickness as at the base, and battering a little inwards.
One of the short ends is left open for a doorway; sometimes additional
defence against wind is secured by a side-adit, a small, wooden,
pent-roofed sentinel, like the office of an East Indian tent. This shell
supports an acute-angled or equilateral triangle of wood: formerly birch
boughs were used, now pine planks are largely imported from Denmark, as
we see by the stacks scattered over the settlement. The steeply-pitched
slopes, revetted with peat sods a foot square, yield a superior crop of
grass--a hint of what may be done by “scalping” and draining. The gable
generally shows the wood well daubed with blistering tar, which soon
turns red and rusty; here are mostly two single-paned, white-framed
windows, the larger one lighting the gun deck or lower floor, and the
smaller the upper deck, loft or garret. The old chimney was a tub; now
there is an iron tube or a square pipe of bricks: a cowl like a
“fly-cray,” two bits of flat wood attached to a perpendicular, and
moving with the wind, cures smoking; and where there is a weather-cock,
it is the bird that warned Peter of his fall. Some of the larger
establishments will have four or five of these pointed gables; and the
smaller are often so small that we admire how human beings can get into
them.
[Illustration: COTTAGE IN REYKJAVIK.]
The characteristic building of the fishermen’s quarter is the
Hjallr,[370] or “wind-house,” acting like the Skeo of the
Scoto-Scandinavian islands; which, however, is a mere shed of dry
stones. Here it is mostly an open cage of wooden uprights and
stretchers, roofed over against the weather--a superior style of drying
fish, especially cod. The body is either hung upon a line (hengi-fiskr
or flattr-fiskr), or salted and stretched upon a rock
(harðr-fiskr).[371] When dry and ready for embarking, it is heaped up on
the beach and covered with stone-weighted boards. Even more unpleasant
features are the vats and pits in the ground, where sharks’ livers[372]
and cods’ sounds and bladders are left to form, with the addition of a
little iodine, cod-liver oil. After this we cannot complain of the
salting operation, done usually in some old ship’s tank.
The beach is the normal scene of a European fishing village, a chaos of
anchors, old masts and spars, nets and wooden floats, clothes and
waterproofs hung up to dry; blue petroleum barrels from Scotland; big
piles of wrack-thatched turf, and drawn-up boats, the sails being left,
whilst the rudders are taken home. We see some three carts in one place.
Travellers in the early nineteenth century tell us that not even a
wheelbarrow can be found at Reykjavik: now hand-carts stand in every
business street, and at times a carriage drawn by two ponies, and full
of people, attracts every head to the window. When the made road shall
be prolonged east and west, the settlement will become civilised, as our
Accra on the Gold Coast.
The rude succedaneum for the wheelbarrow, which still lingers even at
Trieste, is a straight stretcher carried by two men. But the race is
thoroughly unmechanical, as we might expect from its social state. A
local philanthrope gave one of the peasants a small sledge, to save him
from trudging under a heavy box over the deep snows; the consequence was
that the box was slung to the back, whilst the sledge depended down the
breast. This reminds me of S’a Leone, where a British negrophile sent
sundry wheelbarrows for the benefit of the “poor black” navvies: the
barrows were duly filled with earth, and hoisted upon the negro’s head,
where he wisely carries everything, even his toothpick. Many of these
fishermen have been sailors, and the chances are, that if the Cockney
traveller chaff them with, for instance, “How did you leave the old
‘ooman?” they will straightway reply, “A’ right, s’r!” They touch their
hats as strangers pass, but this patriarchal custom will soon disappear
before the presence of steamers. The children clamber about the boats,
and swing by cords from the masts even as Bedawin boys play upon camels’
backs; they toss up with fish tails; they chase the black cats like the
denizens of Lilliput-Land; they bully the dogs, and they harness a pig
on the rare occasions when one lands. “Gi’ me a skilling!” the “Gie me a
yap’ny” of Wales, is sometimes heard--in fact “bakhshish” is not utterly
unknown in these hyperborean lands. Yet it is only fair to confess that
not a single professional beggar is to be seen at Reykjavik.
