Happy the nations of the moral North,
Where all is virtue. * * *
Honest men from Iceland to Barbadoes.
* * * * * * Man
In islands is, it seems, downright and thorough,
More than on continents.
BYRON.
THE geographical features of Iceland, and the manners and customs of
the people, are no less interesting than the history of the nation.
Iceland lies just south of the polar circle, between sixty-three and
a half and sixty-six and a half north latitude, and between thirteen
and twenty-four degrees west longitude from Greenwich. Its length from
east to west, is about two hundred and eighty miles, and its average
width one hundred and fifty. In extent of surface it is nearly as
large as the State of New-York, containing not far from forty thousand
square miles. It is three hundred miles east of the coast of Greenland,
a little over five hundred from the north of Scotland, nearly one
thousand from Liverpool, thirteen hundred from Copenhagen, and about
three thousand miles from Boston. The coast is deeply indented with
bays, its valleys are drained by large rivers, and every part abounds
more or less with lofty mountains. Though volcanic regions have many
features in common, Iceland differs greatly from every country in
the known world. It presents a greater array of remarkable natural
phenomena than can be found throughout the whole extent of Europe and
America. To the naturalist and the man of science, to the geologist,
the botanist, and the ornithologist, it is probably less known than any
equal tract of accessible country in the world. The burning chimnies
of Ætna, Vesuvius, and Stromboli, have given inspiration to Horace and
Virgil, and been minutely described by the pens of Strabo, Diodorus
Siculus, and Pliny. Not so the region of Hekla and Skaptar Jokull.
In the Mediterranean states, art and nature can both be studied; in
Iceland, nature alone, but nature in her wildest moods. But how will
those mountains in the south compare with these in the north? All the
volcanoes in the Mediterranean would scarcely extend over more ground
than a single county in the State of New York, while Iceland is one
entire volcanic creation as large as the State itself. Though not
active all at once, yet throughout the length and breadth of the land
may be found smoking mountains, burning sulphur mines, hot springs that
will boil an egg, and jets of blowing steam that keep up a roar like
the whistle of a gigantic steam engine. The volcanic region of Iceland
may be set down as covering an area of sixty thousand square miles; for
volcanoes have repeatedly risen up from the sea near the coast, and
sometimes as far as seventy miles from land. Though Ætna is higher than
any mountain in Iceland, and of such enormous bulk that it is computed
to be 180 miles in circumference; yet if Skaptar Jokull were hollowed
out, Ætna and Vesuvius both could be put into the cavity and not fill
it!
Iceland, too, is classic ground. Not, however, in the same sense that
Italy, Sicily, and Greece, are. The hundred different kinds of verse now
existing in many volumes of Iceland poetry, the sagas, and other
literary productions of the Icelanders, have not been read and re-read,
translated and re-translated, like the works of Herodotus, Xenophon,
Tacitus, and Cicero, and for very good reasons. The country is not one
of such antiquity; it is not a country renowned for arts and arms, and
overflowing with a numerous population. As a state, it is nearly
destitute of works of art, and its scanty population can only procure
the bare necessaries of life. Scarcely a page of Icelandic literature
ever put on an English dress and found its way among the Anglo-Saxons,
until the pen that gave us Waverley and Rob Roy, furnished us with a
translation of some of the more important of the Iceland sagas. The
author of the “Psalm of Life” and “Hyperion” has given us some elegant
translations of Iceland poetry.
