Perhaps some survival of old paganism may preserve the “yellow footed bird in the inky cloak,” who became black by reason of his sins: Odin’s hawk, the “black cousin of the swan,” who appeared in the traditional oriflamme of the Norsk Vikings, and who still survives in the lines:

Hence, possibly, the prevailing superstitions, e.g., that Ralph combines eccentric habits with human intelligence; that he is a bird of augury; that he holds a Hrafna-Thing (council) in autumn, to billet the several couples; that every church has its own pair; that Grip does not plunder the farm nor fight the dogs of those who lodge the Grips; and that he warns the owner of dead sheep. The Raven’s Song (Krumma-Kvæði), a dialogue between “Hrafn” and a peasant, is well known, whilst the Hrafna-galdur Öðins (Odin’s Raven Song) is a miracle of mystery. Ralph’s croakings were and still are omens, betokening death, when heard in front of a house, and he has appropriated a variety of proverbs. Perhaps this sentiment prevented the Northerner “improving the subject,” as did blind Herve in the Breton verse, “When you see a raven fly, think that the Devil is as black and as wicked. When you see a little dove fly, think that your Angel is as sweet and white.” Thus after St Vincent was beheaded, all the Grips that alighted upon his corpse fell dead; on the other hand, Ravenna owes her name to the fact that ravens, crows, and jack-daws flocked from every part of Italy to take part in the feast of St Appolinarius. In the Færoes the bird of the “brook Cherith” has lost all his Odinic reputation; he is easily killed when the snow drives him to the farm-house, and four skillings are given for his beak. Perhaps instead of being slaughtered, he might be exported to England, where he would now command seven shillings. According to the people, he is not invincible, being often beaten by the agile sea-pie (Hæmatopus ostralegus, the Sceolder of Shetland), and sometimes slain by the strong-billed sea-parrot (puffin).

As we approached the bottom of Berufjörð, we could see the snows over which our path would lie, and the “gurly flood” dashing down the broad steps of trap. It drains the Axarvatn, the “Axe-water,” so called from its shape; it is said to be rich in trout and fish, but Mr Pow, who was of the party, found it far too clear and cold. After a pleasant row of twelve miles in about three hours, we reached our destination, and the “new chums” derided the place which appears so large upon the map. Berufjörð is, in fact, nothing but a Prestagarðr (parsonage) and a chapel, the latter distinguished from a stable only by the white cross, episcopally commanded; the doors hang about, and there is a sad want of paint. In Iceland the clergyman often moves off when his church wants repair, for he must pay the expense.

We were courteously and hospitably received by Síra Thorstein Thorarensson, who was busy in his tún superintending the day-labourers. It is the hay-harvest, the only harvest that Iceland knows. The men ride to and from their work, ply their ridiculous scythes, and, besides being fed, are paid per teigr (80 square feet) 1 Fjórðung[145] = 10 lbs. of butter, here worth 2 marks per lb. An active hand at this season can make $2 per diem, 11 marks being the average; many farms are nude of males, and consequently guides in August are scarce and dear. Hay, which fetches 1 mark per 10 lbs. in winter, now sells for $2 the kapall[146] (horseload, or 240 lbs. Danish); and as the ton in Scotland costs at this season only £1, 10s. to £2, 10s., Mr Pow scents a spec. That evening passed in the confusion of sorting goods and sending back all articles not strictly necessary; it was far into the small hours before we could settle ourselves upon the rotten boards, and under the hideous crucifix which, forming the chapel’s altar-piece, carefully avoids breaking commandment No. 2.

July 31.

Whilst awaiting the arrival of our carriage, Captain Tvede volunteered a walk up the Berufjarðarskarð, which crosses the northern wall of the firth, and afterwards anastomoses with the road to Thingmúli. This part had not undergone its annual repair, and it was painfully pitted with horse-traps, deep holes. The lower part was an avalanche line:

but “interdum” hardly applies to what happens annually from these “thunderbolts of snow.” To the right lay Sóta-botn, a huge hollow, probably formed by hydraulic pressure, the sinking of a mountain-stream, a common feature in the Brazil. As Sóti and his wife Bera (the bearess), a name often given to women, were riding home over this pass, their enemies raised a magic fog; he broke his neck by falling into the pit; she broke her head as the famished horse, to whose instinct the rider had trusted, rushed into the stable—the site of the latter is still shown near the parsonage. Bera’s cairn lies at the top of a little promontory at the north end of the Fjörð, where her ghost sits gazing upon the ever restless tide.[147] The picture was diversified by an advance of white mist; its fragments, forming a vanguard like a flock of wild geese, with abundant play and movement presently invested the shallow cupola of Thrándar Jökull, whose brown clouds were its own growth: at times it melted under the sun, and presently it renewed itself in the cold wind of the firth and in the colder breath of the snow-clad summits. Finally, it settled upon the mid-ridge, making the upper half appear miles away from its base.

