CHAPTER V.

Visits--Convivialities--The Catholic View of the “Reformation”--Surtar-brand--The Home-Rule Party, 363-380

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

VOL. I.

Reykjavik, Capital of Iceland, _Frontispiece_.

General Map of Iceland, _Introduction_, 1

The Dwarfie Stone, Hoy, Orkney, 266

St Magnus’ Cathedral and Earl’s Palace, Kirkwall, 283

Stone Implements found in Shetland, 303-306

Cottage in Reykjavik, 337

The Anglo-Icelandic Host, 345

The Lich-House, Cemetery, Reykjavik, 349

Iceland Woman--Sunday Wear, 354

Iceland Woman--Monday Wear, 355

The Head Constable, 358

ULTIMA THULE;

OR,

A SUMMER IN ICELAND.

INTRODUCTION.

SECTION I. OF THULE.

But is Iceland “Ultima Thule?”

The author hopes to make it evident that “Thule” was used according to date in five several senses--a sufficient reason for the confusion which has so long invested the subject. It has been well remarked that no place is more often mentioned by the ancients than the “island hid from us by snow and winter;” and yet, that no position is more controverted.[1] There has been a “King of Thule,” and now there is a “Princess of Thule,”--but where and what is “Thule?”

It will take some time to clear up the darkness which has been heaped by a host of writers upon “Thule,” and we will begin by distributing the debated word.

_Firstly_, It was attributed poetically, rhetorically, and per synecdochen, to the northern “period of cosmographie,” and to its people, real or supposed.

_Secondly_, It was applied to Iceland, and to Iceland only, from the earliest ages of its exploration.

_Thirdly_, In the centuries when imperial Rome extended her sceptre to the north of “the Britains;” it was given to the outlying parts, Ireland, Scotland, the Orkneys, the Shetlands, and features known only to fabulous geography.

_Fourthly_, The later Roman writers prolonged it to the “Scania Island,” modern Norway, Sweden, and Lapland. This Thule should be called “Procopiana.”

_Fifthly_, Between the establishment of Christianity in England, and the official or modern rediscovery, the term Thule was once more, as of old, limited to Iceland.

I.

“THULE,” POETICAL AND RHETORICAL.

The following are popular instances of Thule used in its first sense, the remotest part of the septentrional world, when it was a “fabulosa non minus quam famosa insula.” Virgil has only one allusion to it (Georg., i. 30, 31):

“Tibi serviat ultima Thule, Teque sibi generum Tethys emat omnibus undis;”

but his epithet has been consecrated by a bevy of succeeding poets.

Servius, commenting upon Virgil, explains:

“Thyle insula est oceani inter septentrionalem et occidentalem plagam, ultra Britanniam, Hiberniam, Orcadas;”

which is vague enough. He is afterwards more precise:

“At this island, when the sun is in Cancer, the days are said to be continuous without nights. Various marvels are related of it, both by Greek and later writers; by Ctesias and Diogenes among the former, and by Samnonicus among the latter.”

The work of Ctesias here referred to is little known: Thule would hardly enter into Persica and Indica (B.C. 400). Of Diogenes presently. Samnonicus Sorenus was a writer put to death by command of Caracalla (Notes and Queries, t. ii., v. 119, p. 301).

L. Annæus Seneca (ob. A.D. 65) first re-echoes Virgil in the celebrated “prophetic verses,” whose sense has been extended to the New World:

“Venient annis secula seris, Quibus Oceanus vincula rerum Laxet, et ingens pateat tellus, Tethysque novos detegat orbes, Nec sit terris ultima Thule.” --Medea, 375, et seq.

Ammianus Marcellinus (ob. circ. A.D. 390) uses (History, lib. xviii., 6, 31) the adage, “Etiamsi apud Thulen moraretur Ursicinus.”

