Right opposite Reykjavik rises an interesting block of mountains.

Bearing due north is Akrafjall, bluff to the sea and sloping with a long

dorsum inland; it is the western steeple of the long Hvalfjörð, one of

the many digitations, carved by wind and water in the western coast. The

eastern is the Esja, which means a “kind of clay;” some travellers

miscall it the Esian or Essian, with the definite pronoun suffixed,[32]

and sounding much like “the Alcoran” to an Arabist. The southern flank

of this precipitous buttress, gashed with deep ravines and still spotted

and streaked with snow which will not disappear before mid-August, lies

north-east and across the baylet of Reykjavik: in fine weather it looks

as though you could see a man upon the summit. Between the two pilasters

of the inverted arch, forming the apparent bound of the far vista, is a

third, a smaller and a more precipitous block, Skarðsheiði--heath of the

_col_[33]--with five buttresses, waxing whiter and whiter as they leave

the warm western aspect. The view is fine albeit somewhat sinister, and

you miss it like removing from the Chiaja to the interior of Naples. All

this, we must remember, is only a corner of the great south-western

Fjörð, whose northern limit is the Snæfellsjökull and whose southern is

the Skagi (point) of Suðrnes: it is called Faxafjörð, from Fax,[34] the

Scot, who believed it to be the estuary of a mighty stream; the same

kind of mistake gave a name to glorious Rio de Janeiro.

The eastern or inland view from Reykjavik on a fine day is not less

picturesque. The clear cut basaltic line of mountains, here and there

broken and jagged, stretches from north-east to south-west. In the

former direction it appears a mural range, in the latter the blue wall

breaks up into detached features, the regular cone of Helgafell, or holy

hill, the pyramid of Keilir, “the wedge,” so well known to sailors, and

the four hillocks called the Trölladyngjur,[35] or giantesses’ bower.

Again this feature reminds me of the Jebel Haurán, and we shall find it

beautifully displayed from the several mountain-tops.

On June 12 I set out with Major B. and Mr S. to try our prentice-hand

upon the Esja. The vehicle was a two-oared boat redolent as usual of

fat, fin, and feather; the hour was 6.45 A.M., and the north-easter was

biting cold--at this season travellers should prefer post-meridional

excursions, as the afternoon wind, during fine weather, invariably

shifts to the genial west. The terns and the large Iceland gulls were

hurrying home to the several islands, each showing the economical value

of early birding.

After adding prospects of Geldinga Ness, Therney, and Lundey to our

repertory, and covering in two hours the six miles’ sail, we landed at

the usual place on the northern bank of the dwarf Kolla Firth. It showed

farm-houses scattered around and a few fishing craft carefully drawn up;

a very necessary precaution when the tide is going out. On the left was

Esjuberg, where Örlýgr Hreppson, converted by Patrick, Bishop of the

Hebrides, built the first Christian chapel, and dedicated it to St

Columbkille, Apostle and Thaumaturgus of the Picts. Farther off lay

another farm upon the site of the celebrated pagan temple known as the

Hof of Kjallarnes--we shall visit Keel-ness by and by.

It is perfectly true in Iceland that

“The sea is wet as wet can be,”

but we cannot say that

“The land is dry as dry.”

Throughout the lowlands Nature, organic as well as inorganic, seems

never to be free from moisture: like tropical man it always sits in a

damp skin.

Having hauled up our boat we crossed the moss towards the great gash in

the hill-flank, the _Caldera_, so conspicuous from Reykjavik; as usual

the ground was shaky bog, and in places like an exaggerated Turkey

carpet. The cause is that the shore, formed either of shingle or of

vegetation decayed to humus is, as we have seen, higher than the

interior, and the people content themselves with dykes for roads, and

with trenches never deep enough for thorough drainage. We passed two

small farms composed of the normal dwelling-places, stables, byres, and

outhouses; plans and elevations of these abodes have been given by every

Icelandic traveller who has used pencil as well as pen. Suffice it to

observe, that throughout Iceland the dwelling-place, like the “skip,”

has seen better days, and that both are now hopelessly degenerate.

At the second farm lived the guide, who was absent in the fields, and we

vainly attempted persuading the sailor lad, a regular “lazy,” to

accompany us with the provaunt-basket. An English youth would have been

delighted with the chance of a climb, but these _fainéants_ about the

capital, timid and apathetic, will do nothing for sport or adventure,

and move only when need drives.

After forty-five minutes’ walk we entered the great gorge, which

discharges a shallow stream, winding in many veins over its broad and

rocky wady: it must be a furious torrent during the thaws of spring. We

should have crossed it and ascended a sharp, rocky, zigzag on the

right-hand jaw, but we had no reason to regret the error, as the deep

section gave us an excellent view of the Esja’s internals. The

formation of the mountain is still a disputed point; some hold its base

to be basaltic pierced by more modern trachyte, whilst others believe in

the greater antiquity of the trachyte. As will be seen, when travelling

to Mosfell, or south-east, we found trachyte on a level with the Esja’s

foundation and, when coasting along the western flank, we saw Palagonite

sandstone, dyked with trap, and underlying as well as overlying the

later igneous formation. The sequence, therefore, appeared to be

Palagonite, trachyte, and trap. On the Kollafjörð also there is a line

of carbonate of lime running from north-east to south-west, and strongly

affecting the water: hence it is judged that Iceland spar may be found

there.

After a few minutes we came to a place where the gorge was split by a

tall chine of rock, and where overfalls and deep inclines rendered the

two beds impassable. We climbed up this hogsback, remarking, as others

have done before and since, how dangerously brittle is the rubbishy

stone which comes away in large fragments under the foot. The same

observation constantly occurs in travels through Greenland and

Spitzbergen, and the cause is doubtless that which strews the upper

heights of the Libanus and Anti-Libanus with natural Macadam--fracture

by alternate expansion and contraction. In Iceland, moreover, the

_débris_ lies in dry heaps, loosely attached to the surface and not

based upon or secured by vegetation or tenacious humus, while the sharp

angles of the material produces many a rocking-stone. Hence large masses

giving way readily beneath the tread, somewhat surprise the

inexperienced. We then fell into a long stiff slope of rock and yellow

humus, puffed up under the sun; there was an abundance of water

stagnating even on the sharpest declivities, and doubtless percolating

from the snow strips above. Where the surface was tolerably level, rough

grasses upon which a few sheep were grazing were sprinkled with mosses

and with raised patches of bright green studded with pink flowerets

(_Diapensia_), faintly resembling the huge Tabbán pin-cushions of the

Hermon. Animal life appeared to be exceedingly scarce.

Presently the guide, who had followed us, was seen crossing the

left-hand or western ravine, and only his Iceland shoes enabled him to

do so. Of course, he wore gloves, for what reason we could not divine,

except to keep his unwashed hands white; and his alpenstock was an iron

stick, some three feet long, with a ring at one end and a half barb at

the other. He waddled like an ant-eater when showing his vigour by

spurts of running up and down, and his bent and _affaissé_ form was a

considerable contrast to that of the mountaineer generally. He was like

his brethren, the very rudiment of a guide, utterly disregardful of the

guided; and in case of difficulty or accident, we expected him at once

to skedaddle. When he whooped “ho!” it was the screech of a sea-fowl.

Arriving at the stiffer part of the ascent, about 2400 feet above

sea-level, we should have bent to the west towards the largest patch of

snow, where the angle is exceptionally easy. But our guide followed us

with African docility, as we bent eastward under the tall scarps of

submarine trap, which from Reykjavik appear to stand up like a wall.

There were several _couloirs_ to cross, mostly slides of icy snow: in

August they will appear like broad yellow gutters polished by frost.

Here we picked up specimens of red jasper, crystals of lime, and stones

whose drusic cavities were charged with _calcaire_.

Then began the climb up the crest. The stairs, about eight or ten feet

high, run with tolerable regularity, whilst breaks here and there allow

easy ascent: at the base is kittle _débris_, where falling blocks may be

expected. However hopeless may appear these trap walls, whose copings,

straight and regular as if built by man, form the characteristic feature

of maritime Iceland, they are generally climbable by creeping along the

ledges below the several grades till gaps offer an opportunity of

swarming up to the higher tier. If, however, a profile view shows that

these traps dip instead of tilting seawards, the normal disposition,

attempts will be in vain. Cryptogams were thinly scattered over the

blocks; lichens appeared to be rare, and the mosses had not revived from

the winter burning--as regards muserlogia there is still much to be done

in Iceland.

After a walk of three hours, we stood upon the level summit,[36] about

3000 feet above sea-level, and the ascent was according to the rule of

the Alpine Club, a thousand feet per hour. Here rose a number of Varðas

or old men. We crossed a dazzling _névé_, following the guide, who

probed as he went on, for here as elsewhere,

“The snow o’erlays

The hidden pits and dangerous hollow ways.”

I narrowly observed its behaviour. The ground about it was so soft and

slushy that even stones would not support our weight, and the shallow

edges were icy-hard, the effect of increased evaporation. On sloping

surfaces the same effect is caused by pressure, like squeezing a

snow-ball, and gelufication is prevented by the little runnels which the

sun sets free to trickle down the gorges. The material was glacious

rather than flaky or niveous, and promised firm foothold. We have read

of travellers sinking to the shoulders, especially in the snow of

August, but it is doubtful if this ever takes place above a certain

altitude, especially in dry weather, when Iceland snow wastes away in

the wind like camphor.

The “raking view” from the summit was a fair physiognomical study of

treeless Thule. To the north the mountain is a mere section, a shell

with perpendicular falls and steep steps of loose stone, which demand

rope ladders. Before it the lowlands fall to the Hvalfjörð, beyond which

the Akrafjall dorsum slopes inland, or to north-east, till suddenly

arrested on the other side of the smooth green sea-arm by the five

buttresses of the sister formation, Skarðsheiði. The latter looks as

though a few hours, instead of two days, would reach it; and our friends

at Reykjavik showed their belief in the wondrous transparency of the

atmosphere by trying to detect, with their opera glasses, our small

bodies creeping up the slope at the distance of at least six direct

geographical miles. At Quito, under the equator, a horseman’s white

poncho may, according to Humboldt, “be distinguished with the naked eye

at a horizontal distance of 89,664 feet, and therefore under an angle of

thirteen seconds.”

Turning southwards, we found the Esja summit flanked to the east by

three regular buttresses, like artificial earthworks, with stepped

projections and horizontal lines of the whitest _névé_. Farther down

were _couloirs_ filled with a brown snow, in lines too steep for

crossing. The highland before us reminded me of the Paramos or deserts

of the Cordillera, and the view generally was a wondrous contrast with

European ideas of spring beauty. The lowlands at our feet were sprinkled

with lakelets and tarns, the Vaud and Soe of Norway, the largest being

the Hafravatn and the Elliðavatn. The formation of the Fjörðs lay in

panorama, a network of fibres and threads converging to form a main

embouchure; whilst the several bays had those hooks and “sickles” of

sand, which the “Rob Roy” canoe places in the Sea of Galilee, but which

my lamented friend Tyrwhitt-Drake and I were not lucky enough to find.

We have already remarked this wealth of “oyce” in the Scotch firths, and

Elius Corvinus declares the same to be the case in Dalmatian streams:

“Danubio et Nilo non vilior Ombla fuissit

Si modo progressus possit hebere suos.”

From south-east to south the prospect is bounded by the snow-dotted

Hraun or lava-run, which in places appears as two parallel ranges. It

completely hides the Thingvellir Lake, but in far distance, peeping over

the summit to the east, rises the bold and rocky head of the arch-humbug

Hekla. The range terminates to the south-west in Laugarfell, a

buttressed crest like the Esja, beyond which the Vestmannaeyjar

archipelago floats in little lumps below the cup-shaped horizon. The eye

rests with pleasure upon the Helgafell cone and the pyramid of Keilir,

perfect as the pigmies of Egypt: this shape is common in Iceland, and

forms the best of land and surveying marks. Beyond the long, thin point

of Reykjavik (Seltjarnarnes) and its scatter of volcanic islets, the

dwarfed projections of Skagi and Reykjanes fine away into mere streaks

of black upon the pale blue sea. Presently a cloud came over the sun,

and the cold air warned us to keep moving. Ugh! how raw it was; the wind

seemed to pierce every joint in our harness. We descended by the

picknicker’s path, showing the unnecessary trouble we had taken: the

line ran between the great gorges or rather rents in the flanks, which

gave excellent sections of the interior, stratified beds of newer red

and older grey-blue lavas remarkably distinct. At the foot of the

mountain the thermometer, placed in reflected heat upon the snowy

ground, showed 82°(F.), hardly to be expected in Iceland.

Reaching the guide’s house, we were kindly received by his wife, who

gave us coffee, biscuits, and excellent milk, which mixed with

Korn-schnapps, even the “water-bewitched” of Reykjavik, is a most

satisfactory beverage. We dropped a rixdollar, by way of being

“delicate,” into a child’s hand. Two months afterwards, our cicerone

wrote to Geir Zoega that he had guided (unbidden be it said) three

Englishmen up the mountain, and had given them coffee, etc.; that his

fee was $3, whereas they had left only $1 with a servant girl, from whom

he could not take it. This little trait--one of many--would not be worth

quoting did it not show that the unsophisticated age of the island has,

in these parts at least, passed clean away.

It speaks volumes for the excellence of the climate that next morning no

one, even after ten months of London life, complained of stiff muscles.

We had been baked, chilled, and baked again, yet there was not a trace

of “cold catching:” the latter, to resident foreigners, is not

unfrequently the result of the glacier winds, but they never seem to

adopt such simple precautions as a hareskin or a _Manus Dei_ (poor man’s

plaster).