On stepping ashore in Iceland, the total absence of trees and forests,
and the astonishing purity of the atmosphere, strike the spectator as
among the more remarkable characteristics of the country. The fields are
beautifully green: the mountains, clothed in purple heath, appear so
near that you are almost tempted to reach forth your hands to touch
their sides. At fifteen or twenty miles distance, they appear but three
or four; and at seventy or eighty miles, they seem within ten or
fifteen. Such is the effect of the magical purity of the atmosphere. In
other countries you go and visit cities and ruins; here you see nature
in her most fantastic forms. In other states you pay a shilling, a
franc, or a piastre, for a warm bath in a vat of marble; here you bathe
in a spring of any desired temperature, or plunge into a cool lake, and
swim to the region of a hot spring in the bottom, guided by the steam on
the surface. In other lands you step into marble palaces that are lined
with gold and precious stones, and find hereditary legislators making
laws to keep the people in subjection; here you see a grass-grown
amphitheater where an elective congress met and legislated in the open
air for nearly a thousand years. In other and more favored climes, you
find comfortable houses, and “fruits of fragrance blush on every tree;”
here, not a fruit, save one small and tasteless berry, and not a single
variety of grain, will ripen, and their houses are mere huts of lava and
turf, looking as green as the meadows and pastures. In other lands, coal
and wood fires enliven every hearth, and mines of iron, lead, copper,
silver, and gold, reward the labor of the delver; but here, not a
particle of coal, not one single mineral of value, and not one stick of
wood larger than a walking-cane can be found. Many of the mountains are
clad in eternal snows, and some pour out rivers of fire several times
every century. But, though sterile the soil and scanty the productions,
our knowledge of the country must be limited if we consider it barren of
historical facts and literary reminiscences. A country like this, nearly
as large as England, must possess few agricultural and commercial
resources, to have at this time, nearly one thousand years after its
first settlement, a population of only sixty thousand souls. Yet the
Icelanders, while laboring under great disadvantages, are more
contented, moral, and religious, possess greater attachment to country,
are less given to crime and altercation, and show greater hospitality
and kindness to strangers, than any other people the sun shines upon.
Their contentment and immunity from crime and offense, do not arise from
sluggishness and indolence of character; nor are they noted alone for
their negative virtues. They possess a greater spirit of historical
research and literary inquiry, have more scholars, poets, and learned
men, than can be found among an equal population on the face of the
globe. Some of their linguists speak and write a greater number of
languages than those that I have ever met in any other country. Iceland
has given birth to a Thorwaldsen, a sculptor whose name will descend to
the latest posterity. His parents were Icelanders, but he was a child of
the sea, born on the ocean, between Iceland and Denmark. Among their
poets and historians will be found the names of Snorro Sturleson,
Sæmund, surnamed FRODE, or “THE LEARNED,” Jon Thorlaksen, Finn Magnusen,
Stephensen, Egilson, Hallgrimson, Thorarensen, Grondal, Sigurder
Peterssen; and these, with many others, will adorn the pages of
Icelandic literature as long as the snow covers their mountains, and the
heather blooms in their valleys. Their navigators and merchants
discovered and settled America long before Genoa gave birth to a
Columbus, and while Europe was yet immured in the darkness of the middle
ages. The works of their poets and literary men have been translated
into nearly every language in Europe; and they in their turn have
translated into their own beautiful language more or less of the
writings of Milton, Dryden, Pope, Young, Byron, Burns, Klopstock, Martin
Luther, Lamartine, Benjamin Franklin, Washington Irving, and many
others. In the interior of the country a native clergyman presented me a
volume—an Iceland annual, the “NORTHURFARI,” for 1848-9—that contains,
among many original articles, the “Story of the Whistle,” by Dr.
Franklin; a chapter from Irving’s “Life of Columbus;” translations from
Dryden; Byron’s “Ode on Waterloo;” Burns’ “Bruce’s Address;” Kossuth’s
Prayer on the defeat of his army in Hungary; part of one of President
Taylor’s Messages to Congress; and extracts from the NEW YORK HERALD,
the LONDON TIMES, and other publications. With scarcely a hope of fame,
the intellectual labors of the Icelanders have been prosecuted from an
ardent thirst of literary pursuits. Personal emolument, or the applause
of the world, could scarcely have had a place among their incentives to
exertion. As an example we need only notice the labors of Jon
Thorlakson. This literary neophyte, immured in a mud hut in the north of
Iceland, subsisting on his scanty salary as a clergyman, which amounted
to less than thirty dollars a year, together with his own labors as a
farmer, yet found time during the long evenings of an Iceland winter, to
translate into Icelandic verse, the whole of Milton’s “Paradise Lost,”
Pope’s “Essay on Man,” and Klopstock’s “Messiah,” besides writing
several volumes of original poetry. Throughout their literary and
political writings can be seen that spirit of republicanism, and that
ardent love of political liberty, which always characterizes a thinking
and intellectual people. Interspersed with their own sentiments
expressed in their own tongue, will be seen quotations from other
writers, and in other languages. With Dryden they say,
“The love of liberty with life is given,
And life itself the inferior gift of heaven.”
