Of all its past glories, Skalholt has retained nothing but its name. The school and the bishopric have been removed, the old church has disappeared, and been replaced by a small wooden building, in which divine service is held once a month; three cottages contain all the inhabitants of the once celebrated city, and the extensive churchyard is the only memorial of its former importance. Close by are the ruins of the old school-house, and on the spot where the bishop resided a peasant has erected his miserable hovel.
But the ever-changing tide of human affairs has not bereft the now lonely place of its natural charms, for the meadow-lands of Skalholt are beautifully imbedded in an undulating range of hills, overlooking the junction of the Bruara and Huita, and backed by a magnificent theatre of mountains, among which Hecla and the Eyjafialla are the most prominent.
Reykjavik, the present capital of the island, has risen into importance at the expense both of Skalholt and Thingvalla. At the beginning of the present century the courts of justice were transferred from the ancient seat of legislature to the new metropolis, and in 1797 the bishoprics of Hoolum and Skalholt, united into one, had their seats likewise transferred to Reykjavik. The ancient school of Skalholt, after having first migrated to Bessestadt, has also been obliged to follow the centralizing tendency, so powerful in our times, and now contributes to the rising fortunes of the small sea-port town.
But in spite of all these accessions, the first aspect of Reykjavik by no means corresponds to our ideas of a capital. “The town,” says Lord Dufferin, “consists of a collection of wooden sheds, one story high—rising here and there into a gable end of greater pretensions—built along the lava-track, and flanked at either end by a suburb of turf huts. On every side of it extends