The Pastor’s honest ruddy face, light flaxen hair, and unassuming manner; his rosy cheeked children, the monthly roses in the window-sill, and the library—all go to form a pleasing picture in the Walhalla of memory. He afterwards accompanied us to call for Rector Jonson. The Rector is a good specimen of the genus homo; tall and burly, while his active mind is vigorous, inquisitive, and accomplished. He showed us over various rooms, where the different branches are taught, some of them containing cabinets of geological and zoological specimens. The school is supported by government; and about sixty select young men intended for the church and other learned professions here receive a free education; a few of them only go to Copenhagen yet further to complete their studies.
Although the island contains 64,603 inhabitants, this, as we have said, is the only Academy or College; and there is not a single juvenile school.
The population is so widely scattered that schools would be quite impracticable; for the six thousand farms which the island contains, on the habitable coast belt which surrounds the central deserts, are often separated from each other by many dreary miles of lava wastes and rapid rivers dangerous to ford.
Parents, however, all teach their children to read and write by the fireside on the long winter evenings, as they themselves were taught; and the people are thus home educated from generation to generation, and trained to habits of intellectual activity from their youth. Thus, as a mass, the Icelanders are without doubt the best educated people in the world.
For six centuries the Icelanders have evidenced their love of literature by writing and preserving old Sagas and Eddas;—by producing original works on mythology, law, topography, archaeology, &c.—several of these at once the earliest and best of their kind in Europe; and by executing many admirable translations from the classics.
Such literary labours have often been carried on by priests in remote districts, who subsist on a miserable pittance, and dwell in what we would consider mere hovels,—men who are obliged to work, at outdoor manual labour, the same as any of their neighbour peasants and parishoners, in order to keep the wolf from the door. Henderson found Thorláksson, the translator of “Paradise Lost,” busy making hay. His living only yielded him £7 per annum, and the one room in which he slept and wrote was only eight feet long by six broad. This translation was not printed till after his death. Verily good work lovingly done is its own reward. These men had little else to cheer them on.
We next visited the Cathedral, which stands in the back part of the town, with an open square space in front of it, and a little fresh water lake—inland—to the left. It is a modern edifice, built of brick, plastered. At the entrance we were joined by our friend Professor Chadbourne. The interior is very neatly fitted up with pews, has galleries, organ, &c.; and can accommodate three or four hundred people.
An oil painting above the communion table represents the resurrection; but the only object of artistic interest is a white marble baptismal font, carved and presented to the Cathedral by Thorwaldsen, whose father was an Icelander. It is a low square obelisk. The basin on the top is surrounded with a symbolical wreath of passion-flowers and roses, delicately carved in high relief out of the white marble. On the front is represented, also in relief, the baptism of our Saviour by St. John; on the left side, the Madonna and Child, with John the Baptist as an infant standing at her knee; on the right, Christ blessing little children; while at the back, next the altar, are three cherubs, and underneath them is inscribed the following legend: “Opus haec Romae fecit, et Islandiae, terrae sibi gentiliacae, pietatis causâ, donavit Albertus Thorvaldsen, anno MDCCCXXVII.” It is a chaste and beautiful work of art.
In the vestry the Rev. Olaf Pálsson opened several large chests, and shewed us numerous vestments belonging to the bishop and priests; one of these with gorgeous embroideries had been sent here to the bishop by Pope Julius II. in the beginning of the sixteenth century. The cloth was purple velvet, embroidered and stiff with brocade of gold.
Above the church, immediately under the sloping roof, an apartment runs the whole length of the building. In it is deposited the free public library of Reykjavik, which consists of more than 6000 volumes in Icelandic, Danish, Latin, French, English, German, and various other languages. A copy of every book published at Copenhagen is sent here by government, and from time to time it receives numerous presentations from foreigners. The ancient original Icelandic MSS. have all been removed to Denmark, so that here there is now nothing very old to be seen, except what has been reprinted. With great interest we turned over the leaves of a copy of Snorre Sturleson’s “Heimskringla,” and the “Landnáma Bok,” shewn us by the librarian and learned scholar Mr. Jón Arnason.