From Byron they quote,
“Better to sink beneath the shock,
Than moulder piecemeal on the rock.”
And with the noble poet, again, they express their
“—— plain, sworn, downright detestation
Of every despotism in every nation.”
Such is the literary and republican spirit of this toiling and
intellectual people.
The Icelanders live principally by farming and fishing. They take cod
and haddock, from five to forty miles out to sea. Whales often visit
their harbors and bays, and are surrounded by boats and captured. Their
season for sea-fishing is from the first of February to the middle of
May. In the summer they catch large quantities of trout and salmon in
their streams and lakes. They have no agricultural productions of much
value, except grass. Grain is not cultivated, and their gardens are very
small, only producing a few roots and vegetables. The climate of the
country is not what we would suppose from its location. Columbus, who
was there in February, tells us he found no ice on the sea. It is not as
cold in winter as in the northern States of America, the thermometer
seldom showing a greater degree of severity than from twelve to eighteen
_above_ zero. In summer, from June to September, it is delightfully mild
and pleasant, neither cold nor hot. The cold season does not usually
commence until November or December; and sometimes during the entire
winter there is but little snow, and not frost enough to bridge their
lakes and streams with ice. In summer, fires are not needed, and the
climate during this season is more agreeable than that of Great Britain
or the United States, having neither the chilly dampness of the one, nor
the fierce heat of the other. Thunder-storms in Iceland occur in the
winter, but not in the summer.
Their domestic animals are sheep, cattle, horses, and dogs. They rarely
keep domestic fowls, but from the nests of the wild eider-duck they
obtain large quantities of eggs, as well as down. Reindeer run wild in
the interior, but are not domesticated. Blue and white foxes are common;
and these, with eagles, hawks, and ravens, destroy many of their sheep
and lambs. White bears are not found in the country, except as an
“imported” article, when they float over from Greenland on the drift
ice. The domestic animals in Iceland are estimated in the following
numbers:—500,000 sheep, 60,000 horses, and 40,000 cattle. All their
animals are of rather small size, as compared to those in more temperate
regions. Their horses are a size larger than the ponies of Shetland, and
average from twelve to thirteen hands high. Their hay is a short growth,
but a very sweet, excellent quality. The Icelanders speak of their
“forests,”—mere bunches of shrubbery from two to six feet high. These
are principally birch and willow. The beautiful heath, so common in
Scotland and the north of Europe, is found throughout Iceland. Their
game birds are the ptarmigan, the curlew, the plover, and the tern.
Nearly every variety of water-fowl common to Great Britain or America,
abounds in the bays, islands, and shores of Iceland, and in the greatest
numbers. The Icelanders export wool, about 1,000,000 lbs. annually, and
from two to three hundred thousand pairs each of woolen stockings and
mittens. Besides these articles, they sell dried and salted codfish,
smoked salmon, fish and seal oil, whale blubber, seal and fox skins,
feathers, eider-down, beef and mutton, hides, tallow, and sulphur. They
import their principal luxuries—flour, rye and barley meal, beans,
potatoes, wine, brandy, rum, ale and beer, tobacco, coffee, sugar, tea,
salt, timber, coal, iron, cutlery, fish-hooks and lines, cotton and silk
goods, leather, crockery, and furniture. From thirty to forty vessels
sail from Denmark to Iceland every year. Reykjavik, the capital, on the
west coast, is the largest town in the island—a place of about 1,200
people. Then there are Eskifiorth and Vopnafiorth in the east, Akreyri
in the north, and Stykkisholm and Hafnarfiorth in the west, all places
of considerable trade. All goods are taken to Iceland duty free; and
letters and papers are carried there in government vessels, free of
postage, and sent through the island by government messengers. By the
present arrangement, the government “post-ship” makes five voyages to
and from Iceland in a year. It sails from Copenhagen to Reykjavik on the
first days of March, May, July, and October, and from Liverpool to
Reykjavik on the first day of January. It leaves Reykjavik, for
Copenhagen, February 1st, April 1st, June 1st, and August 10th; and from
Reykjavik for Liverpool on the 10th of November. One half of the trips
each way, it stops at the Faroe Isles. In addition to the mail service
by this ship, letter-bags are forwarded from Denmark by the different
vessels trading to Iceland.
