and formed the boundary of the plain, was one of the most singular I
ever beheld. It was composed of black, yellow, and red volcanic rock;
rising in fantastic cones, or receding into savage gorges, steep,
abrupt, and angular. The surface was absolutely without vegetation of
any kind, and every cleavage, rent or crevice, so fresh, bare, and
unweathered, one could fancy that the rocks had only during the last
hour been smitten, shattered, and splintered by Thor’s hammer; while the
rich effect of their vari-coloured tints was heightened by the pure
white clouds which incense-like were now muffling and rolling about
their summits, and by the verdure which extended to their base like a
carpet. Our track lay along the foot of them, and wonder only increased
as we obtained a nearer view of their Tartarian wildness.
[Illustration: VARI-COLOURED HILLS.]
Here we halted, and I made a slight sketch of a portion of the range. As
a mere study of light and shade, to say nothing of other striking
features, the scene would have made a magnificent photograph.
Starting, we rode on, till we reached the end of the cinder range,
doubled the outmost spur, and, after ascending for sometime, came in
sight of gently sloping hills. Their flowing outlines were covered with
verdure to the very top, and, from our path, opened up here and there
into little green bosky valleys “where the blae-berries grow.” Before
us, in a vast level plain which stretched away from the roots of the
hills near to the horizon, lay the Laugervatn; and further to the south,
linked by a river, the Apavatn, a lake much larger; while several other
rivers meandered in gleaming serpentine courses over the vast green
prairie-like meadow.
On the brink of the Laugervatn are several hot springs from which it
takes its name. We observed columns of white steam rising from them on
the brink next us, just below the farm of Laugervalla; and also across
on the other side of the lake. Approaching the farm, we halted, outside
the tun, to lunch, rest for an hour and let the horses graze. It
presented the usual appearance of Icelandic farms; not unlike an
irregular group of potato-pits or tumuli. The roofs were of the same
colour as the plain, and the whole shut in from the surrounding pasture
land by a rude four-foot wall, also covered on the top with green turf.
The tun, or few acres thus enclosed, receives a top-dressing of manure
and bears a luxuriant crop of hay; the rest is left in a state of
nature, and reaped without sowing. The hay, when stacked, is protected
from the rain by thin slices or strips of turf from 6 to 10 feet long.
Nearly all Icelandic farming has reference to the rearing of stock—the
summer being too short for grain to reach maturity.
* * * * *
A few words, here, while we rest, as to Icelandic Farms in general.
Most farms have a weaving room, a smithy, a milk room, a sitting
room—used also for eating and sleeping in—called stofa; a guest-chamber,
cattle-houses, which are sometimes placed immediately under the
sleeping-room but more frequently detached, and a kitchen; which last my
friend Dr. Mackinlay neatly describes as often “a dingy dark place, with
a peat fire on a lava block, and a hole in the roof to let in light and
let out smoke.” The turf is inferior; wood is too scarce and valuable to
be much used for fuel. Coal costs £5 per ton, is retailed in small
packages at about 2d. per pound, and is only used in smithies. When turf
is not available, the Icelanders, like the Arabs, burn dried cows’ dung;
and on the coast, where even that is scarce, they use the dried carcases
of sea-fowl. Why do they not burn dried sea-weed, which is extensively
used for fuel in the Channel Islands?
Their daily food is taken cold, and consists chiefly of raw dried
stock-fish and skier. The latter dish is simply milk allowed to become
acid and coagulate, and then hung up in a bag till the whey runs off. In
this form it is both nutritive and wholesome, being more easily digested
than sweet milk; while, to those who take to it, it is light, palatable
and delightfully cooling. Milk is prepared in this way by the
Shetlanders, who in the first stage call it “run milk,” and when made
into skier “hung milk.” The same preparation is made use of by the
Arabs, and it is also the chief diet of the Kaffirs and Bechuanas at the
Cape. Our idea that milk is useless or hurtful when soured is merely an
ignorant prejudice. Those who depend for their subsistence chiefly on
milk diet, and have the largest experience, prefer to use it sour, and
medical authority endorses their choice. In Icelandic farms hard black
rye bread is at times produced as a luxury; butter is always cured
without salt, and used rancid, however, after it reaches a certain mild
stage it gets no worse; meat is dried at certain seasons of the year for
occasional use, and the rivers abound in excellent fish. The chief use
to which the kitchen fire is put, is to prepare a cup of warm coffee.
