Ilse

“ On the towerlike summit of the rock stands a great iron cross, and in case of need there is also room here for four human feet. And as Nature, through picturesque position and form, has adorned the Ilsenstein with fantastic charms, so legend likewise has shed upon it a rosy shimmer. According to Gottschalk, "People say that there once stood here an enchanted castle, in which dwelt the rich and fair Princess Ilse, who still bathes every morning in the Ilse. ”

“ Swarthy Spanish sailors put in sometimes, and fair-skinned, black-eyed Greeks, and broad-shouldered Norwegians, all as ripe for love as any other sailor, but that they should carry away an Island girl to their outlandish places over sea is a thing almost unheard of. The Island girls are courted by their own blue-jerseyed fisher-lads—and what a place for love-making, with the ravines and caves in the cliff-sides, and the deep glens in the heart of the Island, so lonely except for the lord's red deer and little fierce black cattle. ”

“ Such are the Happy Isles, whereunto few have come, save but as roaming shadows in the night, and for only a little while.
'But longer than is needed to make me strong and fierce again I may not stay, and at set of sun, when my arms are strong again, and when I feel in my legs that I can plant them fair and bent upon the floor of ocean, then I go back to take a new grip upon the waters of the Straits, and to guard the Further Seas again for a hundred years. Because the gods are jealous, lest too many men shall pass to the Happy Isles and find content. ”

“ In the eyes of those to whom the past furnishes a perspective more fascinating even than the promise of the future, the little isle adjacent, which is itself a finely marked basaltic cone, rising over a thousand feet high and well called “Holy Island,” is even more worthy of the visits of the reflecting scholar. It holds an attraction even greater, in human interest, at least, than the wonders of geology, or the numerous witnesses to antiquity in the form of upreared stones. ”

“ Like other islands, it has its magic carbuncle. Beyond it lies Papa Stour; Papey, the eyot of Culdees and anchorites: its natural arch will appear familiar after Iceland. About noon we found ourselves off the Færoes, and the rest of the day was spent upon the Ferry of the Northern Sea. We steam all unconscious over the “Sunken Land of Bus,” in N. lat. 58° 2 ́ and long. 29° 55 ́; “Arctis,” a continent which has lately been revived, and whose fragments are supposed to be Iceland, the Færoes, Greenland, Spitzbergen, and Franz-Josef’s Land. ”

“ In the middle of the Irish Sea there is, as every one knows, an island which for many ages has had its own people, with their own language and laws, their own judges and governor, their own lords and kings, their own customs and superstitions, their own proverbs and saws, their own ballads and songs. ”

“ Now, here and there in this vast region there are certain sheltered spots where some grass grows, valleys that have escaped the overflow of the molten rock, or the thrust of the glacier; and during the ninety years that Iceland had been inhabited, every now and then a churl who got tired of service, or a murderer afraid of his life, ran away into the centre of the island, and lived a precarious existence on the wild birds, their eggs, and on the fish that abounded in the countless lakes. ”

“ The Western Isles, and more especially that group lying south of the holy island of Iona, were at this time in a most prosperous condition. Together with a large tract of country on the northeast of Ireland, they formed a sort of naval empire, with the open sea as its centre. They were densely populated. The useful arts were carried to a degree of perfection unsurpassed in other European countries. ”

“ After those days Danes and Irish and English plundered in their turn, but the stillness of the rock and the loneliness of the sea closed in again on the islands, while on the mainland rebellion and conquest alternated in a various agony, and the civilisation thrust on Ireland was a coat of many colours, dipped in blood. These Aras of the Sea rest in their primitive calm, nurturing a strong, leisurely people, with the patience and hardiness of the rock in their blood ”

“ In the first place he is one of the most skilful pilots on the coast; when hard pressed, he does not hesitate to use even the Isles des Rochers as a place of refuge."
"The Isles des Rochers?" queried the nobleman.
"A chevaux-de-frise on the sea, my Lord!" continued the commandant; "where fifty barren isles are fortified by a thousand rocks; frothing fangs when the tide is low; sharp teeth that lie in wait to bite when the smiling lips of the treacherous waters have closed above! ”

“ But if, as sanguine minds predict, all comes out well in the end, and Denmark leaves us to ourselves, or the powers of Europe rise against Denmark, and Iceland remains a free nation, I will not forget that my true home is in the dear island of the Irish Sea, and that good souls are there who remember me and would welcome me, and that one of them was my dear little playfellow long ago. ”

“ Coming now to Continental Islands we consider first those of most recent origin and offering the simplest phenomena; and begin with the British Isles as affording the best example of very recent and well known Continental Islands. Reviewing the interesting past history of Britain, we show why it is comparatively poor in species and why this poverty is still greater in Ireland. By a careful examination of its fauna and flora it is then shown that the British Isles are not so completely identical, biologically, with the continent as has been supposed. ”

“ As the result of my letter I had the pleasure of seeing a vessel enter the harbour with a valuable cargo from New York, which we received in exchange for British manufactures and other goods. Having established my authority at head-quarters, I found it advisable to make a tour of the island. Though nearly destitute of trees, Iceland is perhaps the most picturesque country in the world, by reason of its great inequality of surface and its ridges of precipitous mountains capped with snow and ice. The main support of the people is derived from sheep and the fisheries. ”

“ The literary history of Iceland, in the early ages of the republic, is of a most interesting character. When we consider the limited population of the country, and the many disadvantages under which they labored, their literature is the most remarkable on record. The old Icelanders, from the tenth to the sixteenth century, through a period in the history of the world when little intellectual light beamed from the surrounding nations, were as devoted and ardent workers in the fields of history and poetry as any community in the world, under the most favorable circumstances. ”