A most interesting part of the Esja mountain is the north-eastern

section, where two regularly-shaped cones of golden colour, sharp

towering in the milky blue air, attract the eye from Reykjavik. They are

conspicuous in snowy caps, which they long retain, whilst the basalts

and the dark Palagonites assist the thaws. I was anxious also to inspect

the head of the celebrated Hvalfjörð, to ascend Skarðsheiði, and to call

upon the Reverend Thorvaldr Bjarnason, who had hospitably invited me to

Reynivellir, his parsonage. The excursion took place about mid-July, but

I again sacrifice the unity of time to that of place. My companion was

Mr Martin Chapman, of New Zealand, now domiciled in the Temple: we had

already made the trip to Hekla, and his good gifts as a traveller, his

energy and his imperturbable good temper and _sang froid_, made him an

excellent companion. We again secured as guide Páll Eyúlfsson, of whom

more presently. Each had a remount, and a single baggage animal was

judged sufficient.

We set out merrily by the eastern road, through a country now familiar

to the reader, and soon covered the four miles between the town and the

ford of the Laxá (Elliðaá). On the way were many signs of glacial

action, grooving as well as slickensides, caused by the friction of two

rock surfaces: the ice-dressings which I had last seen on Arthur’s Seat

are everywhere around Reykjavik. At Hr Thomsen’s farm, Ártún (river

“toon”), we left the inland or Geysir road and turned towards the sea.

About Leiruvogr (mud bay) and the mouth of the Leiruvogsá the floor was

of trachyte, which appeared even in the stream-beds: the material was

heat-altered and discoloured by oxides. The little black church of

Mossfell (moss-hill), a common name in the island, was the half-way

house; and thence we rode up the Svinadalr (swine-vale), to the white

pass of Mó-skarða hnjúkr, also called Há-hnjúkr. Here, after travelling

three hours and forty-five minutes, we dismounted and prepared for the

ascent.

On our left hand was a rough tooth, or _aiguille_, a conspicuous object

rising perpendicularly from the rapid slope: the lower ground was the

usual mixture of bog, moss, and water. This was soon exchanged for an

angle too steep for vegetation; yet even on the summit, we picked

scattered flowers, and the peculiarity of Iceland in the eyes of an

African traveller again repeated itself. Here we find not only genera

abnormally numerous compared with species, but also no change of growth

from the tropical to the temperate and the polar, as, for instance, on

Camarones Mountain. The same flora everywhere appears, the paucity of

vegetable corresponding with the poverty of animal forms: only in the

upper regions it is of course dwarfed by height and by the comparative

thinness of the aqueous vapours which screen the lowlands; and for the

same reason it grows and dies later in the year.

The surface of the mountain was purely trachytic, but the one material

was Protean in shape and colour. The prevailing tints were red and

golden yellow. We recognised the slate of Hekla and the heat-altered

material near the great Geysir. As we neared the summit the metal became

flaky, like the limestone of the Syrian mountains. After forty minutes

of rough climbing over slopes of rubbish--the smaller it was the firmer

it proved to the tread--we reached the apex, about 2000 feet above

sea-level: like the western Esja, it had the sharpest face to the north,

and the crest was a saw, a spiked _arête_, palisaded and bristling with

teeth and jags like the many-bladed knife of the cutler’s shop.[37]

Returning to our horses, we descended one of those staircases of earth

and stone now so familiar, and fell into the valley of a northern Laxá,

called for distinction, “of Reynivellir” (the sorb-apple plains). The

surface, so fair to sight, is swampy, despite its main-drain, and must

be traversed by earthen dykes. The lower part is protected to the north

by the Reynivallaháls (neck of Reynivellir), and to the south by the

Miðfell (mid-mount) and other outliers of the Esja. Here many houses are

scattered about; we recognise the sweet scent of hay; and the

dock-fringed plots of potatoes and cabbages look exceptionally

flourishing. In winter all freezes, but as the grass never protrudes

from the ice, however shallow, the neighbouring farmers visit one

another on skates, which are those of Europe generally.

At eleven P.M. we reached the parsonage, which showed three gables

pointing southwards, and a fourth to the east. A cart and a wheel-jack

gave signs that improvements were not unknown. The hour was unusual for

calling, but Iceland knows nothing of these fine distinctions: the house

dogs bayed the alarm; the host awoke the household; and, before turning

in, we supped comfortably at the parsonage.

On the next day Síra Thorvaldr could not accompany us, having service to

read. The only son of a widow, he entered the Church at her desire, but

his heart is book-hunting at Copenhagen, and, as his Sanskrit volumes

show, his delight would be Orientalism. But what can be done so far from

the haunts of learning? and at thirty-four he sees life gradually

slipping away from him. Meanwhile he takes pupils, he farms, he flirts

with botany, and he refreshes himself by an occasional visit to

Reykjavik. He kindly gave me a copy of the Reykholtskirkjumáldagi, the

Authentic Inventory of Reykholt Kirk, facsimile’d by the Icelandic

Literary Society:[38] the three specimens bear no date, but the Sagas

fix the time between A.D. 1143 and A.D. 1222.

About ten A.M. we were _en route_ and, worried by swarms of flies, in

forty minutes we walked up the great ugly prism, Reynivallaháls, whose

winding way was hardly visible from below. The summit is dotted with

Vörður, to guide travellers and church-goers through the snow. The

descent turned eastward, and showed us in front the familiar forms of

the horned and snow-streaked “Súlur,” the massive umbo of Skjaldbreið,

and the white dome of the Ok Jökull: to the left (north) was

Skarðsheiði, veiled in clouds. The lower gullies, where the heavy cold

air settles, condense their columns of warmer air into clouds, which

simulate water-spouts: at times these vapours, wonderfully resembling

smoke-pillars, have been mistaken for a rain of erupted ashes. At our

feet lay the head of the Hvalfjörð, looking unusually picturesque in the

still, blue air. Great double buttresses pushed peremptorily from

behind. The Múlafjall (mull-hills)[39] and Síldarmannafjall

(sillock-fisher or herring-catcher’s hill) are separated from

Reynivallaháls and from each other by Botnsdalr (bottom-head dale), and

by two green vales, Brynjudalr, where the brindled cow was once lost.

The river-like surface of the firth was exceptionally tranquil, and a

dwarf islet, shaped like a Strasburg

[Illustration: THE “REYKHOLTSKIRK[.J]UMÁLDAGI”,

(INVENTORY OF REYKHOLT KIRK) AND TWO OTHER DOCUMENTS

DATE BETWEEN A.D. 1143 AND A.D. 1222.]

pie, rose from its own reflection. There were other islets, and boats,

and eider-ducks temporarily separated _a mensâ et thoro_, screaming

“crees,” peewits, plovers, and the usual accidents of a firth-view in

Iceland.

At the foot of the descent we struck the Fossá farm, and rode along the

northern counterslope of the Reynivallaháls. The path ran over swamp and

rock; it was the _malus passus_ of the whole line, but by no means

dangerous as described by Geir Zoega. Fortunately the tide was out, and

we easily forded the mouths of the Brynjudalr and Botnsdalr; on our

return we exchanged the bad line for two long detours rounding the

forked head of the firth. We then ascended to a farm situated under the

Thyrill, or egg-kipper, the stick for whipping eggs, milk, or porridge.

This remarkable feature forms the westernmost head of the

Síldarmannafjall, and resembles nothing so much as two towers flanking

the gateway of a giant’s castle, built after the fashion of Normandy;

the superstructure is basalt, and time seems to have tilted it a little

awry, as if the proprietor had long been an absentee. This Thyrill takes

its name from the mountain gusts which hurl men from their horses,

threaten caravans with destruction by frightful whirlwinds, and raise

sheets of sea-water high in the air, tearing them to pieces like snow.

To look at the peaceful innocent scene we could hardly imagine that it

ever lets angry passions rise, or that it had been led to the excesses

and atrocities described by Ólafsson and Von Waltershausen.[40]

The farm-people leaned against the walls, sunning themselves like Slavs

under similar circumstances; there was no want of church-goers riding to

and fro, and generally the travellers were more civil than upon the

beaten paths. Iceland mostly reverses the rule of the world, the country

folk being less amiable to the stranger than the town folk. From the

Thyrill to the Ferstikla farm, a distance of an hour and a half, there

are two paths. The short cut lies along the shore of heavy dark sand

and rocky points of black basalt studded with white shells; the porous

material is in parts full of almonds of lime, hence the white coating

which we here observe, as in the Wadys of the Haurán. The inner line is

the usual mixture of warty surface, swamp, stone, and shaking bog. At

Ferstikla, where a path strikes north for Reykholt, we found some grass

and rested the ponies.

A couple of hours finished the ride. We turned left, over a shallow

divide, the Ferstikluháls, whose northern counterslope is wooded with

birches fully two feet tall, yet hardly equal to the task of pulling us

from our saddles. We then fell into another Svínadalr (swine-dale), with

three lakes disposed north-east to south-west, along the southern base

of Skarðsheiði, and drained by another Laxá. There was no lack of

farm-houses, a sight which cheered the nags whilst floundering through

the deep mud-bog. A guide whom we had engaged _pro tem._, pointed to the

cone of the Blákoll, a comparatively low formation to the right; but the

vaunted mountain with its stepped bluffs is everywhere easy, and

“climbing for climb” always suggests to me the African’s “drinkee for

drunk.” After a pleasant but very slow ride of seven hours, we made, at

7.30 P.M., the Skarð farmlet. After the muggy morning with a “rain-sun,”

followed by a chilly evening which threatened a down-pour, we were not

sorry to be lodged in the cow-house of a “Sel”[41] and to sleep upon

sweet-smelling hay, far preferable to the animal heat of the foul

cubicula.

This day we have passed over the Iceland terminus proposed by the Danish

telegraph line. Despite the fearful whirlwinds, described as capable of

breaking “tegulas imbricesque,” and the rocky bottom of the Whale Firth,

it is perhaps the best; it is absolutely free from icebergs (Fjall

jakar), floes, and field-ice (Hellu-ís): Arctic ice appears in the Faxa

Fjörð and about Reykjavik only about once a century, the last time

being 1763. Here the bay-ice is reduced to a little brash-ice and

shore-ice, which are of scanty importance. It is a lee-land defended by

the south-western projection and by the north-western digitations from

the berg-bearing currents; and the bottom, until the Hvalfjörð is

reached, appears to be sand and mud. As Forbes remarks, there is no

“eligible spot” for a station between Portland (Dyrhólaey) and

Reykjanes; whilst the submarine volcanic line of rocks, the passage of

steamers, and the shallows of Reykjavik, render that port impossible.

The Vestmannaeyjar again are too far from the capital, and the east

coast is simply not to be thought of.

The project is part of the “north-about line” of Atlantic telegraph, as

opposed to the “south-about,” viâ the Cap de Verds, St Paul’s Rock, and

Brazilian Cape St Roque. Many of us remember hearing it ably advocated

some dozen years ago by Colonel T. P. Shaffner of Louisville,[42]

Kentucky, who took it up in 1853; travelled to Labrador, Greenland, and

Iceland; advertised, expended time and capital, canvassed, obtained

concessions from Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, and published and lectured

before the Royal Geographical Society, in order to raise a fund of

£400,000. The time was propitious. The first attempt of 1857-58 had

broken down after sending some 400 messages: in 1860 the longest

sub-aqueous circuit was 750 miles. No. 2 cable (1863), carried by the

“Great Eastern,” had also failed; and Mr Faraday objected his

“retardation” and “return currents,” even to an air-line of a thousand

miles. The bankruptcy of Transatlantic telegraphy was therefore

confidently predicted; nor was it believed that any section of 2000

miles could possibly be made to last. Presently, by way of a practical

jest upon scientific hobbies and croakings, the third cable (1866)

succeeded: then came the Valentia-Newfoundland in the same year; and

lastly, in 1868, the Brest and New York, or French line. Now (1872) a

fourth is talked of, and the next half-a-dozen years may see another

half-dozen.

Colonel Shaffner, who is well remembered in eastern Iceland, proposed

to cross the Atlantic by four stations, none exceeding 700

miles--namely, Scotland to Færoes (225-250), to Iceland (240), to

Greenland (600-700), and to the coast of Labrador (510); a maximum total

of 1700, afterwards reduced to 1645 miles. The project, however,

contained two elements of unsuccess. Firstly, it proposed an air-line

from Djúpivogr (east coast) to the capital: I do not know what my friend

Dr Rae, who was sent to inspect the route, reported; but the universal

opinion of Icelanders is that no telegraphic communication of the kind

could resist a single winter-storm, not to speak of earthquakes and

eruptions. “How repair the damage?” they ask: “how even carry the

posts?” The second objection, the state of the ice about the Greenland

coast, was perhaps even more fatal. Thus the scheme gradually fell into

oblivion, not, however, before it had done right good service in

exploring Newfoundland--a very paradise for anglers, where trout weigh 6

lbs. and where salmon sells at 4 cents. The persevering Danes still

cleave to a connection with Iceland, and that is why we saw the gun-boat

“Fylla” on her surveying cruise.

On the next morning, as the peasantry rose at three A.M. to ted their

hay, we began preparations for ascending Skarðsheiði (scarf-gap-heath)

by observing the aneroids.[43] Rain evidently threatened, as at A.M.

7.15 we attacked the slope of _débris_, green only where two trickling

streamlets played hide-and-seek under moss and stones. After an hour’s

walk we reached the first ridge, and found in front of us a broken

plateau about 2000 feet high, with five lakes and ponds distributed at

different altitudes: the waters are all sweet, percolation taking the

place of drainage. On our right rose a tall precipitous wall of receding

steps, which at a distance resemble string courses and stories. The

precipice is streaked with _couloirs_, very well disposed for falls and

cannonades of rocks: high up there are two broad Palagonite bands in the

trap, which may sometimes be seen from Reykjavik. Our guide the farmer

did the honours of the echo.