Snaps, sugar candy, coffee, grain, and other foreign commodities, they
obtain at the factories.
The scarcity of fuel tempts people to crowd together for heat; sometimes
15 or 16 people in one small sleeping apartment, and that often placed
over another where cattle are kept. The state of such an atmosphere may
be imagined, while many dirty habits and the frequent recourse to
stimulants are thus accounted for. Nor will any one wonder much,
although there were no other causes, that, in one district of the south,
75 per cent of all the children born die before they complete their
twelfth month.
As for indoor occupations, the farmers, as in colonial outposts, of
necessity are Jacks-of-all-trades. They forge scythes, make saddles and
bridles, make their simple household furniture, horse-shoe nails, and
even build or repair their own houses. Females do the tailoring, but men
make their own shoes and take their turn at the spinning wheel, the
knitting needles, and the loom. All work together by lamplight, while
some one reads aloud some old-world story. The out-door occupations are
both fishing and farming. The ver-tima, or fishing season, lasts from
February till May, and is chiefly carried on, on the south-west coast,
which, from thus becoming a source of wealth, is called Guld-bringu—or
the gold bringing—Sysla. At the beginning of the season, men move down
to the fishing stations. The boats have each from 4 to 10 oars, and
crews of from 10 to 20 men.
Lines only are used, and the fish caught are chiefly cod and ling. Part
are salted and dried for exportation, part dried for home use without
salt and left at the stations to be fetched at midsummer, when many
people resort to the annual fair for the sale of produce, or rather the
exchange of commodities. The deep sea fishing is not prosecuted by the
Icelanders, but is chiefly carried on by the Norwegians, French, and
Dutch. All journeys are performed on horseback.
These statements will enable the reader to form an idea of the ongoings
of daily life in the numerous farms, which are scattered over the
habitable belt of pasture-land which nearly surrounds the island.
* * * * *
Through Zöga, we had an interview with the farmer, and arranged for the
grazing of the ponies on the farm of Laugervalla. A girl brought out a
large basin of skier, together with a plentiful supply of milk and cream
to us.
We looked wistfully to the south-east in the direction of Hekla which
lay about 35 miles distant, but at this time it was quite hid by an
impenetrable veil of clouds resting on the horizon line. As we were
about half-way from Thingvalla to the Geysers, we mounted the relay
horses, and now it was the turn of those that brought us thither to be
driven before us.
In Iceland, at whatever pace the ponies run, they are supposed to be
resting, when they carry no load.
Our course lay over some wet marshy land—from which we gathered heather,
moss, cotton-grass, and buck-bean—across a shallow river brawling over
white and slaty coloured stones on its way to the lake; and then higher
up, along the sides of the green hill-range which trends in the
direction of the Geysers. Here dwarf-birches and willows grew in
profusion; while the broken cakes of black lava, which projected from
among them, served by contrast to add freshness to the greenth of the
foliage, and yet more brilliance to the vari-coloured flowers which
bloomed in beauty on every side. We saw innumerable coveys of ptarmigan
on the hill-sides, many plovers, snipe, and a few snow-birds. All were
very tame, flitted quite near and seemed to wonder at our intruding on
their amenities. We did not abuse their confidence, but admiringly
allowed them to go, as they came, in peace.
Coming to a part where the soil was of soft earth and turf, we found it,
for miles, worn by the ponies into very narrow tracks, averaging two
feet in depth. There were from six to twelve of these tracks, with thin
grassy ledges between them, lying close together nearly parallel and
every little way running into each other; where the ground sloped, they
were dry; and, where it was level or low, they were full of mud or
water. Riding along at a hard trot, we required to be ever on the alert,
and to maintain an incessant motion of the feet, in order to avoid
collision with the irregular surface and the projecting stones on either
side of us. Tempted by a wild flower of unusual beauty, I dismounted,
but was astonished to find that the deep tracks were so narrow that I
could not walk in them, there not being width for my one foot to pass
the other: yet a horse finds no difficulty in trotting along; actually,
however paradoxical it may seem, requiring less space for its feet than
a man.
