Sir Richard Francis Burton

“ The chief well to the north has built for itself a party-coloured mound like a nest of African termites, and puffs only vapour with the sumph of a donkey-engine. A hundred yards or so to the south is a younger spring with double boilers, in which the water may rise at times a foot and a half high: the “hell broth” slithers through a soft and soppy circle, down a foul channel of burnt pyrites and silica-clothed trap to the bubbling Varmá. ”

“ Descending from the Grjótgarðaháls, we halted near the last lake, and collecting a cart-load of willow-roots, which here represent the sage of the Far Western Prairies, we kept out the mist and cold with a roaring fire. The students, too lazy to follow our example, lay upon the ground; yet when riding, these shuddering tenants of the frigid zone muffled their throats in huge comforters, enclosed their hands in worsted gloves, and wore vast waterproofs of oilskin, with other signs of softness. It was the first fire, though not the last, that I saw in Iceland travel. ”

“ Close to the sea, and conspicuous to those who sail by, is a classical spot, the Haugr, howe or cairn of Hallgerða, the fair-haired with the thief’s eyes. That lady, so famous in Iceland legends, virtually murdered three husbands; the last was the “peerless Gunnar,” who, some years before, had slapped her face. She lived upon this farm, which she inherited from Glum, her second victim; she died in A.D. 996, and she was buried with all the honours of her rank. The tumulus always remains green, doubtless a token of Heaven’s approval bestowed upon one of the strongest-minded of her sex. ”

“ Thence we passed into the usual sand, black and cindery, based upon tawny Palagonite, and curiously beached with pebble-beds; the rounded stones had been scattered on the path by ponies’ hoofs. This sand was deeply cracked, and our nags, panting with heat, sank in it to the fetlock. The maximum of caloric at certain hours of a summer’s day during a long series of years is far more equally distributed over earth than men generally suppose. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Most of this march is only fit for the itinerary. The path in places becomes like the hollow ways of the Brazil, whose gullies spread over a hundred yards of ground, and the “forest,” as on the Anti-Libanus, shows more root than hole, the tree hugging earth, as it were, to save itself from being blown away. The first chapel farm gives an extensive view of the coast features and of the highly picturesque formations, the Jarlhettur rampart, the twin bluffs and spines of Hagafell, and the grim, black isolated castellation of Hljóðufell, outlying the Lángjökull. ”

“ And this doom was to extend “wherever Christian men go to church and heathen men sacrifice in their temples; wherever fire burns and earth greens; wherever mother bears child, and child cries for mother; ship floats, shield glitters, sun melts snow, fir grows, hawk flies the long spring day and the wind stands under his wings; wherever the heavens vault themselves, the earth is cultivated, the gale storms, water seeks sea, and men sow corn. ”

“ The grass land reminds you of a deserted country churchyard. Many of the warts which garnish it are originally formed like “glacier tables,” those pillars of ice bearing tabular rock, which protects their bases whilst the sun melts the surrounding matter. The scattered boulders keep the lump firm, whilst the ground about it is washed away: mostly, however, the tussocky warts are formed, as on the Irish bog, the Scotch moor, and the flanks of Ben Nevis, by the melting of spring-snows and the heavy rains which carry off the humus from the sides ”

“ All this greenery was set off by the barrenness of the buttressed Lángahlíð hard on our left. The regular horizon of trap-wall had been succeeded by a sharp slope of Palagonite conglomerate, which evidently underlies the whole block. On the summit is a desert where no man dwells, broken by pyramids which are evidently lava-cones, Skálafell (scald or bald hill?) being the chief feature; upon the lips of the plateau are gushes of modern lava, and on the low levels appears an ancient sea-beach, scattered with rounded blocks like giant rocs’ eggs. ”

“ Around us a few cats’-paws fan the waters, which, under the lee of the land, stretch smooth as oil, and the air is mild and kindly. In the upper regions rages and roars “Satan’s weather;” the cloud chariots rush forward in solid line against the wind, dashing and clashing as they course and career over the battlefield of virgin snow; they are torn to pieces by the artillery of the Storm-Fiend; the troops whirl away in headlong flight, veiling now one cusp of the crater, then another. ”

“ This Thyrill takes its name from the mountain gusts which hurl men from their horses, threaten caravans with destruction by frightful whirlwinds, and raise sheets of sea-water high in the air, tearing them to pieces like snow. To look at the peaceful innocent scene we could hardly imagine that it ever lets angry passions rise, or that it had been led to the excesses and atrocities described by Ólafsson and Von Waltershausen. ”

“ The northern face of the Berufjarðarskarð is even more striking than the southern; the “Vandyke cliffs” have all the tints of Brazilian Tauá; nowhere does Iceland show more colouring. The red, pink, dead-white, and pale-green Palagonite follows the torrent-beds and girths the rivers; and the singularity is increased by walls and outcrops of the hardest and blackest hornblende, building dykes, bridging chasms, and causing the snow-streams to breach over in cascades. ”

“ The districts round the active volcanoes of Etna, in Sicily, and Vesuvius, near Naples, supply the whole amount of sulphur now used. In seeking, then, for a new source of this commodity, we should naturally turn our attention to a volcanic district. And where in the whole world does there exist another country so pre-eminently volcanic as Iceland? Its fearful lava-tracts, its vast plains of scoriæ, volcanic dust and ashes, its pools of boiling water, its spouting geysirs, its vast caldrons of seething mud, proclaim its volcanic origin. ”