After a two hours’ stroll we reached the Bitruháls, or col, which stands over 2000 feet above sea-level.[148] On the left hand rose Kistufell, the apex where the Danish officers placed a landmark: the summit must be at least 1000 feet higher than the pass. Through the reek and dance of the morning air we looked down upon Breiðdalsvík; the Broad Dale is parted into a northern and southern feature by “Möleyri,” a great spine of trap, and the nearer section is split by three large perpendicular Gjás. The winding Breiðdalsá, which has a fork for each valley, is clear and limpid, very different from Jökull water; and large farms are scattered everywhere about the soles. 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. Farther down there is a vein of glistening trachyte celled with iron, probably a prolongation of the Skriða hills, which we shall pass farther north; afar it looks like plaster fallen from a wall. The valley is scattered over with chalcedonies and crystals of lime, the produce of geodes washed out of the trap, and with jaspers, especially the red, green, and banded; Hr Gíslason’s “copper ore” is probably nothing but burnt or corroded “yaspis.” Along the stream-banks grow yellow poppies (P. nudicaule; Icel. Mela-Sól), with small lemon-coloured flowers and large spreading roots; they extend to Spitzbergen, and the last time I saw them was in the Desert of the Palmyrene.

Down the northern descent, which is rapid but provided with a good causeway à tourniquet, runs the eastern road to Seyðisfjörð, firth of the Seið or Gadus virens, the abode of many merchants, distant some sixty miles from Djúpivogr: the western viâ the Öxarheiði (ox-heath) is generally preferred because it crosses two instead of three great divides. The line to Thingmúli turns to the left, repeatedly crosses the southern Breiðdalsá, and ascends by another newly built causeway, the Breiðdalsheiði, where there is a nameless lakelet, neglected by the map, which discharges the southern Broad Dale fork.

SECTION IV.—To the Mý-vatn: the Seven Days’ Ride.

July 31 ended with a “sea of troubles.” Captain Tvede and Mr Pow left us, greatly to our regret, and no one seemed anxious to effect a departure but ourselves. The guide skulked, the ponies came in slowly, and, worst of all, a dark march was proposed. This always appears to me the summum malum of travelling; it is equally injurious to strength and temper; it often wastes the next day; and, worst of all, it gives a false idea of the country.

Our party is now formed. Messrs Lock, father and son, are attended by Bowers, an able seaman, born in Jamaica and domiciled at Southampton. He is to superintend the sulphur boring; he does the work of half-a-dozen Icelanders, but he has seldom been aboard a nag; and the honest fellow is apt to forget the adage, “astern of a sail and ahead of a horse.” Besides Gísli, the skulk, we temporarily engage for nine marks per diem Hr Hoskulldar Guðmundsson, who is en route for his father’s house. Hr Gíslason, wishing to attend a fair, accompanies us for the first march. The kind and obliging parson, after feeding us with fish, mutton fresh and dry, sharks’ flesh, and seals’ haslets—good with vinegar, but even then somewhat too oily—and after insisting upon sundry stirrup-cups of “Iceland wine” (schnapps), determines to start one of the most disorderly of caravans.

We have a total of nineteen ponies all under six years, which would be four-year olds in England, and with the nineteen never a rope. For the most part utterly unbroken, they break away and lose our time; disgusted with their loads, especially with the long boring-rods, they kick and bite, requiring constant reloading. Consequently, Mr Lock misses a carpet-bag, which contains only his money and his papers, and all our baggage suffers more in ten hours than in a year of railways. The commercial complication was enormous; almost each animal had its own hire; one was to be left at this place; two were to be sent on to that; we took the wrong ones with us to Mý-vatn, and consequently we were threatened with a lawsuit. Mr Lock (père) has a largâ manu manner, but he is strongly imbued with the Anglo-Saxon “idee,” to wit,

He compels the most headstrong to obey him; he remembers the adage, “In Iceland if you want anything, ask for it;” he takes high ground, and he “puts up with no nonsense.” The people, gentle and simple, do not openly resent the novelty, but they slang him behind his back, and with a certain dry humour they dub him “Loki,”[149] the bad god of Scandinavian mythology. I can only say that the tone answered well as in Syria or Egypt.

The disorderly party set out about an hour before midnight. We passed in the dark a mine of magnetic iron disposed, they say, in volcanic rock. This metal cannot be smelted for want of fuel, and its only raison d’être in Iceland is to deflect the magnet and to make navigation and the Vatnajökull dangerous. The ugly bridle-path running up the left bank of the Axavatn, and ascending a variety of stony steps, divided by flats of deep moss, with a rare Beitivellir, baiting or pasture ground, and snow-wreaths sounding hollow beneath the tread, showed few features. Before the cold mist set in from the north, we saw at our feet the long Berufjörð, and the spectre of Thrándar Jökull, gleaming white in the pale and glaucous green light of an Arctic midnight; whilst the continuous roar of foss and torrent rang in our ears.