Our hunt for lodgings ended in a short and sharp run in. A young
Englishman, who had spent some time here, led us ashore. After rejecting
the noisy tavern, and vainly seeking shelter at the Hospital,[373] whose
civil matron was once the handsomest woman in the island, we presently
found cover under the roof of Frú Jonassen, sister of Geir Zoega, the
guide, and married to a Dane, whose over-affection for Bacchus confines
him mostly to his couch. The house deserves description: it is the
normal bourgeois dwelling-place of the capital, very different from that
of the country. The little box is revetted with rhubarb-coloured
boarding, and covered by a black tarred board-roof. Its entrance
debouches upon a hall no bigger than a bird cage, with a door to the
right and the left; you must duck head as you enter them, and--never
forget this precaution in Iceland. The first _pièce_ is a bedroom some
15 feet long by 8 broad and 8 high; the single window has a half blind,
but neither curtains nor shutters. Strangers complain loudly of such an
unnatural thing as the broad glare of day at midnight, and indeed the
effect of a horizontal sun, impinging upon the ground, is not very
unlike the noon of an English November. At first, we envy those on
board ship who can darken their cabins. Sound sleep is difficult under
the stimulus of light which allows you to read the smallest print;
presently we secure it by hanging up one of the dame’s flannel
petticoats. The people, and especially the children, seem to take their
rest at and till any hour: the maternal admonition “Ten o’clock, go to
sleep” is here unknown; the “early to bed” of the proverb, and the
doctor’s dictum about the benefits of slumber before midnight, are clean
forgotten. I puzzle myself to divine how a Moslem would time his prayers
in Iceland.
The bedroom contains two apple-pie-shaped box-beds, some three feet
long, which startle the traveller till he sees them drawn out; they are
covered with the familiar eider-down coverlet of Germany, under which
you may perspire and freeze to your heart’s content: no wonder when,
next to hare’s fur, it offers the greatest obstacle to
heat-transmission, consequently you always kick it off. Presently we
shall exchange the vile eider-down pillows and coverlet for a clean
waterproof blanket, and dislodge our pests by means of the insecticide
powder invented in near Dauphiné, and consequently derived by commercial
humbug from distant Persia. The “B flat” at once put in an appearance,
and the people accounted for it by some German musicians having lately
been their lodgers: we afterwards found that the pest is not indigenous,
and similarly it has been imported into the Færoe Islands from
Copenhagen. The livelier animalcule is well--too well--known. The
sitting-room inside is also wainscotted, and of the four shutterless
windows, only half of one is made to open; they are never doubled, which
shows that the cold cannot be intense; yet at times the wind must
whistle through them as through a summer-house.
Each room has a stove, backed by a blackened wall, the best are the tall
German cylinders, and fire is the _côté faible_ of the capital. A little
heap of peat smoulders in the kitchen behind the bedroom, and thus hot
water, a prime necessary, is very scarce. The furniture consists of a
central drugget, a round dinner-table, a square writing ditto, a
work-table, a commode, a tall armoire, and sundry horsehair chairs, with
a sofa, which must often act bed. In the rear of the kitchen is a
microscopic pantry wherein it is not good to peer. Above us, a grenier
occupies the sharp angle under the roof; here the family lives, and
there is no sleep between 6.30 A.M. and 11 P.M.; they seem always to be
clearing the decks for action. At the back of the house a yard reeks
with impurities, and on both sides cages for drying fish give the
well-known ancient smell. That human beings can live and enjoy health in
the “stifled filth” of Damascus; of Mile-end, Old Town, or of Trieste
(Città Vecchia), argues, they say, peculiar excellence of climate, and
the deduction certainly applies to Reykjavik.
The comely middle-aged dame, who speaks a few words of English, has no
children except those whom, after popular Icelandic fashion, she has
adopted. An aged Cinderella, a bundle of waste dry-goods, hardly human,
haunts the kitchen, whilst Christiana, an artificial daughter of the
house, is the Kellnerin. She is a good-looking lass with the fresh
complexion and the _blond cendré_ hair, one of Iceland’s charms, which
are here the rule; her dress is fine Wadmal of dark colour; and her
large feet, which terminate solid supporters, are encased in the island
slippers, giving a peculiarly lumping tread: a bright plaid apron and a
grey woollen shawl for visiting, complete her toilette. She never knocks
at the door and she slams it with a hideous noise--the neat-handed
Phyllis and the light fantastic toe have not yet come so far north. When
serving us she ejaculates mechanically “Værsgu,” the Danish “Vær saa
god”--be so kind--extensively used throughout Scandinavia, and now
imported into Iceland. Mightily dull of apprehension she appears,
especially after the sharp-witted Syrians, and the dialogue with us
Anglo-Indians is frequently as follows:
“Here you, Kitty, heitt vatn.... Why, you don’t know your own language!
Water hot!”
Answer passive and stolid: “Hvað?”
“Oh what a girl you are! Samajtá? You almost deserve to have a vote. I
say, ‘water hot!’”
“Hvað segið” (what say ye)?
“Will you have a drink, Kitty? Where’s mamma? HOT WATER, I tell you.”
“Hvað segið thèr” (what do you say)?
And so forth, _ad infinitum_. Yet in Iceland Jomfru (Icel. Jungfrú)
Christiana is the gem of a waiteress, and in her leisure moments she
will act _bacheliere ès lettres_--in fact, she readily adapts herself to
our little bachelor ways.