Claudius Claudianus (flor. A.D. 395-408) sings:

“Et nostro procul axe remotam Insolito belli tremeficit murmure Thulen!” --De Bell. Getic., 203, _et seq._

And--

“Te vel Hyperboreo damnatam sidere Thulen, Te vel ad incensas Libyæ comitatur arenas.” --_In Rufin._, ii. 240.

Finally, we find in Aurelius Prudentius (nat. A.D. 348):

“Ultima littora Thules Transadigit.”

II.

STRABO, MELA, PLINY, PTOLEMY.

Entering upon the second phase of the subject, it is advisable to consider what has been written concerning Thule, by the four patriarchs of classical geography. With Strabo Thule is Iceland; in Mela it is indefinite; and to Pliny and Ptolemy it is part of Britain, with an _arrière pensée_ of Iceland: of Pytheas and Eratosthenes we must also say a few words.

STRABO.

Strabo (nat. B.C. 54; Introduction, vol. i., p. 99, Hamilton and Falconer’s translation, Bohn, 1854) tells us, § 2:

“Thence (_i.e._, from the Dneiper) to the parallel of Thule, which Pytheas says is six days’ sail north from Britain and near the Frozen Sea, other 11,500 stadia” [a measure which we will assume with Leake to be 700 = 1°].

Again, § 3:

“But that the Dneiper is under the same parallel as Thule, what man in his senses could ever agree to this? Pytheas, who has given us the history of Thule, is known to be a man upon whom no reliance can be placed; and other writers who have seen Britain and Ierne[2](Ireland?), although they tell us of many small islands round Britain, make no mention whatever of Thule.”

In § 4:

“Now from Marseille to the centre of Britain is not more than 5000 stadia; and if from the centre of Britain we advance north not more than 4000 stadia, we arrive at a temperature in which it is scarcely possible to exist. Such indeed is that of Ierne. Consequently the far region in which Eratosthenes places Thule must be totally uninhabitable. By what guess-work he arrived at the conclusion that between the latitude of Thule and the Dnieper there was a difference of 11,500 stadia, I am unable to divine.”

In book ii., chap. 4, §§ 1, 2, he thus disposes of Pytheas (“by whom many have been deceived”):

“It is this last writer who states that he travelled all over Britain on foot, and that the island is above 40,000 stadia in circumference.[3] It is likewise he who describes Thule and other neighbouring places, where, according to him, neither earth, water, nor air exist separately, but a sort of concretion of all these, resembling marine sponge, in which the earth, the sea, and all things were suspended, this forming, as it were, a link to unite the whole together. It can neither be travelled over nor sailed through. As for the substance, he affirms that he has beheld it with his own eyes; the rest he reports on the authority of others. So much for the statements of Pytheas, who tells us besides, that after he had returned thence, he traversed the whole coasts of Europe from Gades to the Don. Polybius asks, ‘How is it possible that a private individual, and one too in narrow circumstances, could ever have performed such vast expeditions by sea and land?[4] And how could Eratosthenes, who hesitates whether he may rely on his statements in general, place such entire confidence in what the writer relates concerning Britain, Gades, and Iberia?’ Says he, ‘It would have been better had Eratosthenes trusted to the Messenian (Euhemerus or Evemerus) rather than to this writer. The former merely pretends to have sailed into one [unknown] country, viz., Panchæa, but the latter that he has visited the whole of the north of Europe, as far as the ends of the earth; which statement, even had it been made by Mercury, we should not have believed. Nevertheless Eratosthenes, who terms Euhemerus a Bergæan, gives credit to Pytheas, although even Dicærchus would not believe him.’”

In book ii., chap. 5, § 8, we have a further notice of Thule:

“It is true that Pytheas Massiliensis affirms that the farthest country north of the British Islands is Thule; for which place, he says, the summer tropic and the Arctic circle is all one. But he records no other particulars concerning it; [he does not say] whether Thule is an island, or whether it continues habitable up to the point where the summer tropic becomes one with the Arctic circle. For myself, I fancy that the northern boundaries of the habitable earth are greatly south of this. Modern writers tell us of nothing beyond Ierne which lies just north of Britain, where the people live miserably and like savages, on account of the severity of the cold. It is here, in my opinion, the bounds of the habitable earth ought to be fixed.”