At the foot of the fifth and roughest grade, the Öxarheiði, we halted for a while, where the steep ascent is called, apparently in bitter derision, Vagna-brekka, or waggon-hill. The huge mountain-walls seemed to tower straight above our heads; on the right was the Haurar-Gil (crag-gil), and nearer the Mannabeinafjall, or man-bone hill, where some of Sóti’s horsemen were slain. These things the good priest tells us, and then, wringing our hands and bidding us Godspeed, he rides home, bearing with him our best thanks. The very large jar of rum proved too much for one of his friends; after galloping about like one insane, changing his horse every half-hour, and drinking every ten minutes, he lay him down to sleep comfortably upon the soft, cool snow, and lost no time in losing his saddle and saddle-cloth, his bridle and his horse. He will walk into camp at five P.M. next day, sadly crestfallen, if not repentant.

After three hours, during which I felt frozen hands for the first time, we stood on the summit of the Breiðdalsheiði, and looked down upon the long valley to the north. It was a pleasant change after our uncouth way and the panorama maudit of the earlier night; but the sunlight, though gleaming pink and gold upon the snow hills to the north, only saddened sleepy eyes. The path leads down the right bank of the Múlaá in the Skriðdalr, a mad stream rolling reckless over slope and drop, green and blue, cold and clear, here deeply encased by huge slices of black trap, there low-banked with long streaks of red-yellow bog-iron. The left wall was regular with gracious concave lines, ending in the lion-headed Múli, which gives a name to the Múla Sýsla: the right was a succession of buttresses, each owning its own Kvísl, or shallow drain, and the latter were mauvais pas, where only the cleverest ponies could spring up and down the rocks without a fall. As we advanced, the valley broadened out into flats of vivid, unwholesome green, bog and swamp spangled with cotton-grass, whose pods much resemble those of the veritable tree-wool, and which should be collected for sheep-fodder. At 9.30 A.M. we forded the stream, and rode up to Thingmúli, much to the edification of the mowers, men in shirt-sleeves and women half-dressed—

We were not equally edified by their unbusy, dawdling ways: so at the churn the servant girls will work five minutes and rest fifteen.

As I expected, the Thursday was a dies non, whose only event was pancake made by the farmer’s wife. We inspected the tall Múli, whose bare and ragged head of trap ends the long buttress to the north-north-east: it is bounded east by the Geitdalsá, rising in the Líkárvatn; draining, they say, the Thrándar, and uniting with the Múlaá to form the Grímsá. We botanised at its foot, collecting two equiseta, Elting (spearwort, or E. arvense) and Beitill (horse-tail), of which there are many varieties; the Fjóla or violet (V. montana?); the Hrossanál, or horse-needle (Juncus squamosus); the Blá-ber and Grænyaxlar or young blaeberry (Vaccinium myrtillus); the bog-whortle (V. uliginosum); the blue-bell (Bláklukka; Campanula rotundifolia, Hjalt.), which grows everywhere, reminding us of Europe; the small, grey birch; the dwarf-willow, all catkins; the Alpine bartsia (Icel. Loka-sjóðsbróðir[150]); the meadow-rue (Thalictrum Alpense; Icel. Kross-gras); the fleabane (Erigeron; Icel. Smjör-gras) and the ephemeral Veronica. There were also the bright, yellow-green reindeer-moss; the red Alpine catch-fly (Lychnis Alp.); the usual “sun’s-eye,” or buttercup (Sól-ey); the dandelion (Fífill); and the lamb-grass or moss-campion, still in flower; the bladder-campion (Silene inflata); the pretty, common lyng (heather); the mountain-asphodel (Tofieldia palustris; Icel. Sýkis-gras); and, most remarkable of all, the pale-lemon blossoms of the mountain avens already beginning to pall. The Kræki-lyng, the black crowberry (E. nigrum), supplied its small, red currants, sweet and mawkish, of which Bishop Pál made sacramental wine; the vine-like Hrútaberjalyng (Rubus ling) trailed on the sward; and the meadow-rose (Epilobium angustifolium; Icel. Eyra-rós) reigned queen of Iceland flora. The leafage already showed autumnal tints, yellows and reds taking the place of greens, light and dark; and the air was all alive with grey moths (Fyrireld).

An interesting feature of the Skriðdalr, or slipping dale, is the Skriða range, a name not in the map, but given to the north-eastern buttresses of the broken valley as far as Sandfell. Fronted by dark traps they rise, nude of turf, conspicuous in light-yellow skins of trachyte and Palagonite, based upon a thin and sickly green—we learned to call them the Sulphur Range. As the long streaks and gullies, the broad parting fiumaras, and the slides and heaps of footing débris, show, the Skriðas are infamous for landslips and snowslips (Snæ-Skriða), the latter overwhelming túns and houses—

The sole defence against these avalanches (Skriðáfall)[151] is the Skriða-garðr, a dry wall, built very strongly at the sharp angle facing the Skriða and the Snjóflóð, and repaired every year.