Frú Jonassen agrees to lodge and find us in “small breakfast” or early
coffee, and big breakfast at ten A.M., for $1, 3m. 0sk. (say 3s. 5d.)
per diem, and for an equally reasonable sum to house our spare goods
when travelling. “Washing is of course cheap where there are so many
feminine spare hands.[374] The tea is vile, having been drunk at least
once. Water is almost throughout Iceland excellent, cold, clear, and
slightly flavoured with iron, like the sparkling produce of the Haurán
and other basaltic lands. Coffee and brennivín (schnapps) may be called
the national drink, and the people pride themselves upon the former:
after our senna-like potions farther south it is admirable, but it must
not be compared with that of the nearer East. The bean is never good,
even England cannot afford the true Mocha monopolised by the United
States: still it is never stinted,[375] and it lacks the odious
_chicorée_ so popular across the Channel. It is burnt black instead of
brown as in Arabia; it is milled in lieu of being pounded, and the brew
is made in a venerable flannel strainer-bag placed where the kettle’s
lid should be. The consumption is even more extensive than in Germany:
large cups and sometimes bowls are served strong and hot several times a
day, and are always offered to the stranger guest. Some find fault with
the excess, but they forget that coffee prevents waste of tissue, and
that a heating drink is necessary in cold, damp climates where the diet
is poor. The sugar is white loaf, and the cream thick as curds, we never
see such luxury in England; sheep’s milk is kept for cheese, and
Reykjavik ignores the national Skýr.
At seven A.M. we have _café au lait_, rusks, white bread and brown, or
rye loaf, which we all prefer. Breakfast is substantial as in northern
Scotland. The staple is fish, notably cod, boiled or grilled, but all
poor, small, and watery: a “head and shoulders” equal in size or flavour
to those of our own country is rare as the _Spatium admirabile rhombi_
farther south. “Tout ce qui vous plait--mais pas de poisson” is the
frame of mind which soon follows pure ichthyophagy. Meat is always
mutton, the liver and kidneys being apparently preferred; “Carnero no es
carne,” says the Gaucho, and at last we sigh for the Murghí (fowl) at
which the Anglo-Indian turns up his sybaritical nose. Hens’ eggs are
equally uncommon; those of the eider-duck, boiled hard, are rarely
wanting at this season. They are about as large as turkeys’, with
dirty-green shells, and very white albumen; the stranger enjoys them at
first, but, like the Pallo fish of Sind and the “palm-oil chop” of
Guinea, they are too rich; they pall upon the palate, and they are
pronounced to be rancid and _gluants_; besides which they are rarely
quite fresh, the one virtue of an egg. Potatoes are not always to be
had; those grown in the island are waxy and taste like soap; the best
are imported from Denmark and even these cannot be praised.
It must be observed that the Reykjavik lodging-house has a great
advantage over that in England, which exists by petty overcharges and by
small robberies. Here also a strange tongue and foreign habits conceal
that fearful caricature of “society” ever prominent at home. The chief
bane of poverty is not so much that it renders man ridiculous, as that
it brings him into contact with a life-form of which only Mr _Punch_ can
make fun. I envy the _richard_ in civilisation only because the talk of
the Vestibule does not reach the Peristyle: his wealth removes him from
all knowledge of what is going on within a few yards of him, the mean
jealousies, the causeless hatreds, the utter malice and uncharitableness
which compose “high life below stairs.”
By way of simulating civilised existence we converted the tavern into a
club, and dined there daily. It is the usual little board-house in the
High Street, and the northern wall backs a couple of trees some five
feet high, the Sorbier, or service apple (_Sorbus aucuparia_). Another
may be seen in the governor’s “compound,” but apparently one-half of it
has lately paid the debt of nature. The dining-room is a stuffy little
box, and it is useless to open the windows as they will at once be shut.
Often some unwashed and burly traveller from the country precedes us for
a feed; a sewing-machine awaits our departure, and we are serenaded by
the monotonous croon of the nurse above. Sometimes she breaks out into
“Champagne Charley,” with the true British “rum-ti-tiddy” style of
performance. The capital has evidently forgotten the “beautiful
lullaby,” Ljúflingsmál, composed by a calf-father, and sung at the
window; but we have an abundance after this fashion:
[Illustration: Music score
_Et sic ad infinitum._]
On the other side of the hall is the drinking saloon, and beyond it the
billiard-table, a highly primitive affair in which the slower balls
describe graceful segments of circles: the Russian game is the
favourite, and “the price is a penny--it is no more.” The dingy little
room is mostly crowded in the evening, peasants and visitors in rags act
wall-flowers, whilst the _jeunesse dorée_ performs in the centre--yet
note that neither Kirkwall nor Lerwick owns a billiard-room. Groups
gather at the tavern door, and there is more life than usual in the High
Street. Women flock to the large pump and bear away their full pails
with a square fender of lath, like a falconer’s cage; the long bearded
and ragged water-carrier is a local _curio_, and the one carriage
sometimes passes. Young ladies, escorted as in France by the _bonne_,
troop by to shop or to pay visits; and now and then an “Amazone,” very
unlike her Dahoman sister, ambles by on her little “sheltie.”