Finally, in book iv., chap. 5, § 5, we have the most important notice of all:

“The description of Thule is still more uncertain on account of its secluded situation; for they consider it the northernmost of all lands, of which the names are known. The falsity of what Pytheas has related concerning this and neighbouring places, is proved by what he has asserted of well-known countries. For if, as we have shown, his descriptions of these is in the main incorrect, what he says of far distant countries is still more likely to be false. _Nevertheless, as far as astronomy and mathematics are concerned,[5] he appears to have reasoned correctly that people bordering on the frozen zone would be destitute of cultivated fruits and almost deprived of the domestic animals_; that their food would consist of millet, herbs, fruits, and roots; and that where there was corn and honey they would make drink of these. That having no bright sun they would thresh their corn and store it in vast granaries, threshing-floors being useless on account of the rain and want of sun.”

The whole question evidently hinges upon the credibility of Pytheas Massiliensis, who travelled about the time of Alexander the Great. It has been ably argued, pro and con, by a host of writers, and in our day by the late Sir G. C. Lewis (Astronomy of the Ancients, p. 467, et seq.), and by Sir John Lubbock (Prehistoric Times, p. 59). But the dispute has not been settled. I would remark that the old traveller’s account is consistent enough. He appears to place Thule under N. lat. 66° (assuming, as Strabo does, the tropic at 24°), a parallel which would pass through the north of Iceland. He is quite right about the absence of fruits. His spongy matter may have been ice-brash, Medusæ, the German meer-lungen, or even pumice-stone, which modern travellers have found floating in such quantities upon the sea, within reach of volcanoes, that their movements were arrested. We read that about a month before the eruption of A.D. 1783, a submarine vent burst forth at a distance of nearly seventy miles in a south-westerly direction off Cape Reykjanes, and ejected such immense quantities of pumice that the surface of the ocean was covered with it to the distance of 150 miles, and the spring ships were impeded in their course. Also when Herodotus, a Greek--whose world embraced the Eridanus or Amber River, the Tin Isles, the Arimaspians and the Hyperboreans--could confound snow with feathers, Pytheas, a Marseillais, might be allowed some latitude in describing glaciers. Poverty has not prevented the most audacious journeys; and discovery has been mainly the work of individuals. Geminus (Isagoge, etc., cap. 5) opines that Pytheas was taken to Iceland against his will. The barbarians showed him where the sun set on the shortest day, and rose again after a short interval. Then the sea began to thicken “pulmonis marini (πνεὑμονι θαλαττἱῳ) simile.” He afterwards heard that where the sun does not set, is the uttermost part of the world, and cannot be travelled over. Greek _outrecuidance_ evidently hated to be taught by a kind of Gaul like Pytheas. Strabo, with his captious, bilious, and acrid criticism, is wrong, and Pytheas is right, in a highly important part of the question, the inhabitability of the island. In fact, sundry modern writers have declared that, as far as we have the means of judging, Strabo’s predecessors, Pytheas and Eratosthenes, were more correctly informed than he was concerning the geography of the western parts of Europe.[6] The learned Isaac Casaubon (Commentaries upon Strabo) thus decides the question clean against his author: “Thule--non esse aliam quæ Islandia hodie dicitur, facile doctis viris assentior.” He adds that Eratosthenes held Pytheas to be an oracle, but when Polybius and others found his geography loose in points familiar to the Greeks, they pronounced him a liar, and rejected all he wrote.

I must therefore conclude that Pytheas, with all his fables, by Thule meant Iceland, and Iceland only; moreover, that he had acquired some knowledge of the island. Indeed Gosselin opined that both Pytheas and Eratosthenes had had access to the memoirs of some unknown ancient people to whom Europe and its seas were as well known as to ourselves. He argues that this people could not have been Babylonians, Phœnicians, Carthaginians, nor Egyptians. Bailly (Hist. de l’Astr. An., 1-3), entertaining a similar opinion, supposes them, after the fashion of the day, to be Antediluvians.