In the evening the people began to gather for the fair, and most of them were in that state politely called “excited.” One man made himself especially remarkable; with one leg shorter than the other, he was dancing, roaring, snorting fou’; his face was much knocked about; and, with his ’baccy smeared lips, he insisted on succulently kissing every feminine mouth. Mr Lock, sen., had a somewhat narrow escape from a venerable matron whose nostrils showed that she was no better in one matter than our grandmothers: she advanced towards him prognathously, when in the nick of time he turned and fled. He was much shaken, and for some hours looked pale and weak.

The evening might have been in Tuscany; and we drank coffee outside, a practice which excited general reprehension—here you rarely see a bench or seat in the open air. We were lucky in engaging a superior guide, the student Sigurður Gunnarsson, nephew of the archdeacon of Hallormstaðir; his seven years at Reykjavik had given him a tincture of English; he was good-tempered and obliging; in fact, the absolute reverse of Baring-Gould’s “Grímr.” Hr Gíslason, to the satisfaction of every one, disappeared with his big dog, a cur whose only idea of life was to chivy sheep.[152]

Our day’s march was far more interesting than usual: it lay over the long, prismatic tongue of land, a sister formation of the Múli line, separating the Grímsá from its ultimate receptacle, the lake. Amongst the scatter of farms lay Geirólfstaðir, where I slept on return: the house is partly built of greenstone. The mountain path is called, why, I know not, a “Remba,” a hard road to travel, from “að rembask,” to struggle with, to puff one’s self up. The summit of this Hallormstaðarháls was a mere divide, not a Heiði with level ground; and from its altitude, about 880 feet, we looked down upon and around a most extensive view. Below us, and stretching to north-north-east, lay the long “broad,” known as the Lagarfljót, a milky water evidently from the snow-mountains; and on the nearer shore, protected from the biting blasts, lay the celebrated Skógr, or forest of Hallormstaðir, straggling some twenty miles, and composed of birch-trees,

Yet from afar they act pretty well as acacias, the point-lace of the forest. To the north-east rise the nubs, heaps, and snows of Höttr, the hats or cowls, and their frost-bound prolongation, the icy range of Borgarfjörð, and, especially, the cones of Dyrfjöll. But every eye turned instinctively southwards when majestic Snæfell, the northernmost outlier of the Vatnajökull, fronted by its two northern outliers, the Hafrsfell and the Laugarfell, shoots up towards the cirri and cumuli of the still air, its glistening glaciers and steely-blue sides making eternal winter in a lovely garb appear.

At Hallormstaðir, our first stage, we failed to find the Prófastr (archdeacon) Sigurður Gunnarsson, who had gone for supplies to Seyðisfjörð. His wife received us kindly with “Yule bread,” containing raisins and other delicacies. She must be a model housewife; her six-gabled house was being painted; her kitchen-garden grew unusually fine potatoes; and her poultry-yard was far better stocked than usual. We were hospitably invited to pass the night, and Gísli Skulk looked wistfully at the comforts around him; but we were inexorable and, after a two hours’ halt, began operations upon the next stage.

I shall not readily forget that march. The ponies, also, had apparently made up their minds for a half-holiday, and, when refused, they resolved to revenge themselves. Briefly, the loads were everywhere except where they should have been, and the fight at the ford was unusually severe. The bridle-path up the right bank, moreover, was bad, broken with gullies, rugged with rocks, and cullendered with holes; in places we had to avoid headlands of stony teeth by fording the waters; and, as on the skirts of Hermon, the ways were double, high for winter, and low for summer. Student Sigurður explained Lagarfljót as a corruption of Laugr, a bath; others translate it the “layer” or mixed water, because composed of ice and mud. It is considered unwholesome and undrinkable. The average breadth is one mile and a half, and the people declare that the depth reaches sixty fathoms. It is formed by a glacier stream, the little Jökulsá, flowing through the Fljótsdalr or Norðurdalr, a line which we shall presently follow; and an eastern lake-stream, the Keldá, draining the Syðridalr. The latter rises in the Keldavatn, which the map writes Kelduárvatn, the lake of springs-water; and it is reached in a long day’s ride from the Víðivellir, or the Klúka farm, which almost fronts Valthiófstaðir.

I had heard much of the Skógr (Shaw) of the Lagarfljót, as the most beautiful in Iceland: it probably tempted the first settler, Hallormr, to become Hallormr of the Wilderness. In other places, the freezing and thawing of the sap bursts the vessels and kills the plants. Here, however, the Birkis have a backing of heights to concentrate sun-heat, a westerly exposure, and a large sheet of water tempering the cold. The thin birch-scrub grows on all kinds of soil; mostly the trees are mere bushes, but the topmost twigs of the giants of the forest may reach twenty feet, and the timber is heavy enough to make pack-saddles. All are being felled, and none are planted; the weight of the snow is said to destroy the young trees. Nor was the Skóg a vocal growth: I listened long and in vain for the merest chirp.

