Sir Richard Francis Burton

“ The aspect of Reykjavik from the sea is more unlike its description by travellers than, perhaps, anything that I have yet seen—even Humboldt’s Tenerife. One expects, after the Haurán-like profile of the coast, to see a “Giant City of Bashan” rising from the waves. Old sketches suggest the “negative features” of John Barrow, the miserable show of a few tarred pent-roofs topping the black shingle, but free trade has changed all that. Even on this dull day, when it looks its worst, we cannot call its aspect “triste, morne, désolé.” ”

“ Travellers tell us that presently we shall see nine suns, which do not give the light and warmth of one; sub-glacial volcanoes; fire issuing from icebergs—is this not a dream of old Uno Von Troil? [338] —a summer without thunder which is confined to winter; stone crumbling soft under the touch; stalactites and stalagmites of lava, not of lime, Pluto doing Neptune’s work; rivers now bone-dry, then raging floods; forests sans trees; fuel thrown up by the furious sea; deep swamps clothing the high hill-slopes; lakes supplying ocean cod; and wild ducks swimming the almost boiling springs ”

“ The commonalty leaned against the walls and railings, much like the Irish peasantry of the present day, whose poetry, wit, and humour, once so famous, appear, like art in Italy, to have been crushed out of life by a generation-long course of “patriotism,” politics, and polemics. There was a little more apparent drunkenness than usual, men staggering about, peasants supporting one another, and all jostling whatever they met in the streets. ”

“ This class in Iceland appears to me the worst in the world—practical communists with the rude equality of the negro, worse even than the Irish help in the United States, or the servitor at Trieste, where the men are either louts or rogues, and the women are cheats, bacchanalians, or something worse. The domestic agrees to live with his employer for a certain sum, finds little to do, will do nothing but drink and be dissolute, refers frequently to the contract, tells the master, with true northern candour, to serve himself, and finally retires to the house of his brother’s wife’s third cousin. ”

“ There is a greater{296} variety of race than in the islands farther north, but less, as might be expected, than in the Orkneys and Caithness. The blue eyes are milder than in Iceland, the long bright locks are the same, but the complexion is by no means so “pearl and pink”—perhaps its muddiness may result from peat-water. The blondes, as a rule, wear that faded and colourless aspect, which especially distinguishes the Slav race. The look is shy and reserved, and the voice is almost a whisper, as if the speaker were continually nervous: strangers notice this peculiarity even in society. ”

“ Throughout Reykjavik a smell of decayed fish prevails, making strangers wonder how it escapes pestilence and plague; and the basaltic dust raised by the least breath of wind causes hands and face to be grimy as at Manchester or Pittsburgh. ”

“ The “little white spot in the Arctic Sea” is the epitome of a world generated by the upheaval and the eruption; dislocated and distorted by the earthquake, and sorely troubled and tortured by wintry storms, rains, snows, avalanches, fierce débâcles, and furious gales. The far greater portion, the plateau above the seaboard, has a weird and sinister aspect; verging on the desolation of Greenland, and lacking the sternness and grandeur of nature in Norway. ”

“ To the north-east, and far nearer, stretched the long sea-arm Hvalfjörð, an inverted arch, with its two giant steeples Akrafjall and Esja, whilst the scarps of Skarðsheiði formed the bottom of the great cul de sac. Passing clouds of pseudo-columnar shape, here a common feature, simulated volcanic smoke; mountain head and shoulders were streaked with snow, whilst at their feet brooded the sea-fog, a horizontal line of blue mists broken and detached. Presently the rain came on again, and perforce we confined our attention to the features close ahead. ”

“ In the southern parts of the island there is apparently a considerable Irish infusion; and we often remark the “potato face” and the peculiar eye, with grey-blue iris and dark lashes so common in outer Galway, and extending to far Tenerife.
It has been the fashion for travellers to talk of “our Scandinavian ancestors in Iceland,” to declare that the northern element is the “backbone of the English race,” and to find that Great Britain owes to the hyperborean “her pluck, her go-ahead, and her love of freedom.” ”

“ It is not dead but sleeping; and while Pan-Slavism affects to slumber that it may gather vis and energy for decisive movements when the time for action comes, we still live in hopes of seeing a federal union of the great northern kingdoms, and to find Iceland taking her place as a minor but not an undistinguished member of the family. Scandinavian liberty, says Montesquieu, est la mère des libertés de l’Europe, and her free-born children have not lost and will never lose respect for the parent. ”