“ The angry stream is crossed in many places by ropes and cradles; gradually it becomes a torrent-gorge, and the whole length receives a least a dozen rain-bred cataracts: everywhere we saw their smokes and heard the dull charge of cavalry, whilst the rattling of stones upon the sandy beds sounded like the distant pattering of musketry. There was, however, no difficulty in crossing the mouths and, after three hours fifteen minutes of mild work, we rested the nags and changed saddles at the sheep-house of Kleif. ”

“ You leave the town by the Krísuvík, more properly the general eastern, road, passing the fine new prison, which is rising rapidly from the ground: the exceptionally thick walls are made of hewn and unhewn trap, with an abundance of imported lime, blackened by basaltic sand. There are apartments for the officials, and ample accommodation for all the criminals in the island; indeed, if the interior only equal the exterior, its superior comforts may act, it is feared, like our old transportation system, and offer a premium for breaking the law. ”

“ The fog from the west and south-west, which enwraps this firth when the northern Fjörðs are quite clear, began to break at eight A.M., and before eleven it had lifted sufficiently to show the beacon and the one big house perched upon the basaltic knob of Papey. There is a report that this feature and the islets around it are gradually rising, and that a sensible difference is observed every thirty years. Gradually to starboard the lower folds of Strandafjöll, stepped like the Esja and Skarðsheiði, and farther off the black curtain of Búlandstindr, frayed at the summit, struggled into sight. ”

“ Here not a few travellers have declared that the capital of Iceland should be, and undoubtedly it will become the sole place of export for the Krísuvík sulphur-fields. The harbour is exceptionally safe, sheltered from all winds: the climate is better than that of Reykjavik; and the sky is often clear when heavy clouds invest the northern heavens. But unless ground is made, there is little or no building room. ”

“ When one patch is exhausted, the road can be pushed forward to another. I am persuaded that the whole range, wherever Palagonite and lava meet, will be found to yield more or less sulphur. Of course it will be advisable to purchase sundry of the farms, and these, in Iceland, range in value from £300 to £800 maximum. The vast waste lands to the east will carry sheep sufficient for any number of hands; and good stone houses will enable the Englishman to weather a winter at which the Icelander, in his wretched shanty of peat and boarding, looks with apprehension. ”

“ It is a spectacle likely to be remembered, the shoeing of Iceland ponies by the farrier, who is almost always unprofessional. Five men, without including half-a-dozen spectators and advisers, bodily engage in the task; one holds the cruel twitch, two hang on to the several limbs, one or two hold up the hoof, and number five plies the hammer. And the result is that in travelling you must always expect your animals to be pricked.
The traveller should take out with him a comfortable pony bridle, if he intends to ride far. ”

“ An Iceland bit is horrid to look at, but the long, heavy mass of brass is never cruel; the chain is not tightened, often, indeed, it is absent, and sometimes a bit of cord does duty. Happily for the horses, they have no curbs, and I have many a time wished that we in England could unlearn the use of them, or rather learn to use them only when required. Nothing more unpleasant than to see both sexes in Rotten Row worrying their animals into perpetual fidgets, and making them throw up their heads like giraffes on the run. ”

“ Nothing can be more unlike. These pocket “Campi Phlegræi” cover a few square yards, a patch probably overlying pyrites, upon the left or western plain, which gently slopes towards the Túngufljót. The “Tongue” [105] or Mesopotamian “flood” winds snake-like through the moorland of dull-yellow clay, rhubarb-coloured humus, and bog, alternating with green vegetation: here it is hid by high banks; there it shows its vertebræ in streaks and dots of silvery stream, flashing in the sun. Houses and farms unknown to the map vary the surface. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The current, like that of the Congo, boils and swirls through a deep gorge, a trough of perpendicular rocks which wholly ignore landing-places. A number of “old men” showed the desolation of the land, all gorges and dykes, and the sheep followed us, as young bisons do, for company’s sake. We remarked, for the first time, that the sun really set, and that in Iceland there is such a thing as a moon: this simulation of night without a dawn before one A.M. was comforting. ”

“ The eastern side shows a low slip of land connecting two culminations; to the north, Heimaklettr, upon whose tormented slopes, 916 feet high, sheep are grazing; and southwards, Helgafell, a more shapely volcanic cone of cinders and grass—it is the work of the Trolls, famed for truth. A white church and steeple, fronted by black huts, provides for some 400 souls, excellent cliff men, full of fight, and armed with guns against the marauding of foreign fishermen—Frenchmen especially. ”

“ Beyond the green and grassy point, Höfði (the headland) , we came upon sundry veins of lava about a century and a half old, and much like slag: where Palagonite-conglomerate forms the surface, begin the Sandfell and the Hlíðarnámar (Lithewells) , the latter wrongly confounded in the map with the Námar to the east of the Námafjall range. A couple of boards some six inches long were the only signs of work. The dirty-yellow mountain, striped from top to toe, as if washed by rain, with primrose, brick-red, dark blue, pea-green, light blue, and chalky-white, now stood smoking before us ”

“ Icelanders have allowed their pleasant primitive fashions to be laughed away by the jeering stranger, who little thought how much the custom told in favour of the hosts. The naïve modesty of antiquity, when Nestor’s youngest daughter laved, anointed, and dressed Telemachus, and when the maids of Penelope had a less pleasant task with the elderly Ulysses, has departed with the public bathings, in angelic attire, of Iceland, of Sind, and of Japan, and the kiss given to the guest by the young wife or the eldest daughter of the Morlacchi house. ”