All travel and transportation of goods and the mail through the interior
of Iceland is on horseback. There’s not a carriage-road, a wheeled
vehicle, a steam-engine, a post-office, a custom-house, a police
officer, a fort, a soldier, or a lawyer in the whole country. Goods,
dried fish, and valuables are left out of doors, unguarded, with
impunity, stealing being almost unknown. There never was but one prison
in the island, and that was used also as an almshouse. Even then it was
nearly useless, and most always without a tenant; and finally, to put it
to some use, it was converted into a residence for the Governor, and is
now the “White House” in the capital of Iceland. Taxes are very light,
and do not amount to as much as the expense of carrying on the
government, paying the officers, and transporting the mail. The
Icelanders are universally educated to that extent that all can read and
write. There is but one school or institution of learning in the
country—the college at Reykjavik. This has a president and eight
professors, and usually from eighty to a hundred students. The boys
educated here are nearly all trained for clergymen, or else to fill some
of the civil offices in the island, or they expect to go abroad, or live
in Denmark. This institution is endowed by the Danish government, and
was formerly at Bessastath, a few miles south of Reykjavik, whence it
was removed a few years since. The president is Bjarni Johnson, Esq., a
native Icelander, a gentleman of rare accomplishments and learning, and
one of the first linguists in Europe. The Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Danish,
French and English languages are taught here, as well as most of the
sciences. It was during college vacation when I was in the country, and
I used to meet in the interior, at their fathers’ houses, young men who
were students of the college, and who could converse fluently in Latin,
Danish, French, or English. The Bible or Testament, and usually many
other books, particularly historical and poetical works, are found in
nearly every house in Iceland. The population being scanty, with the
great majority of the people it is impracticable to have schools, so
that education is confined to the family circle. During their long
winter evenings, while both males and females are engaged in domestic
labors, spinning, weaving, or knitting—by turns one will take a book,
some history, biography, or the Bible, and read aloud. The length of
their winter nights can be appreciated when we consider that the sun in
December is above the horizon but three or four hours. Before and after
Christmas he rises, sleepily, at about ten o’clock, and retires between
one and two in the afternoon. This is quite different from the earlier
habits and longer visits of that very respectable luminary in more
temperate and tropical climes. True, he makes atonement in the summer,
when he keeps his eye open and surveys the land daily from twenty to
twenty-one hours. Then he rises between one and two o’clock in the
morning, looks abroad over a sleeping world, and only retires behind the
mountains at near eleven o’clock at night.
While traveling in the country, I used frequently to ask the children
in poor families to read to me in Icelandic, and I never saw one above
the age of nine years that could not read in a masterly style. Their
writing, too, is almost invariably of great elegance. This is partly
owing to their practice of multiplying copies in manuscript, of almost
all the historical and poetical works written in the country, copying
them in advance of their publication, and often afterwards. The manners
and customs of the people have changed with the progress of time and
the change in their form of government. In old times we are told,
that when the Icelanders or Norwegians were about setting out on any
expedition of importance they used to have a grand feast. At these
banquets, horse-flesh was one of their luxuries. Bards and minstrels
would recite poems composed for the occasion; and story, song, and
hilarity, added zest to the entertainment. After eating, drinking, and
singing, to a pretty high degree of elevation, they would close the
proceedings by throwing the bones at one another across the tables! We
are not informed, however, that the modern Icelanders indulge in these
luxuries. Their trade is gone, and they are now a simple, pastoral
people. In complexion the Icelanders resemble the Anglo-Saxon race,
often having florid and handsome countenances. They are fine figures,
frequently tall, several that I have seen being over six feet in
height. Light hair most usually prevails, but I have seen some that was
quite dark. In a large district in the northwest of Iceland, all the
men wear their beards, a practice that has been in vogue for hundreds
of years. They always seem pleased when a stranger appears among
them who has adopted a fashion so much in accordance with their own
philosophy, with nature, and the laws of health, and at the same time
that adds so much to the personal appearance of the lords of creation.