We now circled to the north, winding round the grim wall, up and down

ridge after ridge of moraine-like _débris_, and over moss-clad boulders,

among which we occasionally sank up to the knees. Here the most

conspicuous growths were reindeer moss and Fjall-grös (“mountain

grass”), the _Lichen Islandicus_, of which Felligrath sings:

“Old, even in boyhood, faint and ill,

And sleepless on my couch of woe

I sip this beverage, which I owe

To Guper’s death and Hecla’s hill.”

In Iceland I never heard--as old travellers relate--of its being dried,

put in bags, beaten, and worked into flour by stamping. Usually it is

boiled, and eaten with barley like burghoo, or it is infused in milk, as

cacao and maté sometimes are: it gives a light tinge of green, and a

very pronounced mucilaginous flavour. The simple old days used it as

coffee, but it could not stand its ground against the intruder which

arrests the waste of tissue, as well as warms the blood. “Iceland

grass,” however, is still valued at home as a jelly for _poitrinaires_;

and the last time I saw it was on the Campo-grosso or Dolomite mountains

of Italian Recoaro (Vicenza).

After a second hour we reached the north of the bluff. On our left hand

was a red and cindery mound, the Stellir,[44] justly famed as a landmark

for sailors: ahead, and to east, rose the detached Skessuhorn, which

seemed to present no difficulties: it was not till our return that we

heard it described as a local Matterhorn, often attacked, but attacked

in vain, and still awaiting its vanquisher. Turning to the right, we

worked up the quoin by a passage between stone walls of Nature’s make,

and in another half-hour we climbed up the stiff slope of decayed trap.

Our guide required some little management: he pointed in alarm to the

mists rolling up from the north, with a cruel rush of cold air, and

though the line was marked with stone-men, he ejaculated “Thoka!” (fog).

“Lost in the mists” is often a conclusion to a “tale of Iceland’s

Isle.”

The summit of Skarðsheiði, about 3000 feet above sea-level, resembled

that of the Esja, and afforded a view quite as extensive, though not now

so novel. To the north, under our feet, ran the winding Hvitá and its

outlying waters, draining to the Borgarfjörð, here a grisly “spiegel,”

dotted with black reefs. North-eastwards lay the bare sulphurous grounds

of Reykholt (reeky hill), while far to the north-west, bounding the

north of the Faxa Fjörð, the knuckles of Snæfell and the caldrons

popularly known as Katlar, the kettles, formed the land horizon.

Southward the view ranged clean over Reykjavik, and showed the easiest

route to Skarðsheiði: this would be by boat to Saurbær, north-east of

Akrafjall, whence a walk of five miles places the traveller at the Skarð

farm.

The ascent and descent had occupied four hours: we then mounted our

horses, and returned before night to Reynivellir.

A delightful morning (July 23), when the air was so fine, so clear, so

bright that

“It seemed a sin to breathe it,”

a morning when one really would have been sorry to die, sent us to bathe

at the Reynivellir brook, regardless of slugs and snails, moths and

flies. The Reverend left, after a copious breakfast of mashed salmon,

with a promise to meet us on the road. He had just lost a parishioner.

Since July 11th there has not been a shower, and the sky was that of

Italy for a whole fortnight. This abnormally fine weather is equally

fatal to the very young and the very old: seven or eight deaths had just

taken place at Reykjavik, a large proportion out of an annual average of

sixty; and three successive days saw three funerals: the causes are

“pituita,” malignant catarrh, and influenza.

We were threatened with a _mal pas_, and again found it remarkably good.

From Reynivellir the path ran down the Laxá valley; and where we crossed

the stream, it was clear as crystal, and abundant in trout. Here, again,

turf has invaded lands once forested; and now we look in vain for a

specimen of the sorb-tree, which named the parsonage. _Chemin faisant_,

the Reverend lectured us upon the botany of his native vale. The Dutch

or white clover (Smári)[45] flourishes: that red-headed cannibal the

Lambagras, moss-campion or dwarf catch-fly (_Silene acaulis_), which

rises upwards of 11,000 feet on the Swiss Alps, here prefers the drier

soils. The lower lands are covered with the Gúnga-gras (“bag grass,”

_Bursa pastoris_), everywhere common, with the meadow-sweet (Mjaðurt =

οἰνομέλι, _Spiræa ulmeria_), which yields a yellow dye, and a grateful

perfume in hot weather. The pride of the plain is the thrift or

sea-gilly-flower (_Statice armeria_), with downy stalk and pale pink

heads, which the people call Geldingahnappar, “gelding,” that is to say,

wether, “button.” The richer and damper grounds are grown with the marsh

marigold (_Caltha palustris_), the Solia or Solveia of the Færoes, here

called Lækja-sóley or hóf-sóley, from its hoof-shaped leaf; cattle will

not eat it, save as a _pis-aller_; the small green flower-buds when

pickled resemble capers, and the inflorescence lasts from early May to

the end of summer. It is a congener of the carnivorous _Caltha

dionæafolia_. There is an abundance of the Engja-rós, eyre or meadow

rose (_Epilobium augustifolium_), forming a pink carpet--there are many

rosaceæ in Iceland, but roses are deficient, as in the southern

hemisphere, only one having been found;[46] and the traveller must not

expect to find the beautiful little “Ward” of the Libanus. Another

common growth is the leguminous Um-feðmingsgras, “holding grass,” the

tufted or creeping vetch (_Vicia cracca_), whose cirri fasten upon

neighbours; hence the Færoese call it Krogyogras, from Kroya, to cling.

The solitary _Andromeda hypnoides_, a small creeper, with heather-like

white flowers, acts lily of the valley. We are again reminded of Syria

by the chamomile-like Baldursbrá (_Anthemis cotula_), whose snowy petals

suggest the White God,[47] Baldur the Beautiful, and whose circular

yellow centre assimilates it to the solar orb--it is too bad to call it

“stinking camomile.” The common sorrel (_Rumex acetosa_, locally known

as Valla, or Korn-súra) is a social plant that prefers the neighbourhood

of farms, and flourishes in newly-manured túns: the other species are

the kidney-shaped mountain sorrel (_Oxyria reniformis_) and the sheep’s

sorrel (_R. acetosella_). In the more southern islands, where the root

gives a red dye, the leaf is said to grow a foot and a half long; it is

used to flavour bird soup, and is eaten with meat. An anti-scorbutic,

pleasant withal, it should here be used every day, as tomatoes are in

the southern United States; but if you advise the Icelander to correct

his blood with sorrel, he will probably reply that it is food for cows.

After an hour’s ride, including the inevitable short cut of wrong path

and turning back, we reached the Miðfell farm, which faces cosily west,

and is backed by its little range of trap so degraded that it seems to

be forming humus. Fronting it is the Miðfellsvatn lakelet, which drains

the north-eastern Esja: it swarms with the Sílungur trout, but there was

no boat for the convenience of fishermen. Whilst the Reverend went to

his funeral, we sat upon the grassy warts, and enjoyed the view of

Snæfell, bluish-white in the flickering air. The thermometer stood at

86° (F.) in the sun; and the ghost of a mist tempered, like the glazing

of a master-hand, the raw colours and rough forms of the scene. The

prospect suggested Tempe, not the grisly defile of reality, but the

picture painted by poets--Greek Greece and Syrian Syria contrast

wonderfully with the features which naturally form themselves in the

northern mind. We argued that a couple of pleasant summer months might

be spent at Miðfell, but that such æstivation would involve building a

fishing-box and stocking it with friends.

Not the least picturesque part of the prospect was the cavalcade of some

thirty men and women returning in Indian file from the funeral. At last,

wearied with waiting, we rode up the ugly rough ravine of Eilifsdalr,

and turned to the right between the Esja and its northern outlier,

Eyrarfjall. The latter showed sub-columnar and fan-shaped basalt in the

foundations, with Palagonite, here yellow, there dark, overlying and

underlying trap, whilst striated rocks everywhere appeared. On the left

hand, or under Esja, were mounds mightily resembling moraine:[48] they

were probably formed by the streams of frozen mud which carried with

them boulder fragments, and either strewed them upon the plain or swept

them out to sea. The most conspicuous of the natural tumuli, and crowned

with a stone, is called, ‘Róstuhóll,[49] “battle holt,” or, as Hooker

has it, “duel hill:” here Búi Andriðsson, for whom see the Kjalnesinga

Saga, kept his foes at bay, and slew half-a-dozen with a sling.

We then forded the streams, and crossed the nasty swamps and the stony

patches of the brook which flows to the Hvalfjörð. Farms were scattered

everywhere about the sheltered valley. After two hours and a half of

slow progress, we were joined by the Reverend, who, gallantly mounted,

rode straight as a fox-hunting parson of the last generation, and we

soon reached the ladder of red and green lavas which overlooks the

firth. The immediate banks show the feature locally called

Melarbakki,[50] horizontal lines bare of earth, regular as if heaped up

by man, and generally with inclines too stiff to retain vegetation. We

shall see the feature well displayed at Borðeyri and Grafarós. In

Canada, and New England also, where the snow covering, which prevents

radiation of heat, is blown away by winds, and the ground is frozen for

a depth of two feet or more, the surface remains brown and barren

throughout spring and summer.

Here we dismounted to collect the “Yaspis,” for which the place is

famous, and which we had found scattered over the Esja range. The

colours are bright red, blue, and blue-green, often prettily striped and

branched; the sharp edges cut like obsidian, and the whole appears as

impure opaque masses of quartz. According to Dr Hjaltalín, it remarkably

resembles that of Hungary, and the dark spots upon the surface are oxide

of copper, copper glance, or argentiferous copper. Zeolites were

abundant, so were almonds of lime in basalt; chalcedonies, milk-white,

red, yellow, green, and dark-brown, passing into cachalong and grades of

chalcedony and quartz, “cloisonnés” with crystals of carbonate of lime,

and superficially clad with capillary mesotype. We often heard in

Iceland of the noble opal, which might be expected in a volcanic

land--as at Aden, there are whole sheets of it, but none is noble. The

Færoese consider it to be a transition between zeolite and chalcedony: I

was told of fine specimens found there, but failed to see them.[51]

We then trotted merrily past Saurbær (sour mud or dirt-farm; perhaps

farm of Saur), and were shown the Tíða Skarð (tide or hour _col_), so

called because the congregation riding to mass could be seen when an

hour distant. The path along the shore was tolerable, and we had to

dismount only at a single swamp. After a total of four hours’ slow

progress from Miðfell, we reached the main object of our journey, the

celebrated Hof of Kjalarnes (Keel-ness), in the Kjósar or “choice”

Sýsla. It was the great place of assembly in the south-west, and the

chief of the twelve provincial “Things” before A.D. 928, when the

Althing was removed to the confiscated estate of Thingvellir. We

expected interesting ruins after reading of “Kialarness, remarkable for

the remains of a Hof or idolatrous temple erected towards the close of

the ninth century” (Henderson, ii. 3). The Crymogæa of “Arngrim Jonas”

speaks with admiration of two Hofs in the north and south of the island.

Each had an inner sacellum, or holy of holies, where the victims were

ranged in semicircle about the idol-altar (Stalli): the latter was

plated with iron, for protection against the pure, flint-kindled fire,

which, as in a Parsee temple, perpetually burned there: it supported a

brass bowl (blót bolli) to contain the blood, sprinkled with the

blood-twig (blót grein) or asperges upon the bystanders. There hung up,

likewise, a great silver ring, which they stained with blood, and which

whoever took an oath on these occasions was required to hold in his

hand. The “Baugr,” we are told, weighed two ounces, and was at times

worn by the priest: it possibly symbolised Odin’s magic “Draupnir,” made

by Brokkur, most skilful of the dwarfs. Till late years a specimen was

to be seen at the Reykjahlíð churchlet. The “oath on the ring” was taken

by dipping it in blood, often human, and by saying, after the solemn

adjuration of heathen old Scandinavia, “So help me Freyr and Njördr, and

that almighty Áss!” (ok hinn almáttki Áss, _i.e._, Thor);[52] and

Norsemen of rank were buried with the Armilla sacred to Odin. “In one of

these temples there was also, near the chapel, a deep pit or well into

which they cast the victims.”

Mallet, and other trustworthy authors of his day, assimilated the

ancient Scandinavian places of worship to those of the Persian Guebres

and the old Teutons, who would not offend the gods by immuring them, or

by roofing them in, which is not correct. The Hof was an enclosed

building, whilst the Hörg, in whose centre stood the huge sacrificial

stone, was open above. The Scandinavian temple, even that gold-plated

wonder of the North, the fane of Thor at old Upsala, was nothing but a

long wooden hall to contain the worshippers, with a sanctuary at one

end, the true Aryan Estika,[53] where the “Blót,”[54] or pagan

sacrifice, was performed by the priest or pontiff (hof-goði). The same

was the case with the Kjalarnes temple, a rough timber building, burnt

by Búi Andriðsson, the slinger.

The situation is right well chosen for effect. This Hof stood at the

base of a stony land-tongue separated by swampy ground from the iron

shore, lined and faced with _diabolitos_, or cruel little black rocks.

Opposite sleeps the tranquil bay of Reykjavik, backed by its picturesque

blue hills--a veritable Sierra, the backbone of this part of Iceland,

all cones and pyramids, notches and saw-like teeth, resembling the

sky-lines of El Safá. To the right is a rough rise of lava pushing out

jagged points, and to the left towers the Esja pile, with its network of

dykes and slides, an extinct Vesuvius faced by white cliffs. Farms and

hay-fields are scattered about, probably occupying the same positions

which looked upon the ancient heathen gods, with whose departure

prosperity left the land. There is not a trace of the building, but the

pasty-faced peasants showed us, below the rise, a bit of deep swamp

covered with marsh-marigold, and this they called the Blót-Kelda, or

victim well--possibly where men and beasts were sacrificially drowned.

After inspecting this humble marvel, we shook hands with the Reverend,

and took boat for Reykjavik, where we arrived at 9.30 P.M.

