THE LURE
“Oh _Frey_ in the north lands,
Thou sweetest of powers,
Thy breath on the mountains
Turns ice into flowers.
Thy smile on the meadows
Is life to the fold,
Thy touch on the maid’s hair
Turns flaxen to gold.”
—_Anon._
Why do you choose Iceland for a vacation? I would go to a more
interesting place, if I were you.
This question has been asked so many times and similar comments have
followed so often before I could answer the question that I write my
answer here, as an inducement to you, who can not take the long journey
with me literally, to follow me in imagination through these pages and
live with me for a few brief hours in that far off land of fascination.
The people interest me. The country was settled, not by serf nor servant.
The grand old warriors of the viking period, who overran in quick
succession the British Isles, ravaged the coast of France, swept through
the Mediterranean and even penetrated to Constantinople, and wherever
they went subdued and triumphed,—these are the men who, once the lords
and petty kings of ancient Norway, scorning to bend the knee to Harald,
chose unknown dangers in a strange and distant land, and going there sat
down amidst the frosts and volcanoes of Iceland to relate the story of
their deeds. From this virile race are the modern Icelanders descended.
They are a kindly, honest and hospitable race; kind to each other and to
the stranger within their borders, hospitable with a hospitality which is
almost unknown in our selfish race, honest beyond all question.
The literature fascinates me. The language, now dead in its ancient Norse
valleys, is a living speech in Iceland. Its children read its ancient
sagas, centuries upon centuries old, as understandingly as their weekly
newspapers. It is just as if some long lost island of the Aegian still
held in all its ancient purity the musical accent of the Homeric age,
or, as if some forgotten valley in the Italian Alps resounded with the
rhetoric of Cicero or vibrated to the tunes of Horace.
The scenery, the geology, has a charm unknown in other lands. It is a
country fresh from the crucible of nature. Here one views a continent
in the making, beholds the mighty upheavals from the nether abyss, sees
how nature, as if ashamed of her rough work, planes with her league-long
blades of ice the basaltic ridges and glassy peaks. The traveller beholds
a country full of lakes and rivers, and waterfalls the largest in Europe,
but a country without any system of mountain chains and drainage to
conform to the laws laid down by the physiographer. Mountains there
are in abundance and lofty ones, but scattered hither and yon at the
strange caprice of Pluto. Rivers, both the delight and the vexation of
the traveller, inspiring in the grandeur and unharnessed freedom of
their mighty canyons, vexing when they obstruct his passage, and he must
lift his hat in trust to swim their white currents or else forbear the
distant shore. In stern defiance of obstacles the traveller journeys
through a roadless country where a thousand years since the progenitors
of his diminutive steed first bore their valiant masters. There are miles
of meadows smiling in the lengthened summer day and freely sprinkled
with a rich and beautiful flora; there are quaking bogs to cross and
quicksands, where the judgment of his pony surpasses his rider’s wisdom;
there are wastes of wind driven sand without a scrap of vegetation to
enliven the scene; there are mountain ranges to be crossed, perhaps where
no one ever pressed the lava; there are beautiful valleys, rich with
flocks and herds and alive with horses; there are areas of smoking lands,
ill-smelling and sizzling fumaroles, boiling springs and blue-black mud
cauldrons which vomit their horrid contents with a sickening gasp; lakes
and ponds innumerable, where live unmolested a myriad waterfowl, where
flowers bloom in a profusion often rare in more southern climes.
The homes are simple, humble and pastoral. An ancient house of turf and
stone, an enclosed mowing patch, the sheep folds and the byre, a scanty
garden where a few hardy vegetables rejoice in the long, long day. Even
the endless day has its charm, the nearly continuous sunshine and the
fleecy clouds in the bluest of blue skies, the lights and shadows on lake
and mountain, the extreme clearness of the atmosphere, clear to the point
of great deception to the inexperienced,—the colors, I did not forget
them, nor will one having seen the richest of nature’s colors in these
grand old volcanic piles with streaks of emerald and patches of brown,
gray, yellow, red and crimson all washed and blended with the fan-like
brush of melting snow, ever forget.
Why do I go to Iceland? Because the people appeal, the old stories of
heroic deeds stir the sluggish blood of city life, and the thought of
being foot-loose and care-free throughout its lingering summer day to
roam at will its mountain vales and smiling meadows impels me.