“ The dingy little room is mostly crowded in the evening, peasants and visitors in rags act wall-flowers, whilst the jeunesse dorée performs in the centre—yet note that neither Kirkwall nor Lerwick owns a billiard-room. Groups gather at the tavern door, and there is more life than usual in the High Street. Women flock to the large pump and bear away their full pails with a square fender of lath, like a falconer’s cage ”

“ A Danish house is always known by pictures and engravings of Copenhagen and other home scenes, in addition to family photos and loyal portraits of King Christian IX. and his queen; of King Frederick VII., who travelled in Iceland and left there the best of names; of the Prince of Wales and the Princess Alexandra, who has warmed every heart; and, perhaps, of the battle of “Schleswig-Holstein meer-umschlungen.” One enjoys even the artificial presence of trees, which look like the portentous growths of the Brazil or Central Africa, after the stunted vegetation in and around Reykjavik. ”

“ Travellers in the early nineteenth century tell us that not even a wheelbarrow can be found at Reykjavik: now hand-carts stand in every business street, and at times a carriage drawn by two ponies, and full of people, attracts every head to the window. When the made road shall be prolonged east and west, the settlement will become civilised, as our Accra on the Gold Coast. ”

“ Above us, a grenier occupies the sharp angle under the roof; here the family lives, and there is no sleep between 6.30 A.M. and 11 P.M.; they seem always to be clearing the decks for action. At the back of the house a yard reeks with impurities, and on both sides cages for drying fish give the well-known ancient smell. That human beings can live and enjoy health in the “stifled filth” of Damascus; of Mile-end, Old Town, or of Trieste (Città Vecchia) , argues, they say, peculiar excellence of climate, and the deduction certainly applies to Reykjavik. ”

“ I envy the richard in civilisation only because the talk of the Vestibule does not reach the Peristyle: his wealth removes him from all knowledge of what is going on within a few yards of him, the mean jealousies, the causeless hatreds, the utter malice and uncharitableness which compose “high life below stairs.” ”

“ The best are the straight, the worst are offensive “pugs.” Only in two instances, both of them men of good blood, I saw the broad open brows, the Grecian noses, the perpendicular profiles, the oval cheeks, and the chins full, but not too full, which one connects in idea with the Scandinavian sea-king of the olden day. As a rule, then, the Icelandic face can by no means be called handsome. ”

“ Genesis and Geology.
“Iceland owns its existence wholly to submarine volcanic agency”—such is the statement generally made by travellers and accepted by readers. The genesis of this “Realm of Frost and Fire;” this “fragment of earth white with snow, black with lava, and yellow with brimstone;” this “strange trachytic island, resting on an ocean of fire in the lone North Sea,” where the “primary powers of nature are ever at war with one another,” is compared with the efforts, vastly magnified, which in 1811 threw up from the waters Azorean Sabrina to a height of 480 feet above sea-level. ”

“ In Scotland, the average of the whole twelve months is only 7°·1, or less than half of Iceland. These singular fluctuations of temperature are readily explained by the position of Iceland with respect to the Arctic regions on the one hand, and to the Atlantic with its warm currents on the other. As more than usual prevalence of easterly winds rapidly and greatly depresses the temperature by bringing to its coasts the cold, if not also the frozen regions. On the contrary a prevalence of south-westerly winds disperses the cold, and pours over the island the genial warmth of the Atlantic. ”

“ ICELAND WOMAN—SUNDAY WEAR.
German races we look for complexion and piquancy to take the place of that classical beauty which is exceptional beyond the lovely Mediterranean shores. The congregation showed many a pretty girl, but not a single face that would be remarked farther south. The hair is admirable, and requires no chignon—the invention which conceals the Englishwoman’s chief defect, her capigliatura. It is either blond-cendré, dark red, or light chestnut-brown, as in older Denmark; farther south, but not here, brown-black is by no means a rarity. ”

“ Finally, there is one feature in Iceland which assumes a grandeur of dimensions unknown to Europe—the Hraun or lava stream. The “rivers of stone,” like those of water, bear no proportion to the size of the island. The western arm of the Skaptárfellshraun, for instance, is nearly forty-eight miles long by ten of breadth at the lower end; and there are thousands of square miles covered by the Ódáða-hraun or Terrible Lava Stream. Every fantastic form, save of life, is there, and we cannot wonder if the peasant peoples them with outlying men or brigands. ”

“ It must be observed that the Reykjavik lodging-house has a great advantage over that in England, which exists by petty overcharges and by small robberies. Here also a strange tongue and foreign habits conceal that fearful caricature of “society” ever prominent at home. The chief bane of poverty is not so much that it renders man ridiculous, as that it brings him into contact with a life-form of which only Mr Punch can make fun. ”