I afterwards was shown the traditional site of the Thór Hof near

Stykkishólm; and the utter absence of sign made me neglect to visit that

of Vopnafjörð, whose door was translated to the church, the Hörg, at

Krosshólar; and the fane of Goðaborg, with its sacrificial stone where

“David of the wilderness” dwelt. In 1770, Uno Von Troil (Letter XVI.)

offered a tempting list of northern antiquities, some of them possibly

pre-historic or proto-historic.[55] But except in cairns, tumuli, and

the kitchen-middens mentioned in various places, especially that near

Snorri’s bath at Reykholt, I should expect little yield even from the

spade.

The older Edda (Sigrdrífumál, st. 34) speaks of cairns--

“Let a mound be raised

For those departed;”

and we shall pass not a few during our journeys. It would be interesting

to know if any of them have the long adit, the vestibule, and the

separate chambers for the dead, which are characteristic of the

Mongolian tomb-temples, and of which a splendid specimen is found at

Maes Howe.

CHAPTER X.

NORTHWARDS HO! TO STYKKISHÓLM AND GRAFARÓS.

PART I.--STYKKISHÓLM.

We are very anxious to leave this

“Tivoli del mal conforte,”

where,

“O piove, o tira vento, o suona a morte.”

The “Jón Sigurðsson,” Captain Müller, ran into Reykjavik on June 26, and

next day we set out to prospect Hafnafjörð, the Haven Firth, distant two

bays south of the capital. Threading the now familiar islets, we doubled

the beaconed point of Suðrnes, and passed Bessastaðir, Besse or

Bear-stead, a place not undistinguished in island story. It was built by

the turbulent and traitorous “Herodotus of the North,” Snorrí Sturluson,

grandson of Sæmund the Wise, born at Hvamm, in A.D. 1178, and author of

the “prose Edda;” he died “in his shoes”--murdered as was the custom of

the day. Long years afterwards the place of “Meister Petz”[56] became

the Latin School, and now it belongs to a congenial soul, Hr Grímr

Thomsen. Followed Garðar, also on the Alpta-nes (swan-ness) peninsula,

where a fringe of farms

[Illustration: R. F. B. _delt._

SNÆFELLSJÖKULL FROM THE NORTH.]

and houses, each with seven gables or more, ranged in line, not massed

together, fronts the faint-green land, and prospects the glaucous

northern seas. After a couple of hours, which covered two Danish miles,

we steamed down a deep and sheltered sinus, facing the north-west, with

double entrance: here a red buoy made us independent of pilot; the tides

inflow by the south and race round and out to the north.

The scenery of Hafnafjörð, which Scotchmen compare with that of

Scalloway, is peculiar and somewhat grotesque. Like all the

south-western parts of Thule, the formation is a hopeless lava-field,

bristling with shrublets and patched with green: the outline of frontage

consists of points divided by bays of dark-grey sand, and the

habitations are perched between the knobs and turrets of the several

Hrauns, old and new. The land is comparatively level, backed by a

veritable Sierra--the dorsal spine of this part of Iceland--jagged,

notched, and vertebral, extending from north-east to south-west. Four

brigantines and a lugger were anchored in the clear water, off the five

pierlets, the usual planks and caissons, that denote the corresponding

comptoirs, one patch of building to the north, another to the south, and

a third at the bottom of the bay, whilst an extensive farm-house rose

from a dorsum of green, the Hval-eyri or whale strand.

Whilst the steamer discharged her salt and iron pans, we hailed an old,

blunt-snouted punt, and paid for the service two marks: the latter

process evoked a stare of surprise and a vigorous shake of the hand. I

note this proceeding because it is not unusual on the coast of Iceland;

it certainly distinguishes the boatman from his hateful brotherhood in

more genial lands; especially on the “Hesperian strand.” We landed at

Flensburg, about the bottom of the bay, the establishment of Hr Johnsen,

and walked round to the buildings on the north. All are timber, coloured

grey or black, with white windows and slate roofs; each flies its flag,

Danish or Norwegian. The latter belongs to the Bergen Company, which has

lately taken the place of the Scotch house at Reykjavik, with branch

agencies here and at Stykkishólm and Seyðisfjörð. At a little bridged

stream women and boys were busy with the corpses of cods, cutting gills,

tearing out gullets, splitting bellies to their ventral fins,

extracting livers and sounds, and tossing the trimmed carcases into

heaps--they were jolly as Italian peasants at the Vendemmia. Some of the

lads were fishing with sinkers of stone, floats of driftwood, and bait

of cod. Beyond the stream a new road to Reykjavik was being made, by

blasting the lava--as will be seen, it is much wanted. On the north of

the bay we inspected the remains of Hr Sivertsen’s dry dock, which looks

like a line of groins to keep the shore _in situ_. A couple of eaglets

were shown for sale; they had lately been taken from a crag in the

lava-run to the south-east: the chickens, hardly six weeks old, were

about the size of Cochin fowls; their skins showed bare through the

growing plume of grey and dark-grey, contrasting with the bright yellow

cere, and they opened threatening gapes at the stranger. The price had

lately risen to £3, whilst ten shillings a head were asked for the

fierce little graveolent foxes.

As usual we had time for a walk inland to the Varða, or landmark,

bearing magnetic east of the ship, and distant about thirty minutes: I

was anxious to see the behaviour of the lava. Travellers in Iceland

everywhere speak of vast outpours which, instead of showing any decided

point of origin, appear to have sweated from the soil. They especially

quote the lands about Mý-vatn and Krafla, where the contrary is the

case: the same has been observed in other volcanic countries, _e.g._, by

Mr Porter in Syria; by Messrs Tyrwhitt-Drake and Palmer in Moab; and by

those who have studied the Quito platform. Here, however, we distinctly

traced three craters, and it became evident that the mouth which

discharged the oldest torrents may have been obliterated by subsequent

eruptions. The principal lava-bed[57]

[Illustration: From a Photo. M^c.Farlane & Erskine, Lithrs., Edin^r.

HAFNAFJÖRÐ, WHICH OUGHT TO BE THE CAPITAL OF ICELAND.

Vol. II, Page 88.]

showed in section a shallow dome between two lateral fissures, where

contraction of the edges, and perhaps a less solid foundation, had

caused the sides of the stone-river to fall away and form dwarf “Gjás,”

or longitudinal rifts--we shall see the same action on a grander scale

at Almannagjá. The dorsum was broken by sharp edges, the tall crests of

split and splintered blisters, the bubbles of the earth where lava

overflowed wet ground; coils like tobacco-rolls and ropy corrugations,

ripple-marks and plications, showed where the hardening clinkers had

been compacted together, and everywhere yawned tunnels and caverns. Yet

the field was crossed by a horse-path.

The normal high shingle-bank of the shore formed an inland bog, and the

result was a subtending lagoon, as usual without outlet. Farmlets were

scattered about, all apparently on made ground. There was a tolerable

turbary haunted by whimbrels and loud-voiced terns; the lava-fields

belonged to the Snjotit-lingue, snow-flake or snow-tit (_Emberiza_ or

_Plectophranes nivalis_); to the Stein-depill or wheat-ear (_Motacilla

ænanthe_); and to the Máriátla or Mary-bird, the white wag-tail

(_Motacilla alba_). The three latter were exceptionally tame, and like

Joâo de Barros in the Brazil, amused themselves by flirting with the

unfeathered biped.

I have described Hafnafjörð at a greater length than it perhaps

deserves. Here not a few travellers have declared that the capital of

Iceland should be, and undoubtedly it will become the sole place of

export for the Krísuvík sulphur-fields. The harbour is exceptionally

safe, sheltered from all winds: the climate is better than that of

Reykjavik; and the sky is often clear when heavy clouds invest the

northern heavens. But unless ground is made, there is little or no

building room. On the other hand, for an exporting port, Hafnafjörð is

perfect. In the early sixteenth century the British corsairs, numbering

some 360 souls, had formed a regular colony at Haven Firth--let us hope

that the complaints of Christian II. will not call for renewal, when the

English miner shall spread himself over the land.

As the sun fell towards the horizon the air became cool; the thermometer

on deck showed 58° (F.), and the day gradually assumed a worn and faded

look, like a maiden when the sun breaks upon a ball. Before midnight we

were once more at Reykjavik, to start north on the next morning.

The “Jón Sigurðsson” (det Islandske Handelssamlag’s Dampskib) belongs to

a Norwegian company, who bought her at the high price of $60,000. An

iron hull, her draught is 9 feet, her tonnage 460, and her horse-power

80, which can be raised to upwards of 100: she must burn 12 tons of coal

during the twenty-four hours to average less than 8 knots, and this

combined with cheap passages prevents her paying.[58] Her good point is

the possession of two donkey-engines, the simple Cornish, with 6-inch

stroke, which do all the work. Her accommodations are not complete; we

occupy the seven sofas in the aft saloon, and of the four cabins three

are taken by the officers, including the agent. Broad, tubby, and high

out of the water, she catches the wind with her “gawky” telescope

funnel, a survival from the days of Watt; she has little sailing power,

and she is hardly safe off a lee-shore; in August she was beaten back

when attempting to make the Færoes.

The want of punctuality again is a serious disadvantage to “Jón.” The

departure will be fixed for any hour between six A.M. and two P.M.; you

will be hastily summoned on board at nine A.M., and yet not start till

noon. There are stated hours of feeding, but they are not regular enough

for passenger ships; and provisions, as well as liquor, often run short,

because the “restauration” is not obligatory. The delays are ever

recurring; covered lighters being unknown, and rye, with other

perishable goods, cannot be landed during rain. Again “Jón” is

over-officered. Besides captain and two lieutenants, we carry double

engineers who speak English; an agent and commissaire; steward,

stewardess, and assistant steward. The commander, A. W. Müller, is a

young lieutenant of the Norwegian navy, which wisely allows its

unemployed officers to take charge of postal and passenger steamers. We

find the advantage of this arrangement in every part of the

establishment. The brasses are bright; the decks are washed; the

“squeejee” is used; the offices are clean, and even the spittoons are

garnished with fresh heather; whilst the natty little steward and the

white-clad cook are pleasing contrasts with the state of affairs on

board English craft of the same kind. And we were all charmed with

Captain Müller, whose _bonhomie_ and obliging disposition made every

passenger right sorry to part with him.

* * * * *

_June 28._

Steamed out at seven _A.M._ under Italian skies, and over seas smooth as

mirrors, which promised ample enjoyment of this day’s “lion,”

Snæfellsjökull, capping the northern land-arm of broad Faxa Fjörð. As we

crossed the Hvalfjörð-mouth, the lay of the land suggested a mighty

leaf; the water-line being the midrib, with Esja and Akranes

representing the up-turned sides. On the south-western slopes of

Skarðsheiði, we were shown the streamlet and farm of Leirá, “Rivière de

la Vase,” which once owned the printing-press; and beyond the broad

Borgarfjörð (burg firth)[59] lay the low alluvial flat Mýra Sýsla. The

unromantic name, “mire county,” becomes ridiculous when Mýra-maður

(mud-man) is applied to the dweller: the comical wrath which it excites

reminded me of Varnhagen’s indignation about the Corcovado or Hunch-back

mountain of Rio de Janeiro. Far over the fen-tract, streaked by its

three main streams, appeared a suggestive prospect: the long perspective

of Jökulls; Ok (the yoke), Geitland’s and the northern Skjaldbreið, not

to be confounded with the “Broad Shield” on the road to Hekla: this

chaos of ice-deserts and volcanoes was ranged in long dorsa,

dish-covers, or antediluvian Twelfth-cakes, flattened at the summit,

backed by pearly mists of their own growing, with crests rose-tinged by

the sun, and feet streaked with transparent blue shadows. In vain we

strained our eyes to catch a sight of Baula, the cow, pronounced

somewhat like (the land of) “Beulah;” its pale-grey trachytic columns,

though 3000 to 3500 feet high, were hidden by intervening buttresses:

even Eld-borg, the “Tower of Fire,” though quite near the coast, refused

to show its grand circular crater and flanks too steep for snow. Here

begins the northern Skarðsheiði, which, passing through the Hnappadals

(button-dale) Sýsla, anastomoses with the broken cones called Katlar

(the caldrons), and with the great Snæfellsjökull, the Snebels Hokell of

Pontanus, and the “Western Jökull” of our maps. The long thin tongue of

land, mostly trachytic, has been mightily exercised by the fire below.

Here, upon a naked Tenerife, rises a tall grey cone, fronted by a little

extinct volcano, flushing angry red; there a wall of brown lava is built

upon a base of ruddy cinders and scoriæ, which have assumed the natural

angle. It is a land of chimneys and spiracles rising from cinders and

other _rejectamenta_; of Öl-keldr or “ale” (mineral) “waters;” of

cascades, silver fibres dashing into kieves of snow; of jagged

sugar-loaves and saddle-backs; of craters either whole or half torn

away; and of Klettar or precipices stripped of the snows which encompass

them.

Our attention was directed to the Búða-klettar, or cliffs of Buðir, the

celebrated centre of eruption which sent forth the Búðarhraun; and at

their base, ending the Jökullháls, the long ochraceous slope that falls

from the eastern ridge-flank of Snæfell to the settlement of Búðir (the

booths), far-famed for chalybeate springs. Huts for invalids have been

run up at this well-known “Kur-ort,” but the accommodation is described

as rough in the extreme. A little westward again, showing its basaltic

pillars, lies “Stapi,” the steeple-formed rock, a local Staffa,

suggesting memories of Fin M’Coul.