About an hour before reaching the ferry we had a fair prospect of the Hengifoss, said to be the tallest cataract in Iceland. It is an Icelandic copy of the immortal Cocytus (Mavroneria) in Arcadia, with a fall six times the depth. “Hanging-force” plunges suddenly into a huge caldron, the Hengifossárgil, and is dashed to drops before it reaches the kieve, which is considered to lie 1200 feet below. Its wonders can hardly be appreciated, we were told, without entering the cavity: it faces to the south-east; and, as you ride along the lake, the strata lie exposed to sight, as in a Californian cañon. Amongst them is said to be a small quantity of Surtarbrand.

We had sent on to warn the ferryman, and Charon, Sigfús Stefánsson, of Bessastaðir, with fiery hair, clean-cut red whisker, and huge goggles, was the model of a Scotch pedagogue. Remounting, we galloped ventre à terre, the best cure for cold feet, over the turfy flat of the left bank, and found ourselves at Valthiófstaðir, the church and parsonage of Síra Pétur Jónsson. The house was being painted, but we found lodgings in the church: the altar candles were duly lighted, and, after doing what little we could to make ourselves comfortable, we turned in shortly before midnight.

August 3.

At Waltheofstede, whose name is distinctly Saxon, we reduced our stud to the best sixteen head; we bought ropes and horseshoes; we mended the pack-saddles; we paid off the temporary guides; and we engaged the student Stefán Sigfússon, of Bessastaðir, who gave thorough satisfaction when he did not air his ten words of English. Whilst these preparations were being made, I inspected the premises. The farm is of old date, but it is not the Waltheofstede so pleasantly mentioned in the Landnámabók (p. 100): “Tunc servi Erici ruinam villæ Valthiofi de Valthiofstadis intulerunt, Eyolfus autem Saur (Eyólfr Saur) ejus cognatus servos apud Skeidsbrekkas super Vatnshornum occidit, eâ de causâ Eirikus Ejolfum Saurem interfecit, iste quoque Holmgangu Rafnem (Rafn, the duellist) Leifskalis interemit.” Thus, in seven half Lines, we have a regular monomachist, the destruction of a farm, and the murder of two Franklins, with an indefinite number of thralls. We still find a Thórdísa, in memory of old days, the granddaughter of the parson at Valthiófstaðir.

The church is somewhat larger and better, that is, more tawdry, than usual; and justly vain of it is the district. Outside it is red-striped, with gallery, tower, spire, finial, staff, and weather-cock: the latter bears the cross of Denmark, yet “Odi Danicos, sperno, contemno,” is a sentiment frequently expressed in this neighbourhood. Inside it is daubed to mock marble. The bell in the loft bears for date 1744, and the altarpieces are truly hideous: Sanctus Peterus (sic), with key and book, wears his glory on one side of the head, like a cavalryman’s forage cap. The churchyard epitaphs are funny as usual. Hjörleif Thórðarson (ob. 1786) speaks of his future prospects with a confidence which some might consider premature, if not misplaced:

and another’s long home, a box, has become a classic “urn:”

More satisfactory was the aspect of the farm, which supports 11 cows and 600 sheep. The labourers’ Hey-annir is now begun, and will last for six weeks: they were at work “queerving” the grass, as Shetlanders say, with long thin rakes, so that it may not dry too soon; “mixtæ pueris puellæ,” the lasses with turned-up sleeves and the inevitable gloves: at mid-day all seek shelter from the “torrid sun.” This essential part of Iceland “agriculture” is well and carefully done; and the number of hands enables the farmer far to surpass anything farther south. The “Taða,” or hay from the manured (Tað) infield, opposed to the Ut-hey, or produce of the outfield and hills, is close-shaved, and tedded twice, and even thrice, a day: that wanted for immediate use is carried to the house in Kláfrs (creels or crates), articles of universal use, the Leipur of the Færoes, which also carry peat in the Isle of Lewis; and the rest, when thoroughly dry, is stacked and covered with turf. The implements are mere toys, mounted on rods like billiard queues for easy packing and cheap passage. The scythe is a sickle attached to a two-handed stick nine spans long; the blade of three spans, little more than an inch broad, and sharp as a razor, is used here and in the Færoes because the warty ground permits no other. The rakes are of two kinds, with big pegs and with small teeth, both wholly of wood; and in the best farms there are always wheelbarrows and hand-barrows.

The venerable parson, who appeared somewhat “eld-gamall” (un vieux vieux), consented to give us an extra guide, a student lad named Thorsteinn, from the north country, whose circumstances had not allowed him to keep his term at Reykjavik: he was to receive the unconscionable sum of $4 for one day’s march. We set out in mid-afternoon, and rode down the Lagarfljót’s left bank, in twenty-five minutes, to the ruins of Skriðuklaustr, the last priory founded in Iceland. Two long barrows of earth and stone show the site of the church: they measure 87 feet north to south, and 62 east to west. The fane is surrounded by an enceinte of similar humble material: the northern entrance is apparently ancient; that to the west, modern. The habitations of the reverend men were near, but below the little adjoining farm; and there are still fragments of a built causeway running south-west to the cemetery. The latter lay all around the church, and the old custom has been perpetuated: to the south is the grave of Sýslumaður Winne, who died in the early eighteenth century; whilst another heap, which trends east to west, not north to south, is called the “tomb of the bad fellow”—a point of affinity between Icelandic and New Zealand English. Unfortunately, I had no time for skull-digging, and gaining the title of Haugabriótr (cairn-breaker).