The proprietor of our club was Hr Jörgensen, a Dane, formerly valet to
Count Trampe; he began by hotel-keeping at the Hospital, but when that
failed to keep him he wisely took the pot-house which paid well. He was
an independent landlord, disdaining to tout for new comers, and not even
advertising himself by means of a sign-board: in fact, he cared for
nothing as long as he could tap a barrel of beer per diem. At the end of
the season he sold the house and goodwill for $12,000 to Mr Askam, a
Yorkshireman, and returned to his native country a “warm man.”
[Illustration: THE ANGLO-ICELANDIC HOST.]
You dine at Hr Jörgensen’s _café beuglant_ for the very moderate sum of
one rixdollar per diem, including even coffee and _petit verre_, but not
including the “cheap Gladstone” which would be distasteful to the
Oinomathic Society of Edinburgh. The hour is three P.M.; you fight for
five with the good-tempered mistress and often you lose the battle.
Appetite is never wanting near the North Pole, and Reykjavik is a
thirstier place, the result of evaporation, than even the banks of
Brazilian Sâo Francisco. High spirits, fine air, and free ozone--if such
a thing there be--are proof against the excessive greasiness of
Icelandic cookery where, however, it must be owned that melted butter
now takes the place of tallow. The people have learned the use of salt,
which formerly they ignored like the Guanchinets (Guanches) of Tenerife,
not to say islanders generally: it is hard to see the hygienic value of
the condiment amongst eaters of fish and meat, however necessary it may
be to a vegetarian race like Brahmans and Banyans. Icelanders still
prefer spices: the nutmeg, clove, and cinnamon which are mixed, in place
of pepper, with sorrel or scurvy-grass (_Rumex acetosa_); and the sugar
which is added, even to cabbage, gain for the cook anything but our
blessings. Rice pudding with a sauce of currant jelly and water by way
of molasses or the Syrian “dibs” (grape-syrup), often after the fashion
of Dotheboys’ Hall, precedes soup, and the latter is not rarely
milk-soup, or Sod Suppe, the sweet broth of Norway, a slab compound of
sago, dry cherries, raisins or plums, coloured with the juice of the
imported Tyttebær, _Vaccinium myrtillus_ and _vitis-idæa_; the Bláber of
the Færoes and our own bilberry or blaeberry, red whortleberry or
cowberry.
The salmon is excellent, firmer, finer, curdier, and leaner than with
us; unfortunately it is cut up into slices. We make ample acquaintance
with Australian and other preserved meats, and as might be expected, we
find baking in lieu of roasting which seems now almost confined to
England--the _rationale_ of the regrettable change is that it saves
fuel. The cheese is certainly not from Cheese-shire; it is about as good
as bad Gruyère: there is a dark sweet stuff called Mysust (_mysa_, whey,
and _ostr_, “yeast” cheese), made of pressed curds, which the traveller
will certainly not prefer to the Gammell ost, the “old” or common cheese
of Denmark.
There is a tolerable beer misnamed Baiersk (Baerisch), and imported from
the Continent--I do not know where Metcalfe learned that barley brew is
made at Reykjavik. The Schoppe costs threepence, whereas the Rödvin, or
Vin-de-pays, much like vinegar, and by courtesy called claret, fetches
five marks or nearly a rixdollar per bottle. The people avoid the
ancestral ale because it is supposed to give neuralgia, and prefer
“Brazilian wine;” here Brennivín, korn-schnapps, or rye brandy which is
always drunk raw. English travellers declare that they cannot enjoy it
on account of the harmless, or rather the beneficial, aniseed with which
it is flavoured: so Sir Charles Napier, the sailor, ordered casks of
Syrian Raki to be started overboard because it must be poisonous, as it
whitened the water--simply the effect of the condiment. The sensible
traveller will prefer this unadulterated spirit to the vile potato
brandy from Canada, coloured with burnt sugar and perhaps flavoured with
an infinitesimal quantity of mother-liquor, the impostor which now
passes itself off to the world as Cognac.
The tavern and _table d’hôte_ have now passed under the rule of Jón
Zoega, No. 7 High Street, and his pretty wife works hard to secure a
clean house and good cookery. The stranger on landing should at once ask
for the “head guide,” Geir Zoega, who can always find bed and board at
his brothers or his sisters. Other lodgings are by no means so
comfortable, especially those fronting the ditch, by courtesy called a
canal.