All eyes now fix themselves upon Snæfellsjökull: as the break of the sea

upon the shore told us, it rises within three miles, and the accidents

of weather, though apparently determined to conceal the calotte of snow,

combine to form an admir-

[Illustration: R. F. B. _delt._

SNÆFELLSJÖKULL FROM THE SOUTH.]

able setting for the imposing scene. The clearness of the heavens had

gradually changed to light mists, which hung mid-way upon the

hill-sides: whilst “mackerel’s-back” flecks the upper air, woolpack,

growing from the snow wreaths, forms dark-grey columns, perfectly

simulating a burning coast, and puffy white cumuli cast a shadow

distinct as if drawn by a painter’s hand. About one P.M. the northern

breeze becomes a south-easter, bringing with it a decided freshness and

a few drops of rain. The brown and dun coloured cirri, before floating

high above the wool-pack, now girth its middle, and there is a grand

contrast between the here and the there. Around us a few cats’-paws fan

the waters, which, under the lee of the land, stretch smooth as oil, and

the air is mild and kindly. In the upper regions rages and roars

“Satan’s weather;” the cloud chariots rush forward in solid line against

the wind, dashing and clashing as they course and career over the

battlefield of virgin snow; they are torn to pieces by the artillery of

the Storm-Fiend; the troops whirl away in headlong flight, veiling now

one cusp of the crater, then another. The westerly peak is connected by

a deeply-gashed synclinal slope, a kind of broken saddle-back, with the

eastern horn, or rather horns, which appear in the shape of a

“Thríhyrningr,” while below them, on the oriental outline, a star of

jetty basalt shines radiant in the dazzling white. Below the western

peak also the binoculars show a broken quoin, a long, black dyke, and a

multitude of dark dots protruding from the _névé_, as if men were

ascending. The apex has never been reached, and we at once see the

reason why: it is--

“Like a jagged shell’s lips, harsh, untunable;

Blown in upon by devils’ wrangling breath.”

M. Gaimard declares the eastern pinnacle to be “_frisée comme des têtes

de choux-fleurs:_” it appeared to me umbrella-shaped, with under

ribbings of frozen snow. M. Jules Verne was not so happy as usual in

making “Sneffles” an entrance for Arne “Saknussemm;” nor could we learn

anything about “Scortaris.”

The southern front below the _névé_ is a steep incline of contorted

lava; and a multitude of “hornitos” and parasitic craters, apparently

fallen in or choked up, run down almost to the water’s edge, where they

form a wall of contorted and caverned layers. Above the cliff a gentler

slope has a faint tinge of rainbow-green; and the steeper acclivities

are bare, red and yellow, brown and black. As we hugged the shore, I

carefully looked for the snow-drainage, and saw none: had there been

any, the sea-scaur must have shown it. Henderson rightly reports the

general belief that the water set free by the sun passes by underground

tunnels to the sea; and, all along this peninsula, the people hold to

subterranean connections. But the explanation somewhat savours of the

Congo Yellala (rapids), where the mighty mass of the upper stream,

“above the ghauts,” is supposed to pass through an invisible channel.

Herðubreið afterwards taught me that Palagonite allows no surface

drainage in the dry season; and this I hold to be the true explanation

of a remarkable phenomenon often seen in Iceland.

So striking a feature as Snæfell, whose shadow may be traced in the air,

could not fail to engender a variety of tales and legends. Some declare,

with the old Sagas, that it is within sight of Hvítserk in Eastern

Greenland. Certes its height (4577 Danish feet) is very far from

affording a vision ranging over 200 direct geographical miles; but here

we are little more than a degree from the Arctic circle, and it is hard

to limit the magic powers of refraction.[60] When the bishop declared

that it was unassailable by reason of “Dominus Bardus Snæfellsás, cujus

sine auspiciis mons Snæfell vix, ac ne vix quidem, superari potest,” he

alluded to a superstition still preserved. In Hitárdalr,[61] farther

east, is shown a huge feminine face carved in stone, and said to

represent Hít, the Ás or guardian goddess of the dale: a “Plutonic

affection” exists between her and Bárð or Snæfell’s Ás, whom Mackenzie

calls a tutelar saint, and whom Charles Forbes uncivilly converts from

Dominus to demon. He represents right well the Spirit of the Glacier.

Curious to say, the same tale concerning the “Loves of the Mountains” is

told in far New Zealand, where Messrs Tongariro and Taranaki (Mount

Egmont) are jealous as they are amorous of Mrs or Miss Taupo.

The earliest climbers seem to have attempted the ascent from the east

and south-east, where the snow-line extends much lower. Such were Eggert

Ólafsson (1755); Mr, afterwards Sir, John Stanley (1789); and the three

Britishers who “wrote their mistresses’ names in the snow--the emblem of

their purity.” Sir George Mackenzie (1810) remained below, and Drs

Bright and Holland went stoutly up: the latter tells us (p. 55,

Recollections of a Fast Life) that a snow bridge gave way during the

descent, and one leg sank through the arch: he was saved by the poles of

the two Iceland guides, but ever after he sought to shun the

remembrance. They were followed by Henderson (1814), by Gaimard (1835),

and by Forbes (1859).

Of course, none reached the very summit. The Frenchman sensibly

attempted it from the north, and found the slope easy: we shall

presently see his line of march. Remains only to try the west where the

snow lies much higher up, and where the angle does not apparently exceed

25°: here also the distance to the cusps or peaks is notably shorter.

The Beruvík farm appears to be a good starting-place. But Alpines who

love “climbing for climb” must remember that without ropes and ladders,

perhaps kites also, and very likely with them, it will be impossible to

do more than has been done by their predecessors.

The accidents of the shore-line preserve their interest: the lone rock

Göltr (the deer)[62] and the twin Lón-drángar (sea-inlet drongs),

donjons of lava 240 feet tall, the north-western appearing as if

standing inland, where a red rock acts castle. Beyond it, amongst the

conical and degraded craters, we remark the Tröllakyrkja, Kirk of the

Trolls, or Giants, who here have a diocesan as well as a governor. They

have been busy on and off this coast, as shown by the Trölla-botn, Giant

Bay, the Polar Sea between Norway and Greenland; the Trölla-börn

(chimneys), or volcanic “hornitos;” the Trölla-hlað, the Giant’s

Causeway, or colonnade of basalt; and the Trölla-dyngjur, or Giantesses’

bowers, the mamelons near Reykjanes, which erupted in A.D. 1000. And

that the dwarfs have not been idle we see by the Dverga Kamarr, their

hollowed chambers in the basalt. We run by Dritvík (guano bay), along

the caverned cliff, built in various layers, here frosted like silver,

there dotted with white points, which prove to be birds. At Öndverðarnes

(fronting naze), after an hour of thorough enjoyment, thanks to Dominus

Barðr, we turn the corner, the north-westernmost projection of

Snæfellsjökull, which the pilot calls Svarta-lot, from the steps

protruded by the swart sea-wall; we open the Breiði Fjörð, and again we

find waters smooth as a silver plate.

Not that Broad Firth is always so well behaved: at times he rages with

frantic violence, mixing sea and sky till the general view is like a

well-shaken basin of soup, and confusing all the elements in a chaotic

matter, which justifies the much-maligned Pytheas. Many have been

drowned when crossing the dangerous sea, amongst them Ólafsson, the

Icelandic traveller, in 1767; shortly after he had “addicted himself to

the study of revealed religion.” During the winter of 1873-74, it was

completely invested by the Greenland ice; congelation extended as far as

the eye could reach from the highest hill-tops; and drifted bears were

slaughtered by the peasantry. There are traditions of skating across the

broad bay, of seals being killed, and of ships’ anchors being blown away

by the furious wind. At least, so says Mr Clausen, who has now taken us

in charge. The grandson of a Danish merchant mentioned by Henderson, he

has married a wife from Bonnie Dundee, and he has spent some four years

at Melbourne, which have opened his eyes to auriferous quartz-reefs, to

large deposits of iron, and to other minerals in his native island.

We delay for a while at the mouth of the big bay to swing the ship and

prove her compasses, a precaution never to be neglected. The “Jón” then

runs at a respectful distance along the northern shore of the

Snæfellsjökull tongue, which is not less interesting than its southern

coast. Our cicerone points out Enni or Ennisfjall, “forehead mountain,”

_la montagne de front_,[63] where those who would avoid a long detour

inland must pass over an Úfæra or “don’t travel” path--sands liable to

frequent bombardments from the red bluff 2500 feet high. Henderson tells

the exaggerated tale of its horrors, quaintly wondering how they were

not felt by the young girls who rode with him. Mr Clausen then

introduces to us Ólafsvík, his ancestral home, two slate-roofed houses,

with surrounding huts, nestling in a sheltered bay; and, by way of

urging his hospitality, he nobly makes us “free of the cellar.”

[Illustration: SUKKERTOPPR AND LIKKISTA (SUGAR-LOAF AND COFFIN).]

The eastern point of the “Vík” is Búlandshöfði (farm-land head), of

whose road Forbes has given a sketch, which verily makes the reader

“squirm.” From the sea, it appears a cone some 2000 feet high, shelving

towards the water, composed of many couches, said to belong to old

basaltic formations, rich in zeolites: between them are ledges and

_débris_ of the columnar type. All own the road to be dangerous for the

side-saddle; but also Mr Clausen had travelled over it in winter,

cutting steps for his nags in the icy snow, and holding on to his pony’s

tail.

An adjoining headland to the east showed us the quaint features called

the Coffin (Líkkista, the lich or corpse kist) and Sukkertoppr (the

sugar-loaf), both rising from a transparent sea, and backed by

slate-coloured walls and snow-dotted peaks. The former is an elongated

dorsum, with a shallow dome above, steps around its neck, and lower

slopes of a brownish-red. The Pão de Assucar, thinly greened, and

laterally barred with grey rock, seen from the north-east, is a regular

cone, like the Sugar-loaf of Sutherland; and over all hangs, like a

halo, the glorious presence of Bárðr’s home, whose snow roof stretches

far lower than on the southern side. As the sun slants towards the west

about 10.30 P.M., his last fires light it like a noble opal in a shining

bezel of sleety blue, the glow waxing brighter and brighter till the

snow, all aflame, dims every other object of earth, sea, and sky. At

last the fire burns slowly out, a tall white spectre, the ghost of the

morning’s scene, towers in the upper air, and the world becomes once

more cold, dull, and pale--by contrast colder, duller, and paler than

ever. It had been a “thing of beauty,” even though the incomparable

scenery of Magellan’s Straits, rendering me not a little fastidious, was

still fresh within my brain.

As we steam eastward we are shown the red Hraun of the Berserkir,[64]

two light-coloured knobs thrown out by the red and broken forms of the

Drápuhlíðarfjall. It has been asserted that Dr Backmann dug into the

Bersekja-dis, and found two skeletons, but men on the spot know nothing

about these _fouilles_. The story of their acting Macadam is too well

known to repeat, since it appeared in the Eyrbyggia Saga; we may

observe, however, that it has every characteristic of the normal

Icelandic legend. There is the unavoidable woman in the case, Asdisa, “a

young, haughty, fiery, and robust damsel.” The chief actors in the

tragedy, Halli, Leiknir, and their destroyer Arngrim, surnamed Víga Styr

(the stirrer or restless one), are all poets; and the latter

characteristically boasts of a foul and cowardly assassination, as if it

were a deed worthy of a Bayard. The highly honourable nature of murder

pure and simple, unaccompanied by aught of risk or gallantry, belongs to

a certain stage of society, and the Eastern reader finds many instances

in the career of Arab, Persian, and Hindu heroes.

And now, in the cold, fierce wind, we run past a scatter of islets,

especially noting Elliðaey (Ellwich Isle), the private property of the

bishop, whose fair daughter is on board. The light-green surface, effect

of summer growth, supports a few wrack-eating sheep; and the dark masses

of subcolumnar basalt, bluff to the north, and pierced with black caves,

are silvered over by troops of birds. About eleven P.M. we turn sharp to

starboard, and sight our destination, Stykkishólm, not Stockholm, not

_arène de morceaux_, but “holm of sticks,” that is, bits of pillared

stone: the settlement’s name is taken from one of the three rock-islets

to the north, Stykkisey. Leaving tall Súgandisey (wind-gush isle) to the

east, and the larger Landey to the west, we presently find ourselves in

a well-defended, dock-like inlet, with a landing-place above high tide.

The comptoir was of more importance than usual, Stykkishólm being then

the capital of the Western Quadrant: a schooner, two brigantines, and a

smack lay at anchor; seven flags were flying; of the eight houses two

were double-storied, and the parsonage boasted of a white belvedere.

Crosses on the rock-dyke, one looking from afar like the ancient Irish,

suggested a non-existing Calvary. The oldest tenement was that occupied

by the Amtmaðr, or high sheriff.

My first care at Stykkishólm was to see the Hr Administrator A. O.

Thorlacius, agent of the steamer: he came on board with his son, but,

unfortunately, we were “barbarians to one another.” The father has taken

meteorological observations once per diem, at noon, since November 1845:

in 1866 he was provided with instruments by the Board of Trade, and his

labours have appeared in the journal of the Scottish Meteorological

Society.[65]

Early next morning we set out, mounted on rat-ponies, and guided by Mr

Sýslumaðr Skúli Magnússon, to see the curiosities of Thórsnes, the

little peninsula which was once a hot-bed of heathenism. Some

cantonniers were working at the path, which combined the Brazilian

pleasures of slippery plank-bridges, foul causeways, and corduroys of

slush; we were compelled to round the long inlet Vésvágr or Vé-vágr

(holy bay), because it cannot afford a ferry: here broken bottles showed

a habit of picnicing. Turning to the south-east we sighted Helgafell

(holy hill), a common name, as we have seen about Reykjavik. This lump

of subcolumnar basalt, perpendicular to the north and east, and falling

with an easy grassy slope to the south-west, after being honoured as

hillock never yet was, was chosen for one of the earliest Christian

churches; and people still pray at the dwarf chapel on the “Mount of

Immortality,” because the habit is 800 years old. It still preserves

intact the memory of Snorri Goði (the priest of Thor), “who was good to

his friends and grim to his foes:” the Eyrbyggia Saga tells the tale of

his intrigues, cruelties, and murders, Arnkell, whose tumulus is

hereabouts, being the “Charles” or good boy of the story. We were shown

the Munkrskarðr, where the holy men bade farewell to their beloved

monastery, a kind of Arctic “Last Sigh of the Moor”--an illiberal

English sacerdos adds, “their heart, doubtless, was with their treasure,

buried in a hill-side.” Monks, you see, are not like other men; they

must always be either almost superhuman, or, that failing, subhuman.

