These glimpses of the recorded volcanic history of that one spot on which we now gaze, will convey to the reader some idea of the terrific visitations to which the islanders are exposed; even when there are not lava streams licking up rivers, pastures, farms, and people in their fiery floods, filling up whole valleys or rushing out into the sea and forming capes, hissing, the while, louder than the Midgard Serpent, which encompasses the whole earth.
White fleecy clouds come and go, at times muffling the summit of these jökuls, which are deemed the most picturesque in Iceland, if we except Snæfell on the west coast, and Oræfa on the south-east.
After passing the Westmanna islands and the east-most mouth of the Markarfliót river, which sweeps round the north and west sides of Eyafialla Jökul, the south-east mountain ranges, on which we have long been gazing, begin; the general character of the coast, north of this point, having been low like the Guldbringu syssel. This district has been rendered classic ground, as the scene of Njal’s Saga,[[29]] and we only wish it were permitted us to land and visit Bergthorsknoll and Lithend, to cross the rivers, scamper over the plains, or scale the Three-corner mountain. It is now clear, and one can take in the general character of the whole district at a glance.
The colour of the sea now assumed a light green aspect, broken here and there by white crested waves. Snow patches lay on the rugged purple hills; these, again, were touched with lines of intense fiery gold, actually excandescent. Sea-birds flitted past like white gleams; and, altogether, the scene, flooded with golden light, presented a magnificent study of colour. I made jottings of the outlines, tints, and atmospheric effects, for a water colour drawing; to be painted “some day”—that unattainable period when so many things are to be done, but which ever recedes from us like the horizon line; luring us on and on, and cheating us from day to day with a vague phantom shadow of
“Something evermore about to be.”
The Skogar-foss—force or waterfall—yonder, falling sheer over the rock cliffs into the sea, gently sways to and fro in the wind. It falls from so great a height that it appears to lose itself in vapour or dust, like the Staubach. There is an old tradition that an early colonist—Thrasi—before dying, buried a chest of gold and jewels in the deep rock-basin into which this magnificent sheet of water tumbles.[[30]]
Sun-gleams rest on the snow-mountains and play on the ice of the glaciers. These are very numerous near the coast, the ice being generally of a light whity-green colour and corrugated in wavy lines.
As the weather is clear and bright, we see the coast near Portland to more advantage than on our first approach to the island. The wild fantastic promontories, rock-islets, and needle shaped drongs—serrated, peaked and hummocky—resemble the ruins of old castles and cathedrals. The likeness of one of them to Iona, already remarked upon, is now even still more apparent. Behind these rocks is a low range of hills, beyond which rise the jökuls.
The summits of these mountains are white with perpetual snow. The shoulders shade downwards into pale green ice, which terminates abruptly at the edge of a dark rugged precipitous line of rock that descends sheer into the valley behind the low range of hills next the sea. The precipice looked as if the sides of the mountains had, in some way, been sliced down, say from a third of their height, leaving the snowy summits and icy shoulders untouched.