We saw numerous farms as we passed along, each consisting of a group of
irregular hillocks, with the windows hid deep in the grassy turf like
port-holes, and generally all turned inwards so as to be sheltered from
the roaring blasts of winter. We met ponies trudging along conveying
lambs from one farm to another. It was curious to see the little animals
looking out of square crate-like boxes, made of spars of wood, slung in
the manner of panniers on a donkey, and to hear them bleat: reminding
one of the old nursery rhyme “young lambs to sell!”
They could not be otherwise transported over lava tracks and across the
rivers which separate one valley from another. We saw several small
caravans or companies of Icelanders on the way. They had the same sort
of boxes as our baggage ponies, and the same quaint horse gear, down to
the rough hair cords tied and fastened by passing a sheep’s knee-bone
through a loop to prevent knots from slipping. They had tents and
provisions; one of the ponies carried a leather bottle probably filled
with skier. It was a calf’s skin sewed up, with the head and legs left
on it, so that it presented a quaint old world look; and recalled
pictures in the catacombs of Egypt. Notwithstanding the difference of
climate, when in contact with the people, one is here, at every point,
reminded of the East and carried back to patriarchal times. We touched
our hats in returning the salutations of those we met, although we did
not know the exact import of what was said to us on such occasions till
afterwards, when Dr. Mackinlay told me that an Icelander when he meets a
stranger invariably doffs his bonnet and accosts him with the phrase
“Saellar verith thér!”—“Happy may you be!” or occasionally with one
still more expressive, “Guts fride!”—“God’s peace be with you!” On
saying good-bye, he uncovers again, and repeats the first phrase with a
slight inversion, “Verith thér saellar!”—“Be ye happy!”
After the customary salutations, he accosts everybody on the road with a
series of questions, like a master hailing a ship. The first question
put, is “What is your name?” the second “Whose son are you?”—for the
general absence of surnames renders this necessary—the third “Where do
you come from?” Then follows “Whither are you going?” and “What are you
going to do there?” These questions are not regarded as impertinent, but
as exhibiting a kindly interest. Henderson says, “When you visit a
family in Iceland, you must salute them according to their age and rank,
beginning with the highest and descending according to your best
judgment to the lowest, not even excepting the servants; but, on taking
leave, this order is completely reversed; the salutation is first
tendered to the servants, then to the children, and last of all to the
mistress and master of the family.” Old friends meeting, salute each
other, in the old Icelandic way, with the kiss of peace. Clergymen are a
privileged body, for, in salutation, even strangers male or female give
them the kiss of peace and address them as “Sira,” Father. Hence our
words sire and sir. Out of Reykjavik, and away from the factories, there
is much of the oriental type about the manners and customs of the
Icelanders; the same simplicity, the same native politeness, the same
disregard of cleanliness, and the same dislike of change.
We now rode over uneven rocky ground, enriched with brushwood, till we
reached the banks of the Bruará. This broad, deep, rapid river drains
the valley of Laugervalla, receiving the waters of two lakes, Laugervatn
and Apavatn; which in turn are fed by rivers and streams from the snow
mountains beyond. A few miles south of us, near Skálholt, it receives
the joint waters of the Túngufljot from Haukadal with the overflow of
the Geysers, the magnificent river Hvitá which flows from a lake of the
same name at the foot of Lang Jökul, and the Laxá, from Grœnavatn;
further down to the south-west it also receives the Sog flowing from the
lake of Thingvalla; and after draining several hundred miles of country,
these waters, united in a little gulf called Olfusá, flow into the sea
on the west coast.
Properly speaking, the Bruará terminates when it joins the longest and
principal river of those named—the Hvitá or White-river—and below the
junction, the whole waters united in one river are simply called the
Hvitá; while the gulph, formed on the coast where it debouches into the
sea, is called Olfusá.
