Islanders

“ The Danes of old, when they landed in their marauding expeditions upon our coast, hardly excited more alarm, nor did our islanders muster more promptly for the defence of their lives and property against the common enemy, than the modern Icelanders against these formidable brutes. ”

“ Every European seaman must admire the skill of the Caroline-Islanders, who succeed in traveling with such sureness over the length and breadth of their group, through spaces in which one of the islands may be more than eight hundred miles from its neighbor. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The longer they remained on the island, the more they had occasion to be pleased with the conduct of the islanders, and the less incommoded either on board or when on shore, by the natives following them as at first. Into every house they wished to enter, they always experienced a kind reception. ”

“ Appreciations of national character too often depend upon the casual circumstances which encounter and environ the traveller; and writers upon Iceland differ so greatly upon the matter, that perhaps the safest plan will be to quote the two extremes.
The unfriendly find the islanders serious to a fault; silent, gloomy, and atrabilious; ungenial and morose; stubborn and eternally suspicious; litigious and mordant; utterly deficient in adventure, doing nothing but what necessity compels; little given to hospitality ”

“ Turning to more scientific evidence, we find that the Islanders have always been judged to be of Polynesian race, as indeed would naturally be expected from the easterly position of the island in the Pacific Ocean. ”

“ If I should say, I saw such islanders, For certes these are people of the island, Who though they are of monstrous shape yet, note, Their manners are more gentle-kind than of Our human generation you shall find Many, nay, almost any. ”

“ In his own small world his social standing is a settled thing, and cannot be injured otherwise than by his own folly or misconduct. Moreover, most of the Islanders are, or have been, brought face to face with the solitude of nature, and many of all classes have travelled. ”

“ The Island lay in a land-locked Bay of the great Continent, encompassed on all sides by its Highlands. The little hills, which its inhabitants called mountains, were girt around by the magnificent mountain-ranges of the Main Land. Its colonial settlements, which the dwellers in them called cities, were commanded from the other side by the glorious cities of [Pg 126] the kingdom. Its islanders, who called themselves "the world," were compassed about by the victorious ones now at home in the great true world across the waters. ”

“ The term 'Savage' is, I conceive, often misapplied, and indeed, when I consider the vices, cruelties, and enormities of every kind that spring up in the tainted atmosphere of a feverish civilization, I am inclined to think that so far as the relative wickedness of the parties is concerned, four or five Marquesan Islanders sent to the United States as Missionaries might be quite as useful as an equal number of Americans despatched to the Islands in a similar capacity. ”

“ The natives are as domesticated as the Philippine Islanders, and have much better features. Spanish and a little English are spoken by many of them, as these Islands in former years were the resort of English-speaking whalemen. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Icelanders are a wonderfully well-educated people. Our new friend told us he did not believe there was a man or woman in the Island who could not read and write, and certainly on our visits to the various farm-houses, we never failed to notice a Lutheran Bible, and many of the old 'Sagas,' by native poets, beside translations of such works as Shakespear, Göethe, John Stuart Mill's 'Political Economy,' and other well-known writings. ”

“ Men of good birth (nearly always, too, of Celtic blood on one side at least) , they leave Iceland young and attach themselves to the kings and earls of the north, living in their courts as their henchmen, sharing their adventures in weal and woe, praising their victories, and hymning their deaths if they did not fall by their sides—men of quick passion, unhappy in their loves, jealous of rival poets and of their own fame, ever ready to answer criticism with a satire or with a sword-thrust, but clinging through all to their art, in which they attained most marvellous skill. ”

“ There are no accessible books, of a late date, in our language, that give either an intelligible or faithful account of Iceland. The object of the following chapters has been to present a readable and truthful narrative, to create some interest in the people, the literature, and the productions of the lonely isle of the north; and of the good or ill performance of the task, the public must be the judges. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As in America, so in Iceland, the boy, who leaves the paternal roof and the occupation of his ancestors, who scorns the opportunities of the farm and seeks his fortune in the metropolis, soon puts aside his home-taught virtues, lapses into ways of idleness, acquires the idea that the world owes him the same living as that won by the ceaseless energy of toil, and it is not long before he becomes a derelict upon the ocean of humanity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Geographically Iceland belongs to America, and its colonization meant, sooner or later, the finding of other lands to the West. A century later Greenland was peopled from Iceland, and a colony existed for over four hundred years, when it was snuffed out, doubtless by hostile Eskimos. Icelandic records, among them the Vinland sagas, also a Norwegian work of the 13th century, called Speculum regale (The King's Mirror) , and some papal letters, give interesting glimpses of the life of this colony. ”

“ The people who maintain that they have seen these children of nature, assert that they are taller and stronger than other Icelanders; that their horses’ hoofs, instead of being shod earth iron, have shoes of horn; and that they have much money, which they can only have acquired by pillage. When I inquired what respectable inhabitants of Iceland had been robbed by these savages, and when and where, no one could give me an answer. ”

“ If we trace the history of Iceland from its first settlement to the present time, we shall find that the intelligence, activity, prosperity, and happiness of the people, and the rise and progress of the arts and sciences among them, has been exactly proportioned to the liberal and republican spirit of their government. For fifty-four years—from the first settlement of Iceland, in 874, to the year 928—it was a Norwegian colony, governed by chiefs. As the population increased, and the infant settlement waxed strong, difficulties arose between the rulers and the ruled ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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.” ”

“ As a general rule, such reasoning is valid; yet the earliest known phenomena of British civilization are compatible with a comparatively modern introduction of its population. For Great Britain may have been peopled like Iceland or Madeira, i.e., not a generation or two after the peopling of the nearest parts of the opposite Continent, but many ages later; in which case both the population and its civilization may be but things of yesterday. In the twelfth century, Iceland had an alphabet and the art of writing. ”

“ In all Iceland welcome and farewell is expressed by a loud kiss,—a practice not very delightful for a non-Icelander, when one considers their ugly, dirty faces, the snuffy noses of the old people, and the filthy little children. ”

“ The smoke rose from the peat fire in the kitchen, bringing with it the pleasing odor of burning humus, the farm maids were busy with the milking and the men were swinging their scythes in the meadow, albeit it was half past nine at night. This then is Iceland, the land of my boyhood dreams. These are the home-dwellers, who are not city-struck nor crazed with the lust of gold. These are the people of sturdy ways and simple lives whom I am to know in the years to come. ”

“ In Iceland they lived active, not to say tumultuous, lives, and left fine literary records of their doings and achievements. The Icelandic colony was an interesting forerunner of the American republic, having a prosperous population living under a republican government, and maintaining an independent national spirit for nearly four centuries. ”

“ 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. ”