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.

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;

“And call aloud your names as you pass along my grave, For haply shall the voice of you revive the bones of me. I have fasted with my friends during life and in my death; I will feast with you the day when the meeting shall be free.”

We may compare the sentiment with that of the Roman epitaph,

“Hic propter viam positus Ut dicant prætereuntes Lolli, vale!”

And one might quote by the score such inscriptions as--

“Have, anima dulcis!”

which breathe only the most tender melancholy. This sentiment, apparently unknown to the rugged and realistic soul of the north, is felt deepest in the brightest climates, for instance, amongst the Hindús, and generally the races which inhabit the “Lands of the Sun.” Nor amongst the Arabs do we find the abominable heroines of Scandinavia; “the grimmest and hardest hearted of all women,” adulteresses all and murderesses, justifying the Norsk proverb, “Woman’s counsel is ever cold (cruel).”

The eastern shore of the Naze Firth then showed Thórðarhöfði, a majestic headland of black lava, coiled and writhed, whose central hollows are striped with yellow clay washed from above; whose upper crags lodge the eagle and his brood, and whose base is caverned by the ceaseless onslaughts of the waves. At first it seems an island, backed by its lakelet, the Höfðarvatn, but it is connected with its mainland by strips of natural causeway to the north and south, not unlike Etruscan Orbetello. Wild strawberries are said to flourish in the well-sheltered hollows. From about Grafarós it wears the aspect of a couchant lion, and doubtless it was of old, like Helgafell, a Holy Hill. The Thórðr who gave it a name was an “illuster and vailzeand compioun” of Irish blood and fifth in descent from Ragnar Loðbrok (hairy-breeks),[85] one of the most unpleasantly truculent persons in Scandinavian myth. His epicedium or death-song, of course composed for and not by him, the only refrain of whose twenty-nine stanzas is--

“We hewed with the hanger” (Hiuggom ver með hiaurvi--_Pugnavimus ensibus_),

very adequately represents his sentiments and his career: it reads as if it had been inspired by the Destroying Angel. The sooner this style of literature, which deals in every manner of---- cide from parricide to vulpecide, becomes obsolete in Iceland the better. Imagine a decent, respectable Protestant paterfamilias, by way of whiling away the long winter evenings, reading out these revolting and remorseless horrors to his wife and daughters: I should feel as if treated to the Curse of Ernulphus.

The next feature was Hofsós, a scattered settlement, with its chapel, first a pagan temple and then a Catholic church; it is marked by a hill rising bluff above the Unadalr (“Wone” or dwell vale), a little stream which accounts for the term “oyce.” A mile or so farther south lies Grafarós, and here we anchored, after a pleasant cruise of fourteen hours from Borðeyri. This comptoir, chosen by Mr Henderson of Glasgow, is very badly placed: the norther raises a surf which can make landing impossible for a fortnight, and, as we could see, the south wind at once breaks the Skagafjörð into dangerous waves. Surely safe ground could be found under the lee of the grand Thórðar-head.

* * * * *

_July 3._

Apparently the rule in Iceland is, that a fine day brings foul weather, and July 3 was no exception. As we rose, a solid bank of rain stood high in the north, and presently the Storm-King rode forth, beating down the white heads of the angry billows. It was Ahriman waging eternal war with Hormuzd; the battle of Osiris and Typhon; the war of Baldur and Loki. In the course of the day, the gale forged round almost to the south, and the alternations of mist, drizzle, and bright sunshine formed an Ossianic framing highly appropriate to the picture: like the Scottish Highlands, it would have looked ridiculously out of place under an Italian sky.

The Skagafjörð is held to be one of the most picturesque, as well as fertile and populous, districts in Iceland, wanting only the “hair of the earth animal”--wood. The firth, a riverine sea-arm, ten miles broad, is the embouchure of that formidable stream the Jökulsá Vestri (western), which, like the Blandá or Blandwater, drains the central Hofsjökull--the southern face, Arnarfellsjökull, discharging the much more important Thjórsá. Flowing from south to north, before feeding the bay, it bifurcates, forming a delta known as Hegranes (Hern-naze) Island, and famed for beauty. On both sides, rugged and precipitous shores are divided by ravines and valleys which, after an hour’s rain, pour turbid yellow streams into the dull-green receptacle. The southern part of the western bank is subtended by the Tindastóll (peak-host), a well-known name: older travellers talk of “precious stones, probably opals,” being found in abundance among its ravines, of onyx, zeolite, and chalcedony, and of “caves containing curious crystals.” To the north and south, the wall-coping is broken and jagged; the middle length shows straight and regular lines, with numerous strata symmetrically piled.

The eastern shore of Skagafjörð, near the anchorage-ground, is of black sand and shingle, with columnar basalt in places, and capped by a long bare “Melbakki” some seventy feet high: its background rises in detached hills and lines of bluff, counter-parts of the Tindastóll in miniature, and copiously streaked with snow. The regular steps and stratified lines here dip to the north.

The bottom of the firth disclosed a grand landscape of sky. Now a glint of sunshine settled upon snowy top and glaucous slope, then a white mist robed and capped the shadowy mountains, catching the reflection of Bifrost, the bridge of the gods, a fragment of gaudy rainbow. Anon a span of pale-blue firmament contrasted with the mackerels’ backs and mares’ tales to windward; whilst to leeward the dark curtain of purple cloud, hanging in rugged edges over the red and black hills, made the distances dim, dimmer, and dimmest. The inevitable accompaniments of this feature were the ghostly forms of pale birds fighting with the wind; the _âmes perdues_ which attract the voyager’s eye on the beautiful Bosphorus.

We landed to inspect the “one-horse” settlement of Grafarós, which consists of a small temporary landing-place, a tarred store, sundry stone-and-peat huts, and a double-storied red house flying a flag; a few farms are scattered about inland, as well as on the shore. A single schooner lay at anchor. North of the comptoir, and forming a bay in the bare raised bank, is the “ostium” of the Deildardalr (dole-dale)[86] river, a tenth-class Icelandic stream, which, despite its low degree, can look first-rate in violence. There is a ford near the settlement, but elsewhere the water courses over a succession of steps and ledges, which would deter anything but that wild horse who is known to swim the wilder flood. By this time we had seen enough of “Hofs,” and we contented ourselves with strolling up the warm and genial valley, a bed of violets.

Grafarós was formerly, and is still at times, frequented by English smacks in search of whale and seal oil. These cockle-shells, manned by four and five men, the “little friggits” of our ancestors, not larger than the Icelandic “sharker,” work their course by dead reckoning and often come to grief. It is the terminus of our voyage, and we could only regret that the “Jón” had not orders to make a circuit of the island--regrets tempered, however, by the thought that we had seen by far the fiercer and the more interesting half. No better or easier way than this to form a general idea of the formation; it requires only supplementing by a few cross-cuts through the interior.

The students had all left us, and here our now pleasant party broke up. The bishop’s daughter and her two friends had the choice of riding some twenty miles round the Skagafjörð head, or of crossing it by boat, an easy process which, however, did not seem to have charms for them. We bade affectionate farewell to Síra Guttormr, whose beat is from Rípr (the crag) in Helganes to Keta near the north-eastern extremity of the Húnavatn peninsula--he seems to look upon it as a mean place. The reverend has no pay, properly so called, and his “living” is expressed by the contributions of his parishioners: truly a man must have a vocation for such a life!

Late in the afternoon the “Jón” turned his head northwards, and on July 6 steamed into Reykjavik harbour. We shook hands with our excellent captain, and heartily wished him every success, and bade an adieu which was destined to be an _au revoir_.