The place selected for fording the Bruará is immediately above a
singular waterfall shaped like a horse-shoe—the concave looks
downwards—with a volcanic fissure or rent from two to three hundred feet
long in the middle of it. This wedge-shaped gap in the bed of the river
runs back to a point, and the water rushes down into it, from either
side, falling into the chasm with a noise like thunder. Over this chasm,
near the point or part of it highest up the river, are placed some
planks with a slight hand-rail on either side, forming a rude bridge
about twenty feet long and seven or eight broad. The river was swollen
by recent rains, so that at least a foot of water lay upon or rather
rushed over the bridge itself. Some thirty feet of the river had to be
waded through ere the bridge in the middle could be reached;
and—guessing its whole width here, say at 70 feet—again other 20 feet
had to be forded after the bridge was passed, ere the steep rough bank,
up which we had to scramble on the other side, could be attained. The
water was deep, turbulent and rapid; while we could hear large stones
grating on each other as they were borne along in the current. The eye
took in all these bearings at a glance; there was no pause, Zöga led on
and we followed. Our horses were up to the girths, and seemed walking
over large movable boulders. They leant up the river so as to withstand
the current. The arrowy swiftness of the flowing water produced a
strange illusory feeling, akin to giddiness; one could not tell whether
the motion pertained to one’s self, or to the river. A little to our
right was the roaring cataract, so we kept the horses’ heads well up the
river, to avoid missing the bridge; in that case we should inevitably
have been swept over. The view, from the bridge, of the foaming mass of
water through which we moved, and of the yawning gulph into which it was
tumbling and furiously rushing along, far below our very feet, impressed
the situation on our minds as something unique.
[Illustration: CROSSING THE BRUARÁ.]
All having got over in safety, we paused for a few minutes on the top of
the high bank to gaze back on the strange spectacle; while, before us,
the river rushing along into the chasm, although on a smaller scale and
different in kind, suggested Dr. Livingstone’s description of the great
Victoria Falls on the Zambesi. The bridge has been renewed here from of
old. On this account, the river is named Bruará or Bridge-river; a
sufficient reason, when we mention that there is only one other bridge
in the whole island.[8]
In the neighbourhood of the river we saw many small butterflies—blue and
white—both fluttering and flying kinds; and were much annoyed with
mosquitoes like gnats, that bit our faces severely and would get in
about our necks, persecuting us most pertinaciously.
The Iceland ponies are truly wonderful animals. They carry one over
smooth bare rocks, over great blocks of lava, up places steeper than a
stair but with footing not half so good; through mud-puddles, water or
bogs; over tracks of volcanic sand; through coppices; up hill, down
hill; or across rivers. Patient and sure-footed, they stick at nothing.
They are guided by the feet as much as by the bridle; a gentle touch
with the heel being the Icelandic they are trained to understand. Some
riders, we saw, kept up a constant drumming on the poor beasts’ sides.
After their day’s work is done, they receive no manner of grooming or
stabling; saddle and bridle taken off, they are then left to shift for
themselves.
To our intense satisfaction, Zöga pointed out a hill about ten miles
off, on the other side of which lay the Geysers. It was detached from
the range of hills we had to skirt, rising with a gentle slope at right
angles to them, and falling abruptly on the other side; forming a sort
of bluff headland resting on a marshy plain. Part of our track lay
through a plashy bog; then we had long level tracks of beautiful velvet
turf at the foot of the hills, which both riders and horses seemed to
think were made expressly for running races upon. When the ponies could
be got into their peculiar amble, we progressed very pleasantly, and
almost as fast as at a gallop. The hills on our left were mostly green,
covered with dwarf birches, willows and blae-berries. On their slopes we
saw farms, here and there, as we passed along. The plain immediately on
our right, bounded by distant mountains and jökuls, was marshy. When it
became very spongy and impassible, generally, we had only to move a
little way higher up along the hill side, in order to obtain firmer
footing. Approaching the hill which separated us from the Geysers, we
crossed the morass, forded a river, rode up a miry lane past a farm
house, turned the flank of the hill, and beheld clouds of white steam
rising from the slope. The wished for goal now lay before us. Pushing on
rapidly, my trusty little pony soon reached and picked its way over a
gritty slope, among numerous plopping pits, steaming holes, boiling
springs and fountains, up to the side of the Great Geyser, where I
dismounted at 9 o’clock at night, having been ten and a half hours in
the saddle.
