Category: Travel Writing
Historically, Iceland is unique. Assyria, Egypt, Greece, Italy, Mexico,—each has a prehistoric period of human habitation, when man loved and hated, and competed with the brutes for existence. He fashioned his instruments from stone and made self-preservation his first and onl...
Historically, Iceland is unique. Assyria, Egypt, Greece, Italy, Mexico,—each has a prehistoric period of human habitation, when man loved and hated, and competed with the brutes...
2. CHAPTER II“Oh _Frey_ in the north lands, Thou sweetest of powers, Thy breath on the mountains Turns ice into flowers. Thy smile on the meadows Is life to the fold, Thy touch on the maid’s...
3. CHAPTER III“Here rise no groves, and here no gardens blow, Here even the hardy heath scarce dares to grow; But rocks on rocks, in mist and storm arrayed, Stretch far to sea their giant col...
4. CHAPTER IV“And still the eye may faint resemblance trace In the blue eye, tall form, proportion fair, The limbs athletic, and the long light hair,— (Such was the mien, as Scald and Minstr...
5. CHAPTER V“Here, by each stormy peak and desert shore, The hardy isleman tugs the daring oar, Practiced alike his venturous course to keep, Through the white breakers or the pathless deep.”
6. CHAPTER VIHardly was the anchor down in the midstream before a rosy cheeked and genial gentleman came on board and introduced himself as Helgi Zoëga. He was the man with whom I had corres...
7. CHAPTER VIIWe had expected to start on our tour through the south of Iceland at eight in the morning. It was ten when we left the enclosure where the ponies were saddled and the pack horse...
8. CHAPTER VIII“Where the cauldron of the North Spouts his boiling waters forth, From the caverns far beneath, Where they ever lie and seethe, And with steam, and hiss, and boom, Send a tremor...
9. CHAPTER IXA mighty rift within the rock Rent ages since by earthquake shock, Where Hvitá’s frenzied stream Down plunges with the thunder’s roar Upon the canyon’s basalt floor ’Twixt walls...
10. CHAPTER X“Irregularly huge, august, and high, Mass piled on mass, and rock on ponderous rock, In Alpine majesty,—its lofty brows Sometimes dark frowning, and anon serene, Wrapt now in cl...
11. CHAPTER XIFrom _Galtalaekur_ we turned towards the sea. All the long day we traversed the sands of _Hekla_ and the bordering marshes. In the latter there is an abundance of the sand reed,...
12. CHAPTER XII“This land of Rainbows spanning glens whose walls, Rock-built, are hung with rainbow-colored mists— Of far-stretched _Meres_ whose salt flood never rests— Of tuneful Caves and p...
13. CHAPTER XIII“The lands are there sun-gilded at the hour When other lands are silvered by the moon,— The midnight hour, when down the sun doth pour A blaze of light, as elsewhere at the noon.”
14. CHAPTER XIV… “The mountain’s head Stupendous rose; crags, bare and bleachen, spread In wild confusion,—fearful to the eye,— In barren greatness, while the valleys lie Crouching beneath, in...
15. CHAPTER XV“Day long they fared through the mountains, and that highway’s fashioner Forsooth was a fearful craftsman, and his hands the waters were, And the heaped-up ice was his mattock,...
16. CHAPTER XVI“I think that I would wander far to view Such scenes as these, for they would fill a heart That lothes the commerce of this wretched world, That sickens at its hollow gaieties.”
17. Chapter VII was written, that I learned a most interesting thing aboutthis river so famous in Icelandic history. It seems that in ancient days the river followed a natural channel near the ridge that rises above the heath near _Kárastaðir_. It did...