The day at Reykjavik is simple. Sleep is sound as appetite is hearty,
and assimilation of food expeditious. When the infantry overhead opens
its eyes, you proceed to the “chhotí házirí” (little breakfast), and you
pass the time in reading and writing till the real affair about noon
breaks the neck of the day’s work. A visit or two and a long walk land
you at the dinner hour--there is no better plan for the
student-traveller than to make himself thoroughly familiar with a single
section of the country which he is learning, so that during his
field-work he may confine himself to the observation of differences.
After dinner--at five or six P.M. if possible--another and a shorter
walk, weather permitting, prepares for a few hours’ reading before
bed-time. The monotony may be varied by picnics and excursions, gun or
fishing-rod in hand, more, however, for the sake of doing something than
in view of sport. Were I a Reykjaviker my rule would be to hybernate, to
be “bedded in,” during the eight months of cold season:
“Me levant tard, me couchant tôt,
Dormant fort bien;”
and to be “potted out” with late spring, so as to pass as much as
possible of the summer wide-awake and in the open air. Yet winter here
is the “season,” the gay time, when balls last from six P.M. to six
A.M.; and “society” at the capital apparently looks forward to the
“disease of the year.”
CHAPTER IV.
SUNDAY AT REYKJAVIK--DRINKING IN ICELAND.
_Sunday, June 9._
The Iceland Sunday begins at six P.M. on Saturday, and ends at following
six P.M.; this precession is the case with the days in general; thus
Sunday night here is the Saturday night of Europe. Apparently
Scandinavia is the only part of the Western World which preserves a
chronometry directly imported from the East. We find it everywhere
amongst Jews and Moslems; and Genesis (i. 5) tells us that Arab or Gharb
(evening) and Bakar (morning) formed the first day or period before the
sun came into being. The old Germans and Gauls computed, we know, by
nights, and not by days; and the Teutons probably borrowed it from the
Celts: it survives amongst ourselves in such terms as sen’night and
fortnight. At Reykjavik we distinguish the “Sabbath” by the amount of
flying bunting; every store has its flagstaff, and the merchants as well
as the consuls claim a right, as in the Brazil and Zanzibar, to sport
their colours, which are, however, always Danish. The “church-going
bell” begins to ring, and the doors to open, about 11.15 A.M.: the
people much prefer the lively measure of their own summons to the
monotonous system of England, whilst the chimes of the Royal Exchange, a
national disgrace, provoke their contempt. Service does not commence
till near noon, the usual time in the island where many of the
congregation have long and rough rides.
The Dómkirkja (cathedral) in the Austurvöllr has often been described
externally and internally; the “Napoleon book” and others, however, make
it all of stone instead of being partly brick. The older basaltic
building may be seen in Mackenzie, and the last additions bear date A.D.
1847. Its outside is shabby as the People’s Palace at Sydenham; the
unclean yellow plaster has fallen from the distempered walls, the result
of mixing salt sea-sand with the mortar; and the same is the case with
the College and the College Library. “Rispettate la Casa di Dio” should
be writ large upon every corner of this nondescript. A clerestory, with
double windows, partly stained, those on the ground floor being single;
a low-tiled ridge for the chancel; a higher pent roof for the nave and
aisles; and a tall wooden tower, revetted with boiler-plate, compose
what the polite call Gothic, the uncivil “Bastard Nothing.” Utility is
consulted by a weather-cock and a clock, serviceable to regulate time
where no gun, even for saluting purposes, must be fired, lest H.H. the
eider-duck take fright. The front, which is turned west, with a highly
orthodox regard for orientation, shows the three windows of Roman
Catholic architecture; and the Lich-gate,[376] never wanting in Iceland,
is the normal house-hall: it is flanked to the right and left by flights
of steps leading aloft. And the roof is now water-tight.
[Illustration: THE LICH-HOUSE, CEMETERY, REYKJAVIK.]