The Geysers are boiling springs, situated seventy-two miles north-east
of Reykjavik, on a gritty slope, at the foot of a trap-hill three
hundred feet high; and on the upper border of a green-marshy plain,
sloping down towards a small river which runs meandering through it in a
southern direction. They are about a hundred in number, and all located
in an area of about a quarter of a mile. Three of them are erupting—the
Great Geyser, Strokr, and the Little Geyser. These, with Blesi, the most
beautiful of the non-erupting springs, and situated a little way above
the great Geyser, are the principal attractions to a traveller; although
all the others, with everything pertaining to such phenomena, are
intensely interesting.
Geyser means gusher or rager; Strokr is derived from the verb to
agitate, and signifies a churn. Instead of an abstract summary, I shall
endeavour as far as possible to give a detailed account of what we saw,
and in the order of its occurrence. This will enable the reader, as it
were, to accompany us, and gather the distinctive and varied features of
this marvellous scene from the same points of view.
We stand at the side of the great Geyser, on the upper or north-west
corner of a slope; a low trap-hill above us, the green valley of
Haukadal below, and columns, jets, and clouds of white steam rising,
curling and waving from the numerous springs on this upper arid slope on
which we stand. The surface immediately around us—flinty and paved in
thin scaly layers—is of a gritty reddish irony colour, with streamlets
of hot steaming water trickling along from the overflow of the Geysers,
on their way to join the river below. A long continuous strip of verdant
turf runs up into this slaggy region, between the great Geyser and
Strokr; and elsewhere various little round green islet-patches about a
foot in diameter occur in it; blooming like oases, and covered with
parnassia, sea-pink, wild-thyme and butter-cups, all thriving and
seeming to enjoy the thermal heat. Here we found many bits of stick,
turf, moss, and flowers, incrusted over with the silicious deposit of
the water and converted into beautiful petrifactions.
The great Geyser basin is situated on the top of a cone shaped mound,
which, on account of the uneven nature of the surrounding ground, seems,
from every different point of view, to vary in height. As we approached,
it appeared seven feet; moving downwards from the plain, it seemed more
than twice as high; while, from the bottom of a deep gully running
immediately behind and separating it in one direction from the hill, it
seemed to attain an elevation of thirty feet.
The basin—perfectly smooth, of a whitish colour, saucer-shaped, slightly
oval instead of round, seventy-two feet at its greatest breadth, seventy
feet mean diameter, and about four feet deep—is full of water to the
brim. In the bottom or centre of this gigantic saucer, through the clear
hot fluid, is seen a round hole ten feet in diameter. This is the top of
a stony funnel or pipe which goes down perpendicularly to a depth of
eighty-three feet.
The Geyser-water,[9] like many hot springs in India and other parts of
the world, holds in solution a large proportion of silica or flint. It
is well known that this substance, when fused with potash or soda, under
certain circumstances readily dissolves in boiling water; and, under
various other conditions, it diffuses itself throughout the arcana of
nature; finding its way to varnish the stalk of corn in our fields, or
the bamboo in Indian jungles, both preserving them from damp and adding
strength to their extreme lightness. Fused masses of silica have at
times been found among the ashes of a haycock which has been
accidentally burned; and the same substance, arrested and deposited in
crystalline lumps, is at times met with, though rarely, in joints of
cane, and when so found is by the natives called Tabasheer.
This flint-depositing property, resident in the water, has enabled the
Geyser to raise its own pipe, basin and mound. The original basin or
orifice, when the spring began, must have been at the bottom of the
tube; the overflow, spreading, would then continue to go on and form
thin laminated cakes of silicious deposit around it; eruptions would
keep the hole open and smooth at the edge, ever adding layer to layer
till it became a tube.
Thus through the lapse of time—probably about a thousand years—tube,
basin and cone have, without doubt, been built up to their present
elevation; and will continue to rise till the weight of the
super-encumbent column of water becomes so great as to exceed the
eruptive forces, or these latter from any other cause cease to operate,
when the Geyser will probably remain tranquil for a time, and then
slowly continue to deposit flint on the surface edges, till at length
they meet and finally altogether seal up the cone.
This supposition is not altogether hypothetical, but is deduced from our
having observed, both here and elsewhere, mounds, plainly of Geyserine
formation, thus covered over, extinct and silent; little rocky
elevations left like warts on the surface of the ground; and even the
tracks or dry-beds of the meandering rivulets, which once carried away
their overflow, still left, distinctly traceable, down the sintery
slope.