Thence we turned to the east, where Thórsnes lies, and whence the old

Thunderer looked out upon Hofsvágr or Temple Bay.[66] Here, in A.D. 883,

Thórolfr Mostrarskegg (of the big beard), following the pillars of his

high seat round the head of Snæfellsjökull, took possession of the

ground with burning firebrand, as was the significant custom of the day.

The good guide, being utterly guiltless of all local knowledge, led us

up to a substantial farm-house, at whose door stood a blear-eyed old

franklin. Our nags, which attempted to crop a few blades of grass, were

incontinently seized and tethered to a long cord--after the open-handed

hospitality of the Syrian peasant, who, however poor, supplies your

animal with barley and bruised straw, I was struck by the change for the

worse. Usually the people are to be pitied; they would, perhaps, be

hospitable, but they cannot afford it where every ounce of fodder is

wanted. Even in the wealthier age of paganism the guest who outstayed

his three days was said to “sit,” and was held to be a cosherer or

vagrant. This “bonder,” who had 200 head of sheep in his “rétt,”[67] and

300 elsewhere, evidently had better use for his grass than the pauper.

Moreover, there is far more ceremony in hyperborean than in sub-tropical

lands. If the farmer be absent, an Icelander will not enter the house;

the women know nothing, and prefer running away from strangers. When the

master is at home, the guest is too shy to ask for what he wants. After

a sufficient experience, I ended by dismounting, walking up to the door,

offering a pinch of snuff and a drain from my brandy-flask, and roundly

explaining my general requirements, to be paid for, _bien entendu_. A

stranger may do this, but the natives have a punctilious regard for one

another’s feelings, an admirable but uncomfortable quality, which

prevents their taking or tolerating any such liberties.

The steamer was to start at ten A.M., and the garrulous old man was

determined to extract every item of European news from the guide, whilst

Mister Sýslumaður could not disappoint a constituent--the average

dawdling is worse in Iceland than in Peru. At length he sent with us his

son, and this nice-looking lad led us to a shore fanged with hideous

stumps of basalt, grey rocks wetted by the perpetual wave, and long muds

foul with wrack, which resembled cods’ sounds. It had a certain

weirdness of aspect, especially its background, the torn and tormented

flanks of Drápuhlíð,[68] an extinct volcano to the south, famed for

minerals and alternate strata of trap and ropy lava. The only remains of

the Virki (“work”), where the local Thing met, were vallum-like lines of

green sod; and the Dóm-hringr, doom’s ring or judgment circle, was a

triangular shape, with the base facing the shore. Not a sign of the Hof

was to be seen; the Blótsteinn, or sacrificial stone, was asked for, but

beyond legends of buried treasure, nothing was known to the incurious

peasants.

On our return to Stykkishólm, we called upon the Amtmaðr (high sheriff),

Hr Bergr Thorberg, who, fortunately for us, spoke good French. He

assured me that Hr Skuli Magnússon had found the Blótsteinn, and we

again accompanied him to sketch it. After thirty minutes, a boat placed

us on the eastern side of the little peninsula, and we landed upon the

broken basalt, weedy and slippery as ice. This shore is still known as

Thórsnes, and the place as Thingvellir. After vainly seeking information

at a cottage, inscribed T. (Teitur) G. S. Guðmundsson, 1869, we found a

shepherd lad, who steered us through the swamps to a rise on the west, a

site marked by a Varða of rock. The “Stone of Fear” was a bit of basalt,

six feet long by six feet two inches broad, and half buried in the

ground: at least, such was the article shown to us. South of it lay the

Doom-ring, a circle of rough rocks, twenty-five feet in diameter.

Between the two were buried the criminals whose backs had been broken

upon the stone.[69]

In these forensic and sacrificial circles the judge, still called

“Deemster” in the Isle of Man, faced eastwards, with his back to Holy

Hill, at which man might not look without ablution. On his right, the

direction of Múspellheim, the place of honour, from the profound popular

reverence for the sun, stood the accuser. The accused was on his left,

in the line of Niflheim, the nebulous north, a scene of horror and

guilt, which the old Germans called midnight. The twelve doomsmen

occupied the space within the Dóm-Steinar, where benches, here probably

of turf, were provided for them. The sentences delivered from the

“Circle of Brumo” were almost poetical in their ferocity. The old pagan

Scandinavian was the incarnation of destructiveness. His was not the

fickle pugnacity of the Kelt, who would fight and shake hands within the

hour; nor the feeble pride of the classic, who only battled to

“debellare superbos:” he was a Shiva, satisfied with nothing less than

absolute annihilation. The blood-men were warned lest “weak pity step in

between crime and its fitting punishment.” The following was the form of

outlawry sentence: “For this we judge and doom thee, and take thee out

of all rights, and place thee in all wrongs; and we pronounce thy lawful

wife a lawful widow, and thy children lawful orphans; and we award thy

fiefs to the lord from whom they came, thy patrimony and acquired

property to thy children, and thy body and flesh to the beasts of the

forest, the birds of the air, the fish in the water. We give thee over

to all men upon all ways; and where every man has peace and

safe-conduct, thou shalt have none; and we turn thee forth upon the four

ways of the world, and no man shall sin against thee.”

And this doom was to extend “wherever Christian men go to church and

heathen men sacrifice in their temples; wherever fire burns and earth

greens; wherever mother bears child, and child cries for mother; ship

floats, shield glitters, sun melts snow, fir grows, hawk flies the long

spring day and the wind stands under his wings; wherever the heavens

vault themselves, the earth is cultivated, the gale storms, water seeks

sea, and men sow corn. Here shall the offender be refused the Church and

God’s house, and good men shall deny him any home but hell.”[70]

And the old Scandinavian punishments were sanguinary and atrocious as

those of the Thulitæ, of whom Procopius spoke. Criminals were cast to

wild beasts, burned and boiled alive, flayed and impaled, to say nothing

of mutilation and such a trifle as tarring and feathering.[71] Cowards

were drowned or smothered in mud. Forest burners were exposed to the

fire till their soles were roasted. Barkers of trees had their internals

nailed to the injured bole, and were driven round it till their bowels

took the place of the despoiled coat. Removers of boundary-stones were

buried to the neck and ploughed to death with a new plough, drawn by

four unbroken horses, and driven by a carle who had never before turned

a furrow. And so forth.

The aspect of the Dóm-hringr vividly reminded me of the old theory held

by Sir Walter Scott, to mention no others, that Stonehenge and similar

buildings were Scandinavian courts of judicature, in which criminals

were doomed and put to death. One of these fora was fitly described by

Olaus Wormius as “Undique cautibus septum”--hemmed in on all sides with

stones equal to rocks, and usually disposed at a bowshot from the

centre. So Camden says of Stonehenge it is a “huge and monstrous piece

of work such as Cicero termeth ‘insanam substructionem:’” his sketches

make it like a dance of giants (choir gaur or chorus magnus), justifying

Walter Charleton’s “Chorea Gigantum, vulgarly called Stone-heng”

(London, 1663), which he also restored to the Danes. Mr Fergusson’s

anti-Druidical protest was anticipated as far back as 1805 in the

“History of the Orkney Islands” (Longmans, London), by the Rev. George

Barry, D.D., who justly observes, “These extraordinary monuments have,

like almost all others of the same nature, been supposed Druidical; but

with very little reason, since there is not the least shadow of evidence

that that order of men was ever within these islands;” while Coxe justly

calls the Druids a “favourite order of men, under whom we are apt to

shelter our ignorance.” Stonehenge and its chiselled, tenoned, and

morticed trilithons and cronets, though finished with more art, are

evidently the same class of building as the Standing Stones of Stennis;

and both would appear to represent in comparatively genial climes and

populous regions the rude Doom-ring of Iceland. I need hardly notice the

opinion of the Rev. Isaac Taylor, who, in a wild and ignorant book (p.

43, Etruscan Researches; London, Macmillan, 1874), converts to Turanian

sepulchres the monuments which covered the Wiltshire downs, and who

considers the stone circle a survival of the weights which kept down the

skin tents. Though bones have been found within such buildings, and

without the rings, the sepulchral use may have been of later date.[72]

PART II.--TO GRAFARÓS.

Our next station was at Flatey, on the other side of the Breiði Fjörð,

one of a vast archipelago which we were slowly to thread. Like the

“cedars of Lebanon,” three things in Iceland cannot be counted--the

lakes, or rather ponds, of Arnavatnsheiði; the hillocks of

Vatndalshólar, and the islands of the Breiði Fjörð. Similarly it is said

no Laplander has lived long enough to visit all the islands in Lake

Enara, and no Swede has touched at the fourteen hundred of the Malar

Lake. The holms lie mostly at the bottom and on both sides of the Broad

Firth, and, being girt by broad reefs, they demand no little prudence.

Some are private property, but the greatest part belongs to the

parsonage of Helgafell, whose incumbent lives at Stykkishólm. These

quaint forms, the birth of upheaval and the toys of earthquakes, all

show traces of columnar and subcolumnar basalt: the colour is chiefly

black, whitened by gulls and sea-fowl; some are dimly green with a

house-leek bearing a pale flower; and here and there a Húshólmr supports

a homestead. We remark the “wash” dry at ebb-tide; the shoal, the dot,

the knob, the drong, the “cow and calf,” the dome, the pinnacle, the

“gizzard,” like the Moela of Brazilian Santos: the nub, the skerry, the

shield, the line, the ridge, and the back: castellations are common, and

one at the mouth of the Hvammsfjörð (comb-firth) bears two dwarf cones

passably resembling broken turrets.

Our signals failed to attract the pilot, who lives at Bjarneyjar, and

thus we were forced to rely upon ourselves: the grey weather and

spitting rain were, however, far less risky than sleet and snow. To

starboard lay the Dala Sýsla, a fat lingula of land, bounded south by

the Hvammsfjörð, and north by the Gilsfjörð. In the latter direction a

neck of about five miles broken by a lake, leads to the Húnaflói

(bear-cub floe),[73] opening upon the Polar Sea, and a canal like that

of Corinth would save rounding the great three-fingered palmation, the

work of west winds[74] and Greenland ice, which forms the north-west of

Iceland. Once upon a time a Troll, we are told, attempted to anticipate

the _specialité_ of M. de Lesseps, but he was caught by the sun before

his task was done, and, after the fashion of those days, he was

incontinently turned to stone: so travellers are still obliged to ride

across the neck. Hvammfjörð (comb-firth) is a fair specimen, says Munch,

of how trivially local names arose; the Landnámabók (ii. 16) tells us

that here (Kambsnes) Aud Ketilsdottir _pectinem suam amisit_. But Hvammr

also means Convallis, a place where several dales meet, or simply our

“combe.” The Dale-County peninsula ends westward in the Fellströnd

highlands, whose chief height is called Klofi or Klofningr (the cloven),

because it separates the two inlets; from the north its profile,

projecting the lowlands of Dægverðarnes (daywards naze) reminded me of

bottle-nosed Serafend (Sarepta) as seen from the Sidon road. Off this

headland we sighted a couple of small whales: in the early part of the

century we read of a school numbering some 1600, but now-a-days the

long-fibred Medusæ seem to be a waste of cetaceous provaunt.

At length the south-easter brought up heavy rain, veiling the shore, and

compelled us to turn for occupation to the study of our

fellow-passengers. At Stykkishólm we had shipped a Dr Hjörtr Jónsson, an

Icelander who spoke a little Latin and English, and who was very civil

and sea-sick. He had studied under Dr Hjaltalín at Reykjavik, and had

finished himself by a year at Copenhagen. The feminine part of the “old

lot” has at once thrown off the civilised hat and adopted the ridiculous

Húfa: the black or the grey shawl is sometimes worn over the head with

something of the grace that belongs to the ornamental _mantilla_ and the

useful _reboso_. All are in leathern _bottines_ which show the toes

carefully turned in when walking or sitting. First-class and

second-class of the ruder sex are distinguished by boots and “Iceland

shoes:” so the railway clerk in the Argentine Republic ranks you by your

spurs, the larger they are the lower you go. We distinguish the

Danish-speaking by a perpetual recurrence of “Hvává”--hvad behager, s’il

vous plaît?--from the Icelandic-speaking by an ejaculated “Há,”

explosive, aspirate, and nasal enough for Vikings and Berserkir. There

are half-a-dozen students with bowie-knives and long canes, like

officers of the United States navy. The signs of Burschdom are noise,

inquisitiveness, republicanism, hard drinking, and consequent “hot

coppers,” especially in those who are “unco heavy on the pipe.” They

gather together, singing Luther’s hymns and national Norwegian airs,

whilst not unfrequently they intone in chorus--

“Doolce reedentem Lalagen” (pronounce _Lala-ghen_) “amábo

Doolce loquentem.”

They gather round us, forgetting the venerable axiom, “Manners makyth

man;” they pester us, and ask in roaring voices about the English

“hestar,” for they naturally hold us to be horsedealers, and, as the

universal bow-legs show, all are “horsey” from babyhood. Their luggage

consists mainly of old saddles and bridles, and of nests of sealskin

riding-bags. They talk politics, they regret the old Iceland republic,

and they hope to see it once more--this must be expected from students,

and we find it even in the law-abiding Brazil. Two of them are never

sober, and huge horns of spirits acting bottles supply the _de quoi_:

all drink hard at each landing-place, which leads to the “stool of

repentance” next morning. Their heartiness, not to say their roughness,

is dashed with a curious ceremoniousness: they never omit pulling off

their hats, an uncomfortable practice perhaps less common in England

than elsewhere; they shake hands whose warts cause a shudder; and, when

they exchange the parting kiss, it is with deliberation--first

prospecting the place, then planting a “rouser” upon each cheek, and

finishing off full upon the mouth.