We were not asked to dismount, nor did we dismount, at Bessastaðir: the tumulus of the founder, old Bessi (the bear), is a green heap by the river-side. After a general bout of kissing and rekissing, we began the rugged divide separating the Lagarfljót from the Eastern Jökulsá, and at once blundered northwards: when in the worst quagmire the new guides, Stefán and Thorsteinn, a cock-nosed lad of about twenty-two, quietly said, “Há, we should have gone there!” Gradually we rose to 2000-2200 feet, the average altitude of these Heiðis. The foreground was unusually repulsive, and its aspect suggested frost a few inches below. It was a surface of mosses, ever dank and dew-drenched; of iron-stained swamps; of tarns like horse-ponds; of soppy stream beds, with livid-yellow Palagonite encasing the gashes; of brown heath and black peat; of huge heaps instead of the usual warts, as if the farmer had just drawn the manure—in fact, it was a bad specimen of the worst parts of the New Forest centuries ago.

Our eyes, saddened by a path all steps and drops, were suddenly electrified by the first magical view of the Vatnajökull; it had hitherto been hidden by sundry outliers, especially the Eastern or lesser Eyvindar, a snowless block, or rather double block, curving like a serpent’s tail, from left to front, from south to west (275° mag.). For better examination, we dismounted at Vegup—“Collis viæ,” said the students.

Behind the Snæfell cone a blue distance of lowland sweeps, like a streak of paint, to the very foot of the “Lake Glacier,” whose general aspect is a high dorsum of virgin white, an exaggeration of the Wiltshire downs after a heavy fall of snow. The first thing which strikes me is that the altitude by no means justifies all this eternal frost: we must probably seek a cause in the immense agglomeration of ice behind; in thrust from above, and in the prevalence of southerly, here the frigid, winds. Secondly, the features of the grand névé are perfectly separable and distinct, very unlike the dead blank plateau of all the maps. Beginning from the south-west, we notice the domed Kverk (throat) Jökull, fronted by the feature which gives it a name; the huge gloomy mound, fissured to the north, stands boldly out from the pure expanse, and sinks to the level of the deep-blue air. Successively rise the Skálafell (hall-hill), a double cone, connected by a long yoke of miniver, and fronted by a glistening glacier; the three horns of Sval-barð and the ice-mailed points of Snæfellsjökull, not to be confounded with the isolated Snæfell cone:[153] this small Spitzbergen,

all bristling with pink and silvery spikes, tapering, tooth ranged near tooth, in formidable array, projects a long slope eastwards. Farther on, the line, bombé in the map, bends with a great bay from us. Helped by Olsen and the students, we pick out the various features of the south-eastern corner; the Heinabergsjökull (hone-hill glacier); the Sauðhamarstindr (sheep-cliff point), a dark mound like a brown cloud; and eastward, again, the Kollumúli (hind-mull), alternately a black tower and a ridge-end; whilst behind, and upon another plane, flashes a great and glorious snow-peak which, at other angles, assumes the aspect of a bluff or buttress. To the extreme south-east, the blue and snow-streaked horizon, backed by pearly mists, swells into a gigantic bride-cake, the Hofsjökull, bounded west by a pale saddleback, and north of it lies the now familiar dome of the Thrándar ice-mountain. The gold and purple gleams of the westering sun, the opalline play of the projections and prominences which catch the lights, the faint pink-azure of the shades, and the skylarking of the cloud-hosts over the heads of the tallest peaks, set off by the umbreous black foreground, dull and sodden, by the beggarly features of the middle distance, and by the wash of deep damascene blue at the base, fall into glorious picture; and the presence of black spots, like “erminites,” in the waste of white suggests the haunts of some Troll-like race—I no longer wondered that there are superstitions about this mysterious realm of eternal snow.

After a sketch, for the purpose of better fixing the picture upon the brain-plate, we jogged on, leaving the snow-streaked Knefill (the pole) to the north; and at eleven P.M. we began the short and rugged descent to the Eastern Jökulsá. The mountain flank was gashed with the hideous chocolate-coloured chasms of the Sharon plain; we had to pull our way-fagged horses down boulder and through bog. As we reached the riverine plain, well sheltered from the wind, the poor beasts recovered courage and carried us gallantly into the new farm, with its three-gabled house, Thorskagerði (codfish garth). Whilst Mr Lock and I put up the tent, “Charlie” bolted into the “eld-house” (kitchen), much to the astonishment of the gudewife, who bolted out in demi-semi-toilette: we supped at the “fashionable” hour of one A.M., and we slept in the broad bright dawn.

August 4.

