How oddly things sometimes turn up! We saw lying on the floor a box of “Brown and Polson’s Patent Corn Flour,” which at once suggested two very different, although not incongruous, trains of ideas; one, the contrast between the hurry and bustle of railway stations in Britain, where the corn flour is everywhere so extensively advertised, and the primitive locomotion of Iceland, in which not a single steam engine has been erected; and the other, associating the beautiful locality where the flour is made—near Paisley, at the foot of “the Braes of Gleniffer” celebrated in song by Tannahill, one of Scotland’s sweetest minstrels—with some of the loveliest scenes we had lately witnessed. For here, are we not in the land of Eddas and Sagas! and is not the Poet found singing wherever there are human hearts!
A gentleman told me, that having obtained permission, he had, that afternoon, caught seventy trout in the salmon river—three of them from his pony’s back; he had only to throw the fish over his head on the grass behind him, as fast as he could whip them up. He had seen a fisherman get 130 at one haul of the net. I saw the manager of the fishery, an active intelligent Scotchman, whom, from his appearance, one would take to be the mate of a vessel. He told me he had been three years in Iceland, and had some of his family here with him.
Mr. Bushby procured us several specimens of double refracting Iceland spar, obtained from the other side of the island. It polarizes light, and is valuable in various ways, both to science and the arts.
Mr. Murray and Mr. Cleghorn set out after dinner to visit the sulphur mines of Krisuvik; I, on the principle of letting well alone, preferred remaining at Reykjavik to undergoing the fresh fatigue of such a ride immediately after the Geyser journey. Three of us spent the evening, by invitation, at the Governor’s—the Count Von Trampe. I had a long conversation with him in German, during which he mentioned that all the old Saga and Edda MSS. had been removed to Copenhagen; and, in answer to sundry enquiries, told me that the “lang spiel” is the only Icelandic musical instrument now in use. It is something like a guitar or banjo, has four strings, and is played with a little bow. The airs now played are chiefly Danish dance music, and other foreign melodies.
The Icelanders, like the natives of Madagascar, have adopted the music of our “God save the Queen” as their national air. The words to which it is sung were composed in the beginning of the present century, by the late Biarni Thorarensen, Governor of the northern province of the island, when he was a student at the university of Copenhagen. The song is called “Islands Minni,” or the “Remembrance of Iceland;” and finely illustrates the intense love of country displayed by Icelanders, who, wherever they may travel or sojourn, always sooner or later return home though but to die; for to them, as their own proverb has it, “Iceland is the best land on which the sun shines.” We here give the words of this national song, which, calling up in foreign lands memories of sweet home, is no less to the Icelander, than is the Ranz de Vaches to the Swiss when far away from the one chalet he loves best in the world, perched, it may be, on the lofty mountain side, or lying peacefully in some green sunny valley.
MUSIC IN AN ICELANDIC HOME.
ISLANDS MINNI.
I.
Eldgamla Isafold,