Volcanic Origin of the Island.—The Klofa Jökul.—Lava-streams.—The Burning Mountains of Krisuvik.—The Mud-caldrons of Reykjahlid.—The Tungo-hver at Reykholt.—The Great Geysir.—The Strokkr.—Crystal Pools.—The Almannagja.—The Surts-hellir.—Beautiful Ice-cave.—The Gotha Foss.—The Detti Foss.—Climate.—Vegetation.—Cattle.—Barbarous Mode of Sheep-shearing.—Reindeer.—Polar Bears.—Birds.—The Eider-duck.—Videy.—Vigr.—The Wild Swan.—The Raven.—The Jerfalcon.—The Giant auk, or Geirfugl.—Fish.—Fishing Season.—The White Shark.—Mineral Kingdom.—Sulphur.—Peat.—Drift-wood.
Iceland might as well be called Fireland, for all its 40,000 square miles have originally been upheaved from the depths of the waters by volcanic power. First, at some immeasurably distant period of the world’s history, the small nucleus of the future island began to struggle into existence against the superincumbent weight of the ocean; then, in the course of ages, cone rose after cone, crater was formed after crater, eruption followed on eruption, and lava-stream on lava-stream, until finally the Iceland of the present day was piled up with her gigantic “jökuls,” or ice-mountains, and her vast promontories, stretching like huge buttresses far out into the sea.
In winter, when an almost perpetual night covers the wastes of this fire-born land, and the waves of a stormy ocean thunder against its shores, imagination can hardly picture a more desolate scene; but in summer the rugged nature of Iceland invests itself with many a charm. Then the eye reposes with delight on green valleys and crystal lakes, on the purple hills or snow-capped mountains rising in Alpine grandeur above the distant horizon, and the stranger might almost be tempted to exclaim with her patriotic sons, “Iceland is the best land under the sun.” That it is one of the most interesting—through its history, its inhabitants, and, above all, its natural curiosities—no one can doubt. It has all that can please and fascinate the poet, the artist, the geologist, or the historian; the prosaic utilitarian alone, accustomed to value a country merely by its productions, might turn with some contempt from a land without corn, without forests, without mineral riches, and covered for about two-thirds of its surface with bogs, lava-wastes, and glaciers.
The curse of sterility rests chiefly on the south-eastern and central parts of the island. Here nothing is to be seen but deserts of volcanic stone or immense ice-fields, the largest of which—the Klofa Jökul—alone extends over more than 4000 square miles. The interior of this vast region of névè and glacier is totally unknown. The highest peaks, the most dreadful volcanoes of the island, rise on the southern and south-western borders of this hitherto inaccessible waste; the Oraefa looking down from a height of 6000 feet upon all its rivals—the Skaptar, a name of dreadful significance in the annals of Iceland, and farther on, like the advanced guards of this host of slumbering fires, the Katla, the Myrdal, the Eyjafjalla, and the Hecla, the most renowned, though not the most terrible, of all the volcanoes of Iceland.
As the ice-fields of this northern island far surpass in magnitude those of the Alps, so also the lava-streams of Ætna or Vesuvius are insignificant when compared with the enormous masses of molten stone which at various periods have issued from the craters of Iceland. From Mount Skjaldebreith, on both sides of the lake of Thingvalla as far as Cape Reykjanes, the traveller sees an uninterrupted lava-field more than sixty miles long, and frequently from twelve to fifteen broad; and lava-streams of still more gigantic proportions exist in many other parts of the island, particularly in the interior. In general, these lava-streams have cooled down into the most fantastic forms imaginable. “It is hardly possible,” says Mr. Holland, “to give any idea of the general appearance of these once molten masses. Here a great crag has toppled over into some deep crevasse, there a huge mass has been upheaved above the fiery stream which has seethed and boiled around its base. Here is every shape and figure that sculpture could design or imagination picture, jumbled together in grotesque confusion, whilst everywhere myriads of horrid spikes and sharp shapeless irregularities bristle amidst them.”
By the eruptions of the Icelandic volcanoes many a fair meadow-land has been converted into a stony wilderness; but if the subterranean fires have frequently brought ruin and desolation over the island, they have also endowed it with many natural wonders.
In the “burning mountains” of Krisuvik, on the south-western coast, a whole hill-slope, with a deep narrow gorge at its foot, is covered with innumerable boiling springs and fumaroles, whose dense exhalations, spreading an intolerable stench, issue out of the earth with a hissing noise, and completely hide the view.
40. EFFIGY IN LAVA.
The Námar, or boiling mud-caldrons of Reykjahlid, situated among a range of mountains near the Myvatn (Gnat-Lake), in one of the most solitary spots in the north of the island, on the border of enormous lava-fields and of a vast unknown wilderness, exhibit volcanic power on a still more gigantic scale. There are no less than twelve of these seething pits, all filled with a disgusting thick slimy gray or black liquid, boiling or simmering with greater or less vehemence, and emitting dense volumes of steam strongly impregnated with sulphurous gases. Some sputter furiously, scattering their contents on every side, while in others the muddy soup appears too thick to boil, and after remaining quiescent for about half a minute, rises up a few inches in the centre of the basin, emits a puff of steam, and then subsides into its former state. The diameter of the largest of all the pits can not be less than fifteen feet; and it is a sort of mud Geysir, for at intervals a column of its black liquid contents, accompanied with a violent rush of steam, is thrown up to the height of six or eight feet. Professor Sartorius von Waltershausen, one of the few travellers who have visited this remarkable spot, says that the witches in Macbeth could not possibly have desired a more fitting place for the preparation of their infernal gruel than the mud-caldrons of Reykjahlid.