This was a day of peculiarly hard work; I look back upon it with pleasure, because it introduced me to two new features, the cage and the sand-desert. The forenoon began with the inspection of the Jökulsá, here a frequent name: there are three which drain the Vatnajökull northwards—;the Little Jökulsá, from Snæfellsjökull, forming the headwater of the Fljótsdalr; the Great Easternmost Jökulsá, known to the people as the Vale River (á dalr), or the Bridge Stream (á Brú); and the Great Westernmost Jökulsá, or the Hill River (á fjöllum). Icelanders apply the term Jökulsá Eystri (eastern) and Jökulsá Vestri (western) to the chief headwaters of the Skagafjörð, as those who have read Chapter X. may remember. Our river, an ugly gutter-water, milky, mineral as the drain of a Cornish mining village, and consequently desert of fish, runs in an old valley; and the ledges between the hills and stream are the sites of frequent farms. The deep perpendicular rifts, cut by rain-torrents, are filled with wintry snow; and throughout this part of the country the people use sledges, heavy, tasteless board-boxes on iron runners, wanting all the finish of Russia and North America. The modern bed is mostly a crevasse of grey-blue basalt, black when wetted, built in regular strata, and pitted with drusic pock-holes: the perpendicular walls are split into thick and thin slicings; and slaty débris and spoil-banks deform the “broads” where the cliffs sink low into the valley.

The narrowest parts of the bed are naturally chosen for passage; in these gorges there is a great rush from sides to centre, with a furious boiling of the foul stream, tossing up dirty waves, from which there would be scanty hope of escape. On one precipice two ends of Kaðlar (cables), here inch ropes, knotted to one cross-piece, and passed over a second, are made fast under piles of rough stone: on the farther side the cords are roven with a round turn over the cross-piece, and are kept clear of the rock by a wooden bar, battened and rag-garnished, to prevent slipping and chafing. The Kláfur, or cage, is a lidless box, a stool, whose upturned legs are provided with pulleys; it is, in fact, the “cradle” which once crossed the chasm, 65 feet wide, between the Heights and the Holm of Noss in the Shetland Isles. The passenger, sitting or standing, is towed across by one of the two guys, fastened fore and aft. The passage takes about half a minute; you descend the sag with a little run, and are slowly hauled up the other section of the arc. Wire might be an improvement, but it would certainly be rejected as liable to cut the pulleys. Meanwhile, the guy is always snapping and wanting “splicing;” so, að fára í Kláfi, is by no means pleasant to the nervous man, who looks down upon

I need hardly observe that the “cradle” is a form still ruder than the rudest Andine or Himalayan swinging-bridge, which gave a hint—for “travelling teaches”—to the civilised suspension.

We wasted four hours at this river, the chief delay being caused by the horses. The caravan then gathered at Eyríkstaðir, the large farm of Hr Jón Janssen. Whilst the nags were being shod, we drank “blanda,” milk mixed with water, the best procurable remedy for thirst. Inquiring about the stage ahead, we were told that it would take four, six, eight, or ten “tíma” (times), not to be confounded with “Klukku-stundir.” As the student Thorsteinn had left us, we here engaged for the day’s march the owner’s brother, Hr Gunnlaugr Janssen, who also gave complete satisfaction.

The afternoon had passed away before we began to clamber up the high eastern bank of the Jökuldalsheiði: presently we came upon a lake country, a scatter of tarns large and small. The map shows half-a-dozen, but not the largest, Ánavatn. Between them lie various hill-ranges, the Western Knefill and Sval-barð (the cool hill-edge), which yesterday appeared to us in epauletted form: to the west lay a Thríhyrningr, with triple peak on a meridian concealing the broad shoulders of Herðubreið. Where hill and water were not, sand, here chocolate-coloured, there bright yellow, gave unusual opportunities for a gallop, especially where the ground was free from dwarf-willow, deep earth-cracks, and streams whose black arenaceous beds bent and swayed under the horses’ weight. We were shown our line far ahead, marked by five bits of snow, which, disposed upon a hill-side, passably imitated the human face: it veiled and unveiled itself like a plain coquette.

On such a formation we expected a devious path hard to find; but we were bitterly disappointed by the absence of game, where heads in thousands have formerly been seen. Here and there lingered a duck or a teal, a snipe or snippet, too wild to approach; the Arctic tern (Sterna Arctica, Preyer) was not coy, but a solitary skua (Lestris Thuliaca? Pr.), that had gone a-fishing, kept well out of our reach. A sharp canter from No. 2 lake, Gripdeilir,[154] “Certamen ovium,” according to our literary guides, soon placed us at the lakelet and farmlet of Vetur-hús—winter-house, as opposed to Setr. It is neutral ground between the swamps, which, probably, are under water every spring, and the dry sands of the old sea-shore farther west. The owner, Páll Vigfússon, owns a boat for char-fishing, and a fine flock of goat-like sheep: his kailyard is well manured, to judge from the quantity of soft and brittle puffs (Icel. Gorkúla; Agaricus fomentarius), which here take the place of mushrooms.[155] The farm-box was a burrow worthy of St Kilda or Rona in the olden day, entered by a hall like a mine-gallery; the Baðstofa was fouler than the forecastle of a Greek brig; and the three bunks which serve as dinner seats, as well as beds, gave one the shudders. The only caloric was the natural form, which sheep have learned to utilise; and the only chimney was a hole in the kitchen roof. Yet the farm contained provision-room, smithy, workshop, byre, and sheep-house. It was my fate to sleep there on the return march, but I persuaded the good Paudl to put me in a hay-garret. After all, we must remember Sir James Simpson’s description of the Barvas district in the Isle of Lewis, where, during the last generation, neither window nor chimney, chair, table, nor metal vessel existed. What a national scandal was this barbarism!