The inside is better kept than the outside. The ambulatorium and wings
are all hard benches, with stiff, straight backs, but not divided into
pews. The upper galleries along the long walls are supported by square
and round wooden beams and pillars; the tint is characteristic
salmon-colour. Over the entrance is the succedaneum for the
Narthex-gallery, an organ loft, a cage like that used for women in the
Melchite churches of Syria. On the left side of the nave hangs the board
showing the lessons of the day; on the other and outside the chancel is
a pulpit, with gilt gingerbread work. The holy of holies is very
Lutheran, the usual blending of Catholicism with Protestantism, which
marks the first step when consubstantiation took the place of
transubstantiation. There is an altar--not a communion table--surmounted
by a full-length figure of the Saviour, with a sleeping disciple and a
Roman soldier as usual unusually alarmed; its frame supports a cross,
and the _tout ensemble_ is an evident derivation from the Iconastasis or
Rood-screen. Upon the altar, besides an open Bible and a chalice, with
pall but without bourse, two brass candlesticks of ecclesiastical aspect
bear lighted tapers, and eight medallions of the popular cherubim adorn
the boarded wall. The railing is of brass perpendiculars, with wooden
horizontals, and a cushioned step is knelt upon by communicants
receiving the wafer. The gem of the building is the font of Bertel
(Albert) Thorvaldsen, whose features, figure, and character prove him,
though not born in Iceland, to have been essentially an Icelander.[377]
The font has been described as a “low square obelisk of white marble:”
it is the ancient classical altar, with basso-relievos on all four
sides, subjects of course evangelical; on the top an alto-relievo of
symbolical flowers, roses, and passifloræ, is cut to support the normal
“Döbefad,” or baptismal basin. Some have blamed its un-Christian shape,
without taking notice of its use; others have reported that the
inscription has been erased; unhappily we still read such latinity as
“TERRÆ SIBI GENTILICIÆ ... DONAVIT.” The sacristy contains some handsome
priestly robes, especially the velvet vestment sent by Pope Julius II.
to the last Catholic bishop and martyr(?), Jón Arason, in the early
sixteenth century, and still worn by the chief Protestant dignitary at
ordinations. All have been carefully described: they reminded me much of
the splendid vestments displayed in the Armenian convent at Jerusalem
during Holy Week, and of the specimens of old embroidery, of rich
stuffs, rare and interesting, that are worn at certain parts of the
Protestant service by the officiating clergyman of Transylvanian
Kronstadt. “It is a strange contradiction,” says Bonar, “to the spirit
of Lutheranism; and the rich, almost royal, robe ill accords with the
studied plainness of the other parts of the dress, in which is not a
trace of colour, of flowing lines or beauty. But the dissonance to the
feelings is greater, for one could not but feel it as such, to see the
magnificent chasuble which the priest had worn at the altar--so highly
prized as only to be used on the most festive occasions--now employed
for some everyday purpose unconnected with any holy mystery.” Six
votive tablets of silver metal hang against the wall, in memoriam of
departed dignitaries.
Presently enters the Rector, Hallgrímr Sweinsson, attended by Síra
Guttormr, a candidate for ordination. He has walked to church in black
robes, with the broad and stiffly-crimped white ruff, the Fraise à la
Medicis, which is seen from Iceland to Trieste: the poorer clergy in the
island, as in Norway and Denmark, do not use it on account of the
expense. His close-cut hair and peaked beard give him the aspect of an
old family portrait dating from the days of the Stuarts. Presently,
assisted by a bustling clerk in a white surplice, he dons the purple
vestment with a yellow cross down the back--it will be remembered that
the cope and the vestment were long retained by the Reformed Church in
England. Síra[378] Hallgrímr thus attired stands up and intones with
rotund mouth and a good voice somewhat like a Russian papas: he has been
seven years in Denmark, yet he speaks no French, and very little
English. The congregation, which is certainly not crowded, first joins
in a long, a very long, hymn; after this come the prayers of the
Lutheran rite; and finally, a thirty-minutes sermon for the benefit of
the nodders and the noddees. The service lasts at least two hours,
therefore the people rarely sit through it: the men especially disappear
for a few minutes, and return when they please with a faint aroma of
tobacco, which no one remarks; whilst many strangers see it through by
instalments. The governor, who was visiting, did not attend, nor did the
bishop, who was unwell.
The first aspect of the congregation was a novelty, especially after
reading sentimental descriptions of man, whose “œil est pensif; son
attitude nonchalante et sa démarche engourdie,” and of woman, whose
“traits respirent la douceur et la resignation.” The latter are
naturally far more numerous than the former; firstly, the ceremony is in
their line, and secondly, they preponderate in the population. They
mostly affect the left aisle, whilst both sexes are mixed in the right.
Few of the men sport broadcloth and chimney-pot hats; and these latter,
when worn, are mostly of the category known as “shocking bad.” The usual
habit is a Wadmal paletot, the creases showing “store-clothes,” and a
billycock or wide-awake; the students carry caps, and the general look
is that of the Bursch, without his swagger and jollity. The
distinguishing article is the “Islandsk Skór,” Iceland shoon, of which I
have deposited a specimen at the rooms of the Anthropological Institute.
