A region, corresponding in character to the desert mountain-mass we have been describing, stretches westward from it to the extremity of the ridge of the Snaefield Syssel, and terminates in the remarkable cone of Snaefield Jokul.
The island coasts exhibit a singularly broken outline, and the deep lochs or fiords, like those of Norway, only less romantic, dip into the interior for many miles, and throw off numerous branches. These fiords are wild and gloomy; dark, still inlets, with precipices on either side, a thousand feet in height, and the silence unbroken, save by the occasional wash of the waters, or the scream of a solitary ocean-bird. Inland, however, they assume a gentler character: they end in long narrow valleys, watered by pleasant streams, and bright with pasture. In these bits of Arcadia the inhabitants have built their towns and villages.
In the valleys on the north coast, which are adorned by clumps of willow and juniper, the soil is comparatively fertile; but the most genial scenery is found on the east, where, in some places, the birch-trees reach a height of twenty feet, and are of sufficient size to be used in house-building. The fuel used by the Icelanders is the drift-wood which the Gulf Stream brings from Mexico, the Carolinas, Virginia, and the River St. Lawrence.
In the south of the island the mean temperature is about 39°; in the central districts, 36°; in the north it rarely rises above 32°, or freezing-point. Thunder-storms, though rare in high latitudes, are not uncommon in Iceland; a circumstance which is due, no doubt, to the atmospheric disturbances caused by the volcanic phenomena. Hurricanes are frequent, and the days are few when the island is free from sea-mists. At the northern end the sun is always above the horizon in the middle of summer, and under it in the middle of winter; but absolute darkness does not prevail.
One of the most interesting places in Iceland is Thingvalla, where of old the “Althing,” or supreme parliament, was wont to hold its annual assemblies, under the “Logmathurman,” or president of the republic.
It is nothing more than a broad plain on the bank of the River Oxerá, near the point where the swift waters, after forming a noble cascade, sweep into the Lake of Thingvalla. Only a plain; but the scenery around it is indescribably grand and solemn. On either side lies a barren plateau, above which rises a range of snowy mountains, and from the plateaus the plain is cut off by deep chasms,—that of Almanna Gja on the east, and the Hrafna Gja on the west. It measures eight miles in breadth, and its surface is covered by a network of innumerable fissures and crevices of great depth and breadth. At the foot of the plain lies a lake, about thirty miles in circumference, in the centre of which two small crater-islands, the result of some ancient eruption, are situated. The mountains on its south bank have a romantic aspect, and that their volcanic fires are not extinct is shown by the clouds of vapour evolved from the hot springs that pour down their rugged sides. The actual meeting-place of the Althing was an irregular oval area, about two hundred feet by fifty, almost entirely surrounded by a crevice so broad and deep as to be impassable, except where a narrow causeway connected it with the adjacent plain, and permitted access to its interior. At one other point, indeed, the encircling chasm is so narrow that it may possibly be cleared at a leap; and the story runs that one Flosi, when hotly pursued by his enemies, did in this way escape them; but as falling an inch short would mean sure death in the green waters below, the chasm may be regarded as a tolerably sure barrier against intruders.
The ancient capital of the island was Skalholt, where, in the eleventh century, was founded the first school; an episcopal seat; the birthplace of a long line of Norse worthies, Islief the chronicler, Gissur the linguist, and Finnur Johnson the historian. But its glories have passed away; its noble cathedral has ceased to exist; and three or four cottages alone perpetuate the name of the once flourishing city.
The present capital is Reikiavik, to which, in 1797, were transferred the united bishoprics of Stoolum and Skalholt. It consists of a collection of wooden sheds, one story high, rising here and there into a gable end of greater pretensions, extending along a tract of dreary lava, and flanked at either end by a suburb of turf huts. On every side of it stretches a dreary lava-plain, and the gloom of the scorched and ghastly landscape is unrelieved by tree or bush. The white mountains are too distant to serve as a background to the buildings, but before the door of each merchant’s house, facing the sea, streams a bright little pennon; and as the traveller paces the silent streets, whose dust no carriage-wheel has ever desecrated, the rows of flower-pots peeping out of the windows, between white muslin curtains, at once convince him that, notwithstanding their unostentatious appearance, within each dwelling reign “the elegance and comfort of a woman-tended home.”
The prosperity of Reikiavik is chiefly due to its excellent harbour, and to the fish-banks in its neighbourhood, which supply it with an important commercial staple. In the summer and early autumn it is much visited by tourists, who start from thence to admire the wonders of Hekla, Skapta, and the Geysers; but its busiest time is in July, when the annual fair draws thither a crowd of fisher-folk and peasants. From a distance of forty and fifty leagues they come, with long trains of pack-horses, their stock-fish slung loose across the animals’ backs, and their other wares packed closely in boxes or bags of reindeer-skin.