After Vetur-hús we passed sundry farms, and we drank at every place, as if on the banks of the Congo. Men, boys, and maidens came out to be kissed by the two young guides, but we had only once reason to envy their island-privilege. Beyond the Ánavatn lay the Sænaut lakelet, once upon a time haunted by the fabled sea-cow; another pond was passed on the left, whilst swampy ground extended far to the right. We then ascended a ridge of sand scattered over with basaltic fragments, and saw the Grjótgarðr, or stone-fence. It has a singular appearance, a line of blocks, some of them ten feet square, roughly piled upon one another, and extending half an English mile across the neck of ground. The cubical masses appear like the produce of some quarry. The general look suggests the line of rocks subtending the Grind of the Navir: I can only conjecture that icebergs here meeting and grounding, have deposited their burdens of huge boulder-rocks. The legend is that two Trolls, one a sea-giant and the other a Jökull-giant, agreed to divide their domains; the former started from the north, the latter from the south; they built this wall at the place where they shook hands, and they lived in peace—I was not told whether they married—ever afterwards.

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.

Resuming our road, we presently began the ascent which had been pointed out to us in the afternoon; crossed a snow-wreath and a snow-patched divide, unusually hard work, and frequently felt the horses sinking fetlock deep in the loose sand. We then descended the misty sides into Heljadalr, and shivered in “Hellsdale.” A broad and open way crosses this “Barahút,” whose unpleasant title is derived from the tremendous torrents of spring-tide, the deep snows of winter, and the furious dust-storms of the dry season. Leaving the Heljadalsfjall, we entered the cold plain of Geitirssandr; the surface was of water-rolled stones and pebbles, the base of black sand, whilst light-yellow Palagonite appeared in the courses of the dry fiumaras. In places there were crater-like heaps of dust from ten to a hundred feet high, the smaller features perfectly conical, and set off by bars and patches of white sand, lime, potash, and other produce of the sea. Evidently the formation is subaqueous, as well as volcanic,[156] and I subsequently found reason to believe that the ancient sea-beach begins west, and upon the parallel, of the Jökulsá bridge, and runs up to the north-western base of Snæfell, the mountain, not the Jökull. The whole tract reminds one of what is said anent the Barony of Bunen: it has neither wood, water, nor earth sufficient to hang, to drown, or to bury a man.

Walking our fagged horses down the yielding slopes, we presently found the ground improve. A stream flowed to our left; a lakelet lay on the right, and thin grass, well covered with sheep, made the scene an oasis. We again put on steam, and shortly after three A.M. we made the Möðrudalr farm. The church was shut, but the buxom housekeeper took compassion upon our weary plight; basins were brought to relieve eyes red with flinty dust, and skins painful with prickly heat; bowls of hot coffee comforted the inner man, and once more we revelled in the luxury of sheeted beds.

August 5.

The farm of Galiums (etymologically “Madder”), girt by its desert of sand and stone in all directions but the west, where the Western Jökulsá flows at a distance of six indirect miles, is one of the best, if not the best, in Iceland. It is not known in the Landnámabók,[157] which tells us that this quadrant was the last occupied. The white-headed owner, Sigurður Jónsson, has often been offered his own price for it, but to no purpose. He brings out the map and enlightens us upon the features of the wilderness on the other side of the river. He denies the existence of the mountain “Dýngjufjöll hin nyðr Trölladýngjur,” immediately south of Bláfjall; and I afterwards found that he was right. Speaking of Baring-Gould’s project to attack the Sprengisandur from Möðrudalr, he said that a traveller would be taking the wrong road; the usual line is from Bárðardalr on the Skjálfjandifljót to the Thjórsá headwaters: moreover, that this Sahara is never passed till early July. He denied that the snows on Bláfjall give any rule for crossing the cap of the Iceland dome, of which one stage is a jornada of twenty-four hours, waterless and grainless. He confirmed my idea that the Ódáða Hraun is bounded east as well as west by the sandy region; and he shrugged his shoulders when I consulted him about ascending the local sundial, Herðubreið,[158] distant some sixteen miles. The “Broad-shouldered” stood before us in all his majesty, cabochon-shaped, or, as the Syrians say, a “Khatím” (seal-ring), girt by perpendicular walls, and projecting a tall point between the double glacier, here of frosted, there of polished silver, as the surface caught the rays of the noontide sun. It is not my fault if the sketch be very unlike Henderson’s “Herdubreid, seen from Mödrudal.”