It is a square piece of leather--sheep, calf, seal, or horse--longer and
broader than the foot; the toes and heels are sewn up, the tread is
lined with a bit of coloured flannel, and the rim is provided with
thongs like our old sandals. It corresponds with the Irish “brogue,” as
shown in heraldry; the Shetland Rivlin, or Rullian; the Revlens or
Revelins of the Scoto-Scandinavian islands; the Red Indian Mocassin; the
Pyrenean Spartelle; the Zampette of Sicily; the Roman Cioccie; the
Opanke of the Slavs; and the Mizz, which Egypt and the nearer East,
however, are careful to guard with papooshes. It is one of the very
worst _chaussures_ known; it has no hold upon snow; it is at once torn
by stone; being soleless, it gives a heavy, lumping, tramping, waddling
gait; it readily admits water; and being worn over a number of
stockings, it makes the feet and ancles look Patagonian, even compared
with the heavy figure. There are a few specimens of “Lancashire clogs”
from Denmark and the Færoes; chumpers or sabots are unknown; and the
civilised bottine is not wanting.
The women at first sight appear tall compared with the men, but not so
notably as in the case of the little Welshman and his large wife. They
are, as they should be, better looking than their mates, whilst the
chubby and rosy children are better looking than their mothers. The
expression of countenance is hard and uncompromising. We involuntarily
think of “those chilly women of the north who live only by the head;”
and they gorgonise us into stony statues. Regularity of features is
hardly to be expected so near the Pole. Even amongst the
[Illustration: ICELAND WOMAN--SUNDAY WEAR.]
German races we look for complexion and piquancy to take the place of
that classical beauty which is exceptional beyond the lovely
Mediterranean shores. The congregation showed many a pretty girl, but
not a single face that would be remarked farther south. The hair is
admirable, and requires no chignon--the invention which conceals the
Englishwoman’s chief defect, her _capigliatura_. It is either
_blond-cendré_, dark red, or light chestnut-brown, as in older Denmark;
farther south, but not here, brown-black is by no means a rarity.
Plaited in two large queues, which hang down the back at home, it is
gathered up when abroad under
[Illustration: ICELAND WOMAN--MONDAY WEAR.]
the Hufa or cap. This article is a caricature of the Fez, as the Skór
are of the Mizz, and it has every defect except that of ugliness. The
material is elastic black web woven by the women. The old style is to
wear it large, like the night-cap of former days: the juniors prefer a
mere apology for head-covering, much smaller than the thing now called a
hat in England. It is provided with a Tuskana, a long tassel of black
spun silk brought from Copenhagen; and the latter is ornamented at the
base by a short cylinder (Hólkr) of silver, gilt-silver, or brass made
in the country. This tassel serves for not a little by-play; usually it
depends upon the right or left shoulder indifferently, but when bending,
for instance, it may be held under the chin for coquettish contrast of
colours. The whole affair, which costs some six rixdollars, is kept in
position by hair-pins, and, as it gives no protection against cold, it
is covered out of doors with a shawl, mostly grey, striped white or
chocolate; in fact, women rarely leave the house, even in what we
consider warm weather, without being muffled to the ears; and the men
are not less effeminate. There is only one specimen of the old Falldr or
Skott Falldr (galeated cap), which seems to be growing obsolete; the day
is windy, and this curved and
“High-peaked head-dress of snowy white,”
which corresponds with the “Roide Cornette” of ancient Holland, and of
which modifications may still be seen in Normandy, could hardly be worn.
I shall reserve a description of the crested and helmet-like affair
which strangers compare with a flattened cornucopia, with a cap of
liberty, or with a dragoon casque, ultra Amazonian: here let me merely
premise that it is a larger edition of the Lapp head-dress; that, within
the memory of man, it was worn in the Orkneys; and that the whole
costume somewhat resembles that of the Oberland Bernois. The few hats
and bonnets accompany more modern attire, and even the crinoline and the
Dolly Varden are not wholly unknown. In Iceland dress denotes the
station; in Europe it is only the most advanced society that escapes
from this outward show. The sensible Yankee travels in his “Sunday
best,” because it procures him respect and attention where he is
unknown; we reverse the rule, and notably so on “the Continent”--which
is uncivil and breeds incivility. Most of the elderly women are in black
Wadmal; the juniors prefer fine, dark bottle-green stuff, with plaid or
rainbow-coloured aprons. I at once remark the absence of the γυνή
πυγοστόλος, called “bussle-wearer” by our grandmothers. Those in the
island-costume wear a narrow band of gold embroidery round the skirt,
which resembles the costume of the Slav women about Trieste. The bosom
is no longer flattened as much as possible--was this the result of a
savage decency which, taught the sex to mask nature? On the contrary,
about the middle of the jacket a _soupçon_ of white chemisette is now
allowed to peep forth. But these coy dames have still to borrow a hint
from the young Irish person who wore
“every beauty free
To sink or swell as heaven pleases.”
