VARI-COLOURED HILLS.
Here we halted, and I made a slight sketch of a portion of the range. As a mere study of light and shade, to say nothing of other striking features, the scene would have made a magnificent photograph.
Starting, we rode on, till we reached the end of the cinder range, doubled the outmost spur, and, after ascending for sometime, came in sight of gently sloping hills. Their flowing outlines were covered with verdure to the very top, and, from our path, opened up here and there into little green bosky valleys “where the blae-berries grow.” Before us, in a vast level plain which stretched away from the roots of the hills near to the horizon, lay the Laugervatn; and further to the south, linked by a river, the Apavatn, a lake much larger; while several other rivers meandered in gleaming serpentine courses over the vast green prairie-like meadow.
On the brink of the Laugervatn are several hot springs from which it takes its name. We observed columns of white steam rising from them on the brink next us, just below the farm of Laugervalla; and also across on the other side of the lake. Approaching the farm, we halted, outside the tun, to lunch, rest for an hour and let the horses graze. It presented the usual appearance of Icelandic farms; not unlike an irregular group of potato-pits or tumuli. The roofs were of the same colour as the plain, and the whole shut in from the surrounding pasture land by a rude four-foot wall, also covered on the top with green turf. The tun, or few acres thus enclosed, receives a top-dressing of manure and bears a luxuriant crop of hay; the rest is left in a state of nature, and reaped without sowing. The hay, when stacked, is protected from the rain by thin slices or strips of turf from 6 to 10 feet long. Nearly all Icelandic farming has reference to the rearing of stock—the summer being too short for grain to reach maturity.
A few words, here, while we rest, as to Icelandic Farms in general.
Most farms have a weaving room, a smithy, a milk room, a sitting room—used also for eating and sleeping in—called stofa; a guest-chamber, cattle-houses, which are sometimes placed immediately under the sleeping-room but more frequently detached, and a kitchen; which last my friend Dr. Mackinlay neatly describes as often “a dingy dark place, with a peat fire on a lava block, and a hole in the roof to let in light and let out smoke.” The turf is inferior; wood is too scarce and valuable to be much used for fuel. Coal costs £5 per ton, is retailed in small packages at about 2d. per pound, and is only used in smithies. When turf is not available, the Icelanders, like the Arabs, burn dried cows’ dung; and on the coast, where even that is scarce, they use the dried carcases of sea-fowl. Why do they not burn dried sea-weed, which is extensively used for fuel in the Channel Islands?
Their daily food is taken cold, and consists chiefly of raw dried stock-fish and skier. The latter dish is simply milk allowed to become acid and coagulate, and then hung up in a bag till the whey runs off. In this form it is both nutritive and wholesome, being more easily digested than sweet milk; while, to those who take to it, it is light, palatable and delightfully cooling. Milk is prepared in this way by the Shetlanders, who in the first stage call it “run milk,” and when made into skier “hung milk.” The same preparation is made use of by the Arabs, and it is also the chief diet of the Kaffirs and Bechuanas at the Cape. Our idea that milk is useless or hurtful when soured is merely an ignorant prejudice. Those who depend for their subsistence chiefly on milk diet, and have the largest experience, prefer to use it sour, and medical authority endorses their choice. In Icelandic farms hard black rye bread is at times produced as a luxury; butter is always cured without salt, and used rancid, however, after it reaches a certain mild stage it gets no worse; meat is dried at certain seasons of the year for occasional use, and the rivers abound in excellent fish. The chief use to which the kitchen fire is put, is to prepare a cup of warm coffee. Snaps, sugar candy, coffee, grain, and other foreign commodities, they obtain at the factories.
The scarcity of fuel tempts people to crowd together for heat; sometimes 15 or 16 people in one small sleeping apartment, and that often placed over another where cattle are kept. The state of such an atmosphere may be imagined, while many dirty habits and the frequent recourse to stimulants are thus accounted for. Nor will any one wonder much, although there were no other causes, that, in one district of the south, 75 per cent of all the children born die before they complete their twelfth month.
As for indoor occupations, the farmers, as in colonial outposts, of necessity are Jacks-of-all-trades. They forge scythes, make saddles and bridles, make their simple household furniture, horse-shoe nails, and even build or repair their own houses. Females do the tailoring, but men make their own shoes and take their turn at the spinning wheel, the knitting needles, and the loom. All work together by lamplight, while some one reads aloud some old-world story. The out-door occupations are both fishing and farming. The ver-tima, or fishing season, lasts from February till May, and is chiefly carried on, on the south-west coast, which, from thus becoming a source of wealth, is called Guld-bringu—or the gold bringing—Sysla. At the beginning of the season, men move down to the fishing stations. The boats have each from 4 to 10 oars, and crews of from 10 to 20 men.