“ Some that have visited foreign countries, have returned home so impressed with their experience of the great and busy world; that they have infused a spirit of activity and inquiry into the whole circle where they move. They tell of one man, an Icelander, who got off to the continent, and went through all the wars of Napoleon, 294and after many years returned to his native land. He was so glad to see his own good island, that he fell down and embraced the earth, and declared, in the words of the national proverb, “Iceland is the best country the sun shines upon.” ”

“ In the far north there is an island so cold and dreary that from time immemorial it has been called Iceland—the land of ice and snow and frosts. Here are no spreading forests or fields of flowers, but only here and there hardy evergreens and a few pale blossoms, that come, perhaps, just to show how beautiful the place might become if only the short Icelandic summer lasted as long as the sunny months farther south. ”

“ The noblest of them are distinguished by pure and strict form, noble heroic subject, and simple truthful self-control of style and treatment, free alike from overwrought sentiment or extravagant passion, and raised equally above euphemism and commonplace, but ever inspired by a weird Æschylean power, grim and tender, and splendid as that which breathes through those historical books of the Old Testament, to which alone should the masterpieces of Iceland s greatest writers be compared. ”

“ We passed by "Ellen's Isle," as it is called, the most exquisite little island ever formed, a perfect oval, and all covered with the purple heather, the golden gorse, and all sorts of flowers and exquisitely beautiful trees. O, what a little paradise it is! A number of little row-boats, with fine-looking Highland rowers and gay companies of ladies and gentlemen, were visiting the island as we passed. They show the oak tree to which they say Ellen fastened her boat. ”

“ Till the ruin of the Norse kingdom in the east of Erin, in the great battle of Clontarf (1114) , the Norsemen were brought much in contact with the Irish, and by this means adopted Irish names, such as Nial and Cormac, and Irish superstitions as well. The name they gave to the Isle of the Blessed, in the western seas, was either Great Ireland, because there the Erse tongue was spoken,—it being colony of the souls of the Kelts,—or Hvitramannaland, because there the inhabitants were robed in white. ”

“ From the cradle to the tomb the life of the Icelandic chief fetters our attention by its poetry of will and passion, by its fierce, untamed energy, by its patient endurance, by its undaunted heroism. In Iceland in the tenth century it was only healthy children that were allowed to live. ”

“ The day after leaving the Clyde, we were coasting along the not very attractive-looking island of Islay, inhabited by the Macdonalds. It was often the scene of forays, which one clan was wont to make on another, in the good old days, as people delight to call them, when the ancestors of the present race were scarcely more civilised than the South Sea islanders. Though rock-girt, Islay is fertile, and a large portion has been brought under a state of cultivation. ”

“ You preface your verses on Ulster by words from the mysterious oracles of humanity as if you had been inflamed and inspired by the prophet of God; and you go on to sing of faith in peril and patriotism betrayed and the danger of death and oppression by those who do murder by night, which things, if one truly feels, he speaks of without consideration of commerce or what it shall profit him to speak. ”

“ In a short time a course to Iceland was marked out by the early rovers of the North Sea, who, before the close of the ninth century, planted a colony on the bleak coast of this icy island, the most westerly land hitherto discovered by the fearless seamen of Scandinavia. ”

“ We should also expect to find that after the partition of the Isles the Northern Islands would become comparatively deserted by the lower class of the population, the actual occupiers of the soil; and the condition of these islands at this time may be gathered from the Chronicle of Man, where it tells us that the Norwegian king Reginald ‘gave his brother Olave the island which is called Leodhus or Lewis, which though larger than any of the other isles is mountainous, rocky, and almost entirely inaccessible. ”

“ For these people do not know how to fit together [literally, weave] keels of fir or maple; they do not bend their craft with deal, in the usual way; but strange to say, they make their ships of hides sewed together, and often traverse the vast sea with the help of hides. Two days’ voyage from thence lay the great island, which the ancients called ‘the Holy Island,’ [32] and it is inhabited by the people of Hierne [i.e., Ireland] far and wide, and near to it again extends the island of Albion. ”

“ At that time I did not distinguish the Icelandic from the Danish but I knew the tune, America, and I mingled the good English words of Dr. Smith with the lisping gutturals of the Scandinavian. Norse and Yankee are [48] well met in this Icelandic sea and I doff my cap to the descendants of those sturdy mariners who discovered Iceland, Greenland and America before Columbus was born, who Anglicised Celt and Britain and eventually made possible our own dear New England.
The morning vapors are scattered. The ocean is a thing of life. ”

“ Another island in the harbor is called Ellis Island, where most of the emigrants who have left their homes in other countries, land when they reach the United States. Irish and Poles, Italians and Russians, men with children clinging to their sides, and women with arms clasped around tiny babies, all dressed in the fashion of their old homes, step from the big ships and take their first breath of the free air of America almost under the shadow of the Statue of Liberty. ”

“ The island, though scantily peopled, enjoyed immense advantages for study. It had taken the first great step in civilisation, SLAVERY, and while carl and thrall tilled the field, Jarl, clerk, and franklin found ample leisure for literature. The long rigorous winters, when neither farming, fishing, fighting, nor sea{237}faring was possible, proved highly favourable for reading, writing, and reciting; and hence the phenomenon that the history of mediæval Iceland is more complete than that of any European country. ”

“ All the native historians agree in calling this the Golden Age of Iceland. During this period Greenland was discovered and settled, the continent of America was discovered, and an enterprising, daring, and successful series of voyages was carried on, that eclipsed the efforts of all previous navigators. Christianity was established and bishops appointed both in Iceland and Greenland, poetry and history were cultivated, and a degree of intellectual activity 42was shown, beyond that of any country in the north of Europe. ”