“Sabbath” in the “moral north” passed away as usual. The respectables,
masculine as well as feminine, sat at the windows opposite one another,
the former smoking vile Hamburg cigars, the latter devoting themselves
to the serious and exhaustive study of street scenery. The German mirror
placed to reflect the thoroughfare is still a rarity, and therefore the
prospector must display herself as _chez nous_. The commonalty leaned
against the walls and railings, much like the Irish peasantry of the
present day, whose poetry, wit, and humour, once so famous, appear, like
art in Italy, to have been crushed out of life by a generation-long
course of “patriotism,” politics, and polemics. There was a little more
apparent drunkenness than usual, men staggering about, peasants
supporting one another, and all jostling whatever they met in the
streets. This unpleasant process of “rubbing up” seems to be here the
rule, and we can hardly complain of it when we remember the lower
orders, and not only the lower orders, of the Lowland Scotch: as the
Yankee is the Englishman with the weight taken off him, so here the
people, like the scenery, are Caledonian intensified. In the evening,
thus to speak, when the dissolute sun, instead of keeping the regular
hours of the tropics, does not turn in before eleven P.M., the sexes
paired, and one gentleman accompanied his “lady” in carpet slippers. The
day ended without a brawl. On St Monday, however, there was a tavern
quarrel, when one of the strongest men in the town had his face cut open
by a stone. We were assured by all that such things are very rare. Yet
on the following Wednesday one of the couthless Calibans from the
country, whom tangle-leg had made “drunk as an auk,” thinking that he
was derided by a party of Englishmen, slipped up behind one of them and
hit him a rounder, in popular parlance a “regular slogdolager.” The
Briton, thus unexpectedly assaulted, soon recovered himself,
[Illustration: THE HEAD CONSTABLE.]
and, though the peasant bundled away, rolling like a bolting bear, Mr
A---- succeeded in lodging a couple of sound lashes with his horsewhip.
A small crowd gathered; of course it took part against the strangers,
and a free fight became imminent. This was prevented by the chief
constable, whose badge is the tallest hat I ever did see, and who
commands a body of three men, armed with the “Northern Star.” When
appealed to, however, the dignitary distinctly refused to take his
fellow-countryman into custody; hence, perhaps, the freedom of the jails
from jail-birds, a peculiarity strongly insisted upon by complimentary
writers, and quaintly corresponding with our “gratifying diminution of
crime.” This is not what we read about Iceland and the Icelanders. It
of course will be said that fair time is approaching, and that we are at
Reykjavik, a centre of dissipation, where men are eagerly looking
forward to the arrival of a grind-organ.
This appears to be the place for inserting a few remarks upon the
subject of drinking in Iceland compared with that of England and
Scotland. I had asserted in the _Standard_ that “more cases of open,
shameless drunkenness may be seen during a day at Reykjavik than during
a month in England and Scotland.” A gentleman interested in the matter
writes to me: “According to the only official returns of Icelandic
statistics (’Skýrslur um landshagi (resources of the country) á Íslandi,
gefnar út af hinu islenska Bókmenntäfélagi,’ Kaupmannahöfn, 8vo), from
1865 to 1869, the date of the last publication, the consumption of
intoxicating drinks has been steadily decreasing. Thus in--
1865 the amount of 2 gallons 6½ pints were drunk per head.
1866 ” 2 ” 1 ” “
1867 ” 1 ” 6 ” “
1868 ” 1 ” 4 ” “
1869 ” 1 ” 3 ” “
In 1869 the gross total used in the island was thus one gallon and three
pints per head. In Scotland the consumption of spirits alone for 1870
was a fraction of a gill less than two gallons a head (Parliamentary
return for 1870 relating to spirits, beer, and malt spirits), and in the
United Kingdom one gallon a head. I have not been able to ascertain the
quantity of wines consumed, nor the proportion contributed by the secret
stills of Scotland and Ireland; but of beer and spirits together, the
consumption in the United Kingdom was no less than thirty gallons per
head per annum. You must remember that the Icelanders have no spirits
equal in strength to whiskies and French brandies. You must also remark
in connection with the drunkenness observed by you at Reykjavik that you
were there during the trading season, when people flock to the capital.
They have not tasted, perhaps, a drop of intoxicating liquor during nine
or ten months, and they make up for their sobriety by a fortnight or so
of indulgence. I have known several peasants who bought a keg of Danish
brandy at the trading-place, and who made free use of it during their
homeward journey, and as long after as the supply lasted. Then they did
not taste a drop till the next season, for the very good reason that
they could not get it. It would therefore not be quite fair to state, as
a general condition of the Icelanders, what might be observed at
Reykjavik during the fair, from about the middle of June to the end of
July. It would be equally unjust to show up the condition of Londoners
on Boxing Night, or of the Scotch on New Year’s Day, not to speak of
every Saturday night.”