The Coryphæus of the band is a little rather reverend, freshly ordained

and stationed at some hole in the Skagafjörð, which elicits not a few

mild witticisms connecting his domicile with purgatory. Sir Guttormr,

who violently objects to his name being translated “_Dei vermiculus_,”

makes the serious mistake of disputing on Old Testament subjects with Mr

Levi, a Norwegian Jew, whom I had at once diagnosticised and drawn out

by a “Shalom lach:” Apella is now going to try the north, last year he

and his partner “did” the south. Their business consisted in women’s

hair, especially the tints which command such large prices in the

southern marriage-marts; and, unless report greatly belie them, they

collected their booty by “screwing” husbands and brothers up to the

cutting point with spirits.

Two hours’ steaming through the maze of rocks placed us at Flatey. It

occupies nearly the centre of the Eyja-Hrepp (island parish), and it is

connected in trade with the Svefneyjar or Isles of Sleep--ah! how

different from

“That happier island in the watery waste”

which lodged the lotus-eaters. Flat-isle is, of course, not flat, but

rolling ground, trending east-north-east to west-south-west, with a

dwarf bluff in the former, and a high basaltic rib in the latter

direction. The length is at least a mile, by about three-quarters of

utmost breadth, though Henderson (ii. 91) gives it only one mile in

circumference. Curious to say, the little rock has a name in literature,

through the “Codex Flateyensis,” or annals of the Norwegian kings.[75]

In A.D. 1183 its monastery was transferred to Helgafell, and, during the

Reformation, its ninety-six farms were duly secularised and annexed by

the Danish Crown. At present about a quarter of the island belongs to

the Church; and thus the clergyman is no longer obliged, like Sira

Andreas, to “follow the original employment of Zebedee’s children,” and

be “particularly dexterous in catching seals.”

We landed on the north-western side of the island, about its middle

length, at a regular dock fronted by a natural breakwater of basalt,

upon the usual scatter of slippery wrack-grown rocks backed by a few

yards of black sand. A rude causeway, not made by man, leads up to the

settlement, half-a-dozen houses, one wholly wooden and double-storied;

the rest of the normal ground-floor type, overgrown with the

white-flowered weed. The huge vats and oil-tuns were not wanting: there

was a windmill like that of Reykjavik for grinding imported rye, and

higher up stood the church. A wooden box like those of the old Saxons,

it had a long coffin for a deceased clock, a steeple of two stages, each

with a white-framed window staring out of the black tar: where the apse

should be, the outline was stepped after Iberian fashion. The cemetery

lay around it, with a few monuments and railings neglected and broken

down, and this being Saturday, of course the building was closed. We

walked to the north-east over the wet grass and warty ground, and then

turned south-west towards a sloping and time-wrecked cross, crowned with

an old billy-cock and a fragmentary stocking. This is not intended for

irreverence, but to show that the place is to be respected by hawks,

ravens, and strangers; the utilitarian idea comes from Norway, where,

indeed, we must go for explanation of many Icelandic peculiarities. The

eiders, here and in Stykkishólm, float about the harbour tame as

horse-pond geese; at times a Skua causes the duck to bolt with

prodigious cackling, followed by its young, piping their plaints. The

turf is shaven and hollowed to make the nests, which affect the wrinkles

and pock-marks of the surface, and the places are marked by pegs; as at

Engey, some show eggs, others ducklings, whilst others are abandoned

with the down carelessly left to decay.

We returned on board in a greasy boat, with huge hooks fastened to

wooden bars, and baited with flesh of the sharp-biting puffin. The

“sea-parrot” nests in the sand, making holes two to three feet deep, and

clinging to one another when dragged out. The head and feet, wings and

entrails, are often mixed with cow-chips for fuel, whilst the breast is

salted. On this occasion, and many others, I remarked that the sailors

prefer turning sunways or to the right (_deasil_ or _dessil_), the left

or “widdershins” being held uncanny. The superstition is rather Aryan

than Semitic, the former affecting Pradakhshina, whilst the Tawáf of the

latter presents the sinister shoulder. So in the marriage ceremony of

the Russian Church, bride and bridegroom thrice circumambulate the

temporary altar.

* * * * *

_June 30._

During the night we had steamed along the bold bluffs of Barðaströnd in

the Sýsla of that name: now we prepare to double the great north-western

projection of Iceland, which somewhat resembles south-western Ireland.

The country people extend the right hand horizontally: the thumb forms

the length, whose nail is Snæfellsjökull; the hollow between pollex and

index represents the Breiði Fjörð, and the other fingers are the

digitations of the _annexe_, North Cape being the ring of the little

finger.

The day broke frosty but kindly, like a fine November in England, with

a sharp north wind, and an oily sea under lee of the land: stationary

cirri stood high in air, and westward gleamed a clear stretch of

green-blue sky. After Patriksfjörð, another remnant of the Írar or

Eriners, and Tálknafjörð (whalebone firth), both of small importance, we

open Arnarfjörð (Erne firth), the most important in the north-west after

the Ísafjörð. Each greater _massif_ is jagged into a saw-blade of minor

peninsulas, forming shallow arcs, probably the work of ancient glaciers

meeting the Greenland icebergs, and every valley is now bisected by its

own drain, set free from the upper snow-fields. There is similarity but

no sameness in the wild view. The cliffs give the idea of having been

shot up their present height perfect and complete; the tableland, some

2000 feet high, and, of course, snow-covered, appears evenly upraised,

yet laterally split in all directions by jagged rifts. Seen in profile,

the cliffs form a long perspective of headlands, quoins, and bluffs,

ranging between 500 and 1500 feet in height; and the strata appear to be

horizontal, or little inclined. The bluffs, when faced, represent

trap-ladders alternating with layers of reddish tuff: when distinctly

stepped, they often fall steep and sheer to the unfathomed sea; in other

places they are footed by a talus of _débris_. The former shape appears

most commonly in the southern projections; in the northern tongues the

Plutonic spines occupy far less area than the verdant lowlands which

depend upon them, and these shallow slopes and plainlets are the sites

of homesteads. The bleak table-lands above the bluffs are barely grown

with hardy shrubs and gramens; the snow gradually increases as we go

northwards; the patches and powdering become long streaks, and at last

they touch the water’s edge, where every wave besprinkles them. Thule is

here fairly Snowland.

All these projections culminate southwards in the great Gláma (clatter)

system, and northwards in the Dránga Jökull, these two being the only

important masses in the north-western corner of the island. They are

said by those who have ascended them[76] to be becoming one great

glacier, but as yet there are no exact data whereby to calculate either

the measure or the periodicity of abnormal glacier action. The Gláma

throughout our cruise was capped by clouds, which occasionally burst,

and showed the slope and shoulders of the great hunchback.

We then opened the long and winding sea-river known as Dýrafjörð

(wild-beast firth),[77] at whose northern bend rose the ridge of Gnúpr

(_Cacumen montis_), foreshortened to a regular cone. A few farms were

scattered about; and behind Gnúpr lay Mýrar, the northern station of the

French frigate. The sea was by no means desert, we saw at the same time

a schooner and half-a-dozen luggers, Gauls and Danes, the latter mostly

confining themselves to the Arnarfjörð and the Ísafjörð. This must be a

good line to attack the western horn of the Gláma, upon which

Gunnlaugsson places a trigonometric mark, with farm-houses and “Skóg”

(forest) extending eastward to its very base.

The next feature was the Önundarfjörð (Önundr’s firth), whose tenants

are famed for wearing the longest beards on the island. The Súgandafjörð

is distinguished by its deposits of Surtarbrand or lignite, which the

people throughout this part of Iceland declare to be found on the

headlands, not where we might expect it, in the bays. Fine specimens

were sent to England last year (1871), and it is believed that a foreign

company will take the semi-mineral in hand.

We were now approaching our third station, and shortly after mid-day we

turned “Jón’s” head east. Isafjarðardjúp,[78] the deep of the ice-firth,

and the largest of the north-western inlets is so called because when

first sighted by Flóki it was filled with polar icebergs,[79] merits the

terminal, as no bottom can be found at 300 fathoms, and it gives a name

to the northernmost Sýsla. There is a curious contrast between the

shores of the great bay--the northern side, Snæfjallaströnd, is lee

land, whose snowy heights are subtended by a smooth, straight

shore-line, whilst the southern is jagged and hacked by currents, floes,

and the violent north-wester. To starboard before we round the corner

crouches the fair, green vale of Skálavík (hall bay), dotted with farms,

and flanked eastwards by Stigahlíð, the “stair-ledge” or slope, whose

reddish trap produces abundant Surtarbrand. Opposite the upper jaw of

the mighty gape is Grænahlíð, streaked with thin verdure, and striped,

despite southerly frontage, by snow descending to the sea. The central

projection of Snæfjallaströnd, representing the tongue of the gape, is

tipped by Bjarnagnúpr, the bear’s knoll, where the “old man with the fur

coat” has often landed from his floating home, weak and famished, a

ready victim to gun, club, and scythe. He is always the white ice-bear;

the other two kinds known in Norway are strangers to Iceland.[80]

A green bulge, an _impasse_ between two mighty blocks, with a little

stream in the middle, shows us the farms of Hóll--fishing-boats on the

shore, and houses built upon tumuli, to guard against the periodical

ragings of the brook. These settlements upon the western and northern

shores assume somewhat the aspect of villages; in the interior, however,

here as elsewhere, they diminish to scattered farms. The path from Hóll

to Eyri. is a noted “ú-færa:” one would hardly suspect danger unless

warned; yet during the course of the day we saw a land, or rather a

stone, slip from the loose trap cliffs. Where the strand is barred by

rocks the line runs up and down the _débris_; in other parts it lies

upon the sands, and here the traveller pricks as fast as he can.

Presently we turned south into the Skutilsfjörð (“shuttle,” _i.e._,

harpoon, firth), where the scenery became even more impressive. The

bottom of the bay was split, and the two forks, separated by a central

buttress, formed amphitheatres hoar with snow above and each traversed

by its own runnel. The breadth of the mouth may be ten miles, and the

twin cliffs of trap rose at least 1200 feet. Many streamlets dashed and

coursed down the slopes; here and there they started from the ground,

these features are always pointed out as curiosities, but they simply

result from the drainage of the _couloirs_ and snow wreaths disappearing

under the rocky ground and reappearing, perhaps, hundreds of feet below.

We hugged the eastern side of the picturesque firth, Arnanes, a flat

tongue grown over with farms, in order to avoid a fronting spit or

shallow. The continuity of the wall was broken by a deep “corrie,” or

curved scarp, at whose mouth stood homesteads with scattered sheep,

apparently waited upon by ravens. We then rounded a shallow that

continues the sandspit of Eyri, and the clear way was hardly the length

of our steamer. There is a pilot for this bay, but Hr Wydholm is “very

stiff and proud,” demanding, for half-an-hour’s work, the unconscionable

sum of ten rixdollars specie. So we did very well without him; likewise

did a plucky little Norwegian cutter which followed “Jón” into the inner

harbour. Fortunately the weather was fine: in last May Captain Müller

had been delayed two days by the snow.

Eyri, in the maps, is popularly known as Ísafjörð. The former term,[81]

throughout the island, means a sandspit, in places equivalent to the

Greek “Zankle:” it is applied to the sickle-like banks of sand and

shingle, which we first noticed from the Esja summit; the effect of

confluence, influent meeting effluent. Here the line sets off from the

western shore and bends first to the south-west, and then to the

south-east, in the shape of an inverted letter S, forming a close dock,

seven fathoms deep, along shore: as we glided in, a perfect calm

succeeded the cold and violent _rafales_ outside. This Eyri may be 600

feet broad at the base; here are a few scattered hovels, a neglected

grave-yard and a wooden church and steeple, with the general look of a

card-house. About the middle it thickens to a quarter of a mile, forming

the body of the settlement, a bit of enclosed meadow-land and a rough

square, the houses being independently oriented, but mostly facing

north. The top fines off into a spit sixty feet across, and prolonged

under water: it carries a single establishment of five sheds, an

incipient windmill, and tarpaulin-covered heaps of dried cod--we shall

take in a small cargo of heads for Grafarós. The streets are made simply

by removing the stones; we count five flags, all Danish; the old houses

are faded black and white, the new pink, grey, and yellow, and there are

three roofs of very bright pigs-blood, such as delight the Brazilian

eye. A single landing-place and several abortive attempts at piers show

private not public spirit. The settlement has been sketched by Mr

Shepherd, whose frontispiece makes the Eyri far too narrow; also our

view of the same was by no means so romantic and startling in colour as

his.

After feeding we ascended the eastern precipice, which shows two

distinct steps and a broken coping. The new comer would expect a dry

walk over the grass growing below the shunt of rubbish; we now know it

to be a quaking bog, the effect of retentive fibrous roots, even upon

the rapid slope. Murmuring runnels, which from the shore appear mere

threads, become deep gullies, garnished on either side with rocks and

boulders, shot down from the perpendicular cliffs. The weather was that

of August in England, fostering a pretty little vegetation, yet we soon

reached a deep patch of snow. The drainage flows into the Fjörð, and the

sea-water tasted almost sweet.

