Lines only are used, and the fish caught are chiefly cod and ling. Part are salted and dried for exportation, part dried for home use without salt and left at the stations to be fetched at midsummer, when many people resort to the annual fair for the sale of produce, or rather the exchange of commodities. The deep sea fishing is not prosecuted by the Icelanders, but is chiefly carried on by the Norwegians, French, and Dutch. All journeys are performed on horseback.
These statements will enable the reader to form an idea of the ongoings of daily life in the numerous farms, which are scattered over the habitable belt of pasture-land which nearly surrounds the island.
Through Zöga, we had an interview with the farmer, and arranged for the grazing of the ponies on the farm of Laugervalla. A girl brought out a large basin of skier, together with a plentiful supply of milk and cream to us.
We looked wistfully to the south-east in the direction of Hekla which lay about 35 miles distant, but at this time it was quite hid by an impenetrable veil of clouds resting on the horizon line. As we were about half-way from Thingvalla to the Geysers, we mounted the relay horses, and now it was the turn of those that brought us thither to be driven before us.
In Iceland, at whatever pace the ponies run, they are supposed to be resting, when they carry no load.
Our course lay over some wet marshy land—from which we gathered heather, moss, cotton-grass, and buck-bean—across a shallow river brawling over white and slaty coloured stones on its way to the lake; and then higher up, along the sides of the green hill-range which trends in the direction of the Geysers. Here dwarf-birches and willows grew in profusion; while the broken cakes of black lava, which projected from among them, served by contrast to add freshness to the greenth of the foliage, and yet more brilliance to the vari-coloured flowers which bloomed in beauty on every side. We saw innumerable coveys of ptarmigan on the hill-sides, many plovers, snipe, and a few snow-birds. All were very tame, flitted quite near and seemed to wonder at our intruding on their amenities. We did not abuse their confidence, but admiringly allowed them to go, as they came, in peace.
Coming to a part where the soil was of soft earth and turf, we found it, for miles, worn by the ponies into very narrow tracks, averaging two feet in depth. There were from six to twelve of these tracks, with thin grassy ledges between them, lying close together nearly parallel and every little way running into each other; where the ground sloped, they were dry; and, where it was level or low, they were full of mud or water. Riding along at a hard trot, we required to be ever on the alert, and to maintain an incessant motion of the feet, in order to avoid collision with the irregular surface and the projecting stones on either side of us. Tempted by a wild flower of unusual beauty, I dismounted, but was astonished to find that the deep tracks were so narrow that I could not walk in them, there not being width for my one foot to pass the other: yet a horse finds no difficulty in trotting along; actually, however paradoxical it may seem, requiring less space for its feet than a man.
We saw numerous farms as we passed along, each consisting of a group of irregular hillocks, with the windows hid deep in the grassy turf like port-holes, and generally all turned inwards so as to be sheltered from the roaring blasts of winter. We met ponies trudging along conveying lambs from one farm to another. It was curious to see the little animals looking out of square crate-like boxes, made of spars of wood, slung in the manner of panniers on a donkey, and to hear them bleat: reminding one of the old nursery rhyme “young lambs to sell!”
They could not be otherwise transported over lava tracks and across the rivers which separate one valley from another. We saw several small caravans or companies of Icelanders on the way. They had the same sort of boxes as our baggage ponies, and the same quaint horse gear, down to the rough hair cords tied and fastened by passing a sheep’s knee-bone through a loop to prevent knots from slipping. They had tents and provisions; one of the ponies carried a leather bottle probably filled with skier. It was a calf’s skin sewed up, with the head and legs left on it, so that it presented a quaint old world look; and recalled pictures in the catacombs of Egypt. Notwithstanding the difference of climate, when in contact with the people, one is here, at every point, reminded of the East and carried back to patriarchal times. We touched our hats in returning the salutations of those we met, although we did not know the exact import of what was said to us on such occasions till afterwards, when Dr. Mackinlay told me that an Icelander when he meets a stranger invariably doffs his bonnet and accosts him with the phrase “Saellar verith thér!”—“Happy may you be!” or occasionally with one still more expressive, “Guts fride!”—“God’s peace be with you!” On saying good-bye, he uncovers again, and repeats the first phrase with a slight inversion, “Verith thér saellar!”—“Be ye happy!”