MELA.

Pomponius Mela (A.D. 41-54; De Situ Orbis, iii. 6) is our next authority. After mentioning Britannia and Iverna, the thirty islands of the Orcades, the seven Hæmodæ (Shetlands) fronting Germany,[7] and the Scandinavian Isle held by the Teutons,[8] he says:

“Thule fronts the seaboard of the Belcæ (alii Belgæ and Bergæ),[9] an island celebrated in the Greek poetry and in our own. There, as the sun rises to set afar off, the nights are indeed short; but during winter, as in other places, obscure; in summer they are light, because throughout that season (the sun), already raising himself higher (above the horizon), despite not being seen, yet illuminates the nearest parts by his approaching splendour. At the solstices there is no darkness, because then (the sun), becoming more manifest, shows not only his rays, but the greater part” (of his disc).

PLINY.

The next authority is Pliny (nat. A.D. 23, ob. A.D. 79), who makes Thule the northernmost British island. Both he and Cæsar (Bell. Gall., v. 13), placing Mona about N. lat. 66°, declare that the sun does not set in summer, but perpetually disappears during the winter solstice. To the former phase Cæsar assigns thirty days, Pliny six months (_senis mensibus_). The great natural philosopher mentions the Massilian traveller without abusing him:

“Pytheas informs us that this is the case (_i.e._, the day lasting six months, and the night being of equal length) in the island of Thule, which is six days’ sail from the north of Britain” (Nat. Hist., vol. i., book ii., chap. 77, Bostock and Riley, Bohn, 1835).

In book iv., chap. 30, occurs:

“The most remote of all that we find mentioned is Thule, in which, as we have previously stated, there is no night at the summer solstice, when the sun is passing through the sign of Cancer; while, on the other hand, at the winter solstice there is no day.”

Again (loc. cit.):

“There are writers also who make mention of some other islands, Scandia, namely, Damna, Bergos, and, greater than all, Nerigos (or Nerigo, Noreg, _i.e._, Norway), from which persons embark for Thule. At one day’s sail from Thule, is the Frozen Ocean, which by some is called the Cronian Sea.”

Finally, in book vi., chap. 39, we find:

“The last of all is the Scythian parallel,[10] which runs from the Riphæan range to Thule, in which, as we have already stated, the year is divided into days and nights alternately of six months’ duration.”

With these passages before us, it is easy to understand why popular writers generally assume Pliny’s Thule to be the Shetland Isles. But he evidently confirms the account of Pytheas, and adds the significant detail about the Cronian or Frozen Sea. It is well established that the ocean south of Iceland is not icy, whilst the northern and western shores are often frost-bound.

PTOLEMY.

Claudius Ptolemy, the Pelusian (flor. A.D. 159-161) notices θούλη in nine places. After correcting (book i., chap. 20, §§ 7, 8,[11] = p. 17[12]) the errors of Maximus of Tyre, he says (book i., chap. 24, § 4, = p. 19): “Consequently also the parallel passing through Thule shall be laid down as ν β’ (52) sections from η το ζ η, along the lines of latitude ξ, ο, π.” The same chapter (§ 6, = p. 20) tells us, “Also shall be comprehended the interval between ο and κ southwards, that is, between the parallels passing through Thule and through Rhodes κ ζ (27) sections.” Thirdly, the same chapter (§ 17, = p. 22) continues: “κ, through which shall be described the line (of latitude) defining the north, and falling on the island of Thule.” Fourthly, in the same (§ 20, = p. 22), we find: “And as τὸ μῆκος (the longitude) is commensurable with τὸ πλάτος (the latitude), since upon the sphere whose great circle is five, of these the parallel passing through Thule is about β and δ´” (2¼).