After a bird’s-eye view of the settlement we returned on board. In all

these places flaps of whale and porpoise meat hung out to dry, and huge

vats and tuns, reeking with high shark-liver, diffuse an odour

distinctly the reverse of spicy and Sabæan. The deck was crowded with

open-mouthed sight-seers, who walked round us as if we had been lately

floated over from Greenland, and who, between cigar-puffs, loudly asked

one another, “What _can_ they be?” In the evening they will be “fou” and

fond. On our return we were fortunate enough to meet Hr Thorwaldr

Jónsson, son of our friend Hr Guðmundsson of Reykjavik: he speaks

French, as _Médecin d’Isafjörð_ on his card shows, and he kindly gave me

an amulet of Surtarbrand, engraved with “runes”--the form is not found

in Baring-Gould’s collection.

[Illustration: THE AMULET.]

But neither he, “nor any other man,” could enlighten my curiosity as to

the island which Pontanus, or rather his mapper, Giorgius Carolus

Flandrus, places off the north-west coast. All being mere drongs and

skerries, I was forced to the conclusion that “Insula Gouberman” is only

the Gunnbjörn Skerries of Ivar Bardsen forced hundreds of miles to the

east.

It was nearly ten P.M. when we steamed out of the Ísafjörð. We passed a

number of shallow-branched firths, combining to form the Jökulfirðir,

which well merits its name; at the bottom to the south-east rise the

roots and outliers of the Dránga snow-dome. After some two hours’

steaming we turned to the east and entered the “Cronian Sea,” where old

Saturn, planter of the vine, lies sleeping in his pumice cave. There was

a solemn charm in this end of the world of men. An arch of golden gleam

in the west threw a slanting light upon the noble bluff of Kögr (the

“dogger”); and the giant range of trap bluffs which faces the Pole,

forms a worthy barrier to the icy ocean. The profile showed a thick

ribbed curtain, topped by _chevaux de frise_, sharp-topped pyramids,

sheer to the fore, as we might expect on a shore exposed to the whole

fury of the north; the front view separated the three shells of cliff by

hollows, with a dreary attempt at verdure. The Horn[82] was signed by a

knob or chimney below the highest point; all present who knew the two,

preferred Icelandic Cap Nord to the Nord Cap of Norway, though the

latter lies far nearer to the Pole (N. lat. 71° 10´ 15´´). As we gazed

our full, a solid wall of sea-fog, which to the north wore the semblance

of an island, and to the south-west mimicked an ice-floe, rose from the

horizon and gradually wrapped in its grey pall the golden glories that

clothed the splendid cliffs. The last look at the three waving heads

sent me berth-wards to dream of the limestone billows of Syrian Blúdán

and Marmarún.

* * * * *

_July 1._

The culminating point of excitement had now passed. We were tired with

craning necks backwards, and in the chill and cheerless weather of the

next morning we cast languid glances at the coast. But for “earth’s

period,” _the_ Horn, we might have admired the tall and bizarre form of

Kaldbakshorn (cold hill-peak) and the remarkable pyramid of Sandfell. We

were now running down the great gulf Húnaflói, bounded west by the

Stranda Sýsla and east by the long tongue of Húnavatn’s Sýsla, which

separates it from the Skagafjörð (naze firth). The shores are garnished

with a multitude of unimportant islands, and cut with secondary firths

and creeks, the western side being again much more torn and frayed than

the eastern shore. At two P.M. we entered the narrow Hrútafjörð (ram’s

firth); the dreary low-banked sea-arm looked like the estuary of a

mighty stream, yet it conducts only the mildest of streamlets draining

the smallest of lakes. “Go to Hrútafjarðarháls!” I may mention, is here

equivalent to sending a man to Jericho or--Halifax. The bluff eastern

point rejoices in the short and handy name of Bálkastaðaneshöfði, head

of the naze of Bálkastaðir or Balk-(bulk-head) stead.[83] On the western

of the two dwarf holms, Hrútey, appeared a cross, warning us to respect

the eider-duck; both belong to the Sýslumaðr, whose Bær is on the left

bank opposite. From a little hollow in the right bank curled the thin

blue vapour of the Reykir (hot springs), and south of it stood

Thóroddstaðir, a house with five gables and large tún.

After eighteen hours’ run we anchored in rapidly shoaling water, over a

bottom of deep mud outlying black sand, at Borðeyri, the table-spit, so

called because that article of furniture was found there: a miniature

copy of our last Eyri, based upon the western side, projects a few yards

to the south-east. Three plank-pierlets without caissons and removed, as

usual, in winter, outlie two establishments; in Messrs Shepherd’s (1862)

and Baring-Gould’s day (1863) there was only a single shed, deserted

when the season ends. One is salmon-coloured, the other yellow-white;

one flies a flag; both are double-storied, and both are surrounded by

peat-houses. The scene is wonderfully animated; this is the opening of

the “Handelstid,” or annual fair, attended by all the country-side; one

long day’s ride brings men from Stykkishólm, and in forty-eight hours

they can make Grafarós. Strings of ponies, somewhat better grown than

usual, are descending the hills, and groups of farmers and peasants

flock in to the two comptoirs, buying and selling for the year. They

exchange rough greetings, stand on the shore staring with intense

inquisitiveness, and scramble, like climbing bears, over the laddered

sides of the two Danish brigantines, which have affected the place

during the last nine years. This, with a considerable amount of hard

drinking and loud hymn-singing at night, form the only visible humours

of the _foire_ in the far north. The stations of the Spekulants or

shop-ships, and their length of stay, are fixed by law, and all are

Danes, the Icelanders have too little spirit for this work: the

primitive system reminded me of the banyans at Berberah and of the

trade-boats on the Amazonas. The holds are fitted up like shops, with

desk and counter; the stores supply all the wants of a primitive

people--dry-goods, clothes and caps, saddlery, wool-carders, querns of

basalt, and spinning-wheels; sugar, grain, tobacco, and, especially, the

rye-spirits, with which all purchasers, male and female, are copiously

drenched. These, and a multitude of notions, are exchanged for wool and

eider-down, dried-meat, salt-fish, and a few fox-skins.

We landed, for nearer inspection, in a dingy propelled by a single scull

aft; a common style called Rempe Ruðir, which the little Reverend, who

has a queer manner of “wut,” translates “progressio podiciana.” On shore

the violent flaws and _grains_ were stilled, and the sun shone with a

genial warmth. The Sýslumaðr, in gold-laced cap and uniform buttons,

made _acte de presence_, to keep order. The peasant women wore white

headkerchiefs over the usual black fez, and instead of shawls short

fichus, which reached only to the waist; they managed their baggy

petticoats with some art as they swarmed over the gunwale of the store

ships; and their side-saddles had unusually elaborate foot-boards, with

backs of worked brass. Dry meat hung in plenty, but it was very like

donkey, or the roast-beef of Sierra Leone. Heaps of wool lay upon the

ground for sale; it is a very poor article, half-rotten before it is

plucked off: after “gathering,” it is scalded, or rather boiled, in

caldrons, placed in frames, rinsed with cold water, and dried on stones

or turf. The owners asked one shilling per pound, and consulted us about

the chance of making money at Hull: a more likely spec. here would be to

import wool.

We then strolled up country, beginning with the bare Melbakki, so common

along the shores of these northern Fjörðs, a low dorsum of earth and

stone, from which the snow has only just melted; too steep for turf, and

kept bare by the furious winds. Often, as in this case, it is the bank

of an old torrent-bed. To the north-west the land again seemed to offer

a fair walk: “old Experience” had taught us that we shall have to

bog-trot from tussock to tussock, to paddle through ankle-deep waters,

and to cross turf-fens, which look solid and yet admit you to the calf.

The drainage of these hills would supply a little river, but, as usual,

it sinks, or rather lies. The turbaries, so deadly to the growth of

trees, were judged by the French expedition the only safe stations for

observations of magnetism; elsewhere the cellular dolerite, containing

oxydulated titaniferous iron, deflected the needle 1° to 1° 30´. Upon

the slope we found what appeared to be a Lögberg (law-mount),

artificially raised above the swamp; partly revetted on the top with

turf, which had been stripped off for use, and encircled by a remnant of

similar vallum. Ice appeared at the foot of the basaltic rises.

The summit, denoted by the usual “Varðas,” commanded the nearer Heiði, a

desolate land, a scatter of moor-ponds and bogs, everywhere alternating

with heaps and swathes of stone, and with dark mounds wearing cravats of

_névé_. To the south-south-east was a grand view of amphitheatral snow

mountains; the western flank rose in a shallow dome of purest white: we

judged it to be the Eyriksjökull, whose romantic and, of course,

murderous tale has often been told; while to the east Balljökull (hard

Jökull?), a lower elevation, showed dark-blue rocks, which had worn

their winter garb to strips. These outliers were backed by a radiant

semicircle of peaks, which, in the slanting sun, assumed splendid

rainbow hues.

* * * * *

_July 2._

The “Jón” made a long halt at Borðeyri; she found only two shore-boats

for discharging goods, and these were dingies towed by a rope: it was

past two P.M. before we steamed out into the great Húnaflói. “Skyey

influences” appear to be peculiarly capricious on the shores of the

Cronian Sea. Morning; cloudy, with southerly wind, and clear with

north-easter, suggesting a “lady’s passage.” Noon; thermometer in sun

81° (F.), in shade 60°, although snow is upon the shore; with the sea,

as at Granton, in alternate stripes of deep-blue and silvery azure.

Afternoon; a Mediterranean, plus the normal long roll, and a biting

breath from the north; and, later still, the sea-fog and a return of

warmth under the protection of Skagafjörð. At five P.M. we had turned

the point Vatnsnes,[84] a long low projection from a high talus of

stepped rock: hence we sighted the southern Jökulls towering above the

lowlands and inlets of the shore--mighty masses of solid cloud, with

true cloud floating above and around them. To the north-west, over the

teeth and pyramids which jagged the shore of the Húnaflói, rose the

Dránga Jökull, apparently supporting the firmament, Atlas-like, upon its

vaulted head.

We then doubled at a respectful distance the long peninsula of Húnavatn,

which, hilly and broken at the root, thins out into a cliffy point, and

projects near Rifsnes the dangerous reefs of Skalli (the scald or bald

head). Two French schooners from Dunquerque sailed leisurely by, with

their rigging a mass of drying fish: after safe return these cod-fishers

will pilgrimage to Nôtre Dame des Dunes. The behaviour of the ice-fog

gave us some concern, we were now in N. lat. 66° 10´, and this was the

only night that would offer a chance of enjoying the midnight sun. The

mist came up in a white transparent line raised by the abnormal heat,

and at times a low, solid bank, precisely imitating floe-ice in all

points except being stationary, threatened, as is its wont when the

light of day lies low, to invade the land.

As time neared the noon of night, the burnished circle, utterly shorn of

its beams, seemed almost to stand still: when suspended about a diameter

and a half above the ocean, it changed to a long oval, to a mushroom

with distinct columella, to half a sovereign, and finally to a fragment

of golden egg, which seemed to indent the blue horizon. In the latter

phase it held its own till the bell struck, when the light of night

began to rise once more. The spectacle was a lecture upon such Eddaic

and Skáldic phrases and periphrases for the precious metal, as the Eld

Særar, “ocean or water flame;” the “sea’s bright beams,” or “lowe of the

waves;” the “swanbath’s rays;” the “ore of the Rhine” (any river); and

the “resplendent radiance of the flood.”

This was our farthest northern point--

“Sistimus hic tandem, nobis ubi defuit orbis.”

We failed to sight inhospitable little Grímsey, which employs its spare

hours in adorning porridge-pots with the Runic knot or snake.

When abreast of long, high, and broken Málmey (Malm or sand isle), bluff

at both ends, we had fairly entered the Skagafjörð, which my classical

friend translates “_Sinus qui eminet_;” he is less happy with Grafarós,

_ostium sepulturæ_; Gröf, as in “Grafar-lækr,” here means the

deeply-encased bed of a stream. A little farther we left to starboard a

triad of islands classical in Iceland story. The northern rock-needle

bears the common name Karl (old man), whose hip, the Kerlíng (carline),

to the south, suggests a ship under sail. The middle, and by far the

largest, feature is Drángey, an area of 800 square yards, rising

steep-to some 600 feet high, and inaccessible except on the south, where

the cliff breaks, and where adventurous cragsmen swarm up to rob birds’

nests. It is one of the richest of its kind, and it is known far and

wide as the last refuge of Grettir Ásmundarson, popularly “Grettir the

Strong.” The millennial lithograph simply says of this strong man,

“outlaw for twenty years, and died in this capacity.” While telling the

tale of his well-merited death, the Icelandic speaker’s eyes, to my

wonder and confusion, filled with tears: I could not but think of my

poor friend James Hunt, who died of a broken heart because

“Anthropology” was not welcomed by the “British Ass.” The “Oxonian”

abridges the prodigious long yarn spun by the Gretla, and shows the

“William Wallace of Iceland,” as the outlaw is called by the admirers of

muscular un-Christianity, to have been, _pace_ Mr Morris, even for

Iceland, a superior ruffian. With few exceptions, we may say the same of

the Saga heroes generally, and it is ethnologically interesting to

contrast their excessive Scandinavian destructiveness with the

Ishmaelitic turn of the Bedawin--the reader has only to glance at the

pages of Antar, translated by Terry Hamilton. But the Arab, though

essentially a thief and a murderer, boasting that blood is man’s only

dye, and that battle is to him like manna and quails, has a soft corner

in his heart which the Iceland poet lacked; he was chivalrous as a

knight-errant in his treatment of women; he was great upon the subject

of platonic love, whose place in the hyperborean north is poorly

occupied by friendship, however tender and true; his poetry was inspired

by the sun, not by eternal ice and snow; and, like all the peoples of

the glowing south, his fiery savagery is gloomed by a peculiar and

classic shade of sadness. Witness this address of the dying Bedawi to

his fellow-clansmen:

“O bear away my bones when the camel bears his load,

And bury me beside you, if buried I must be;

And bury not my bones ’neath the burden of the vine,

But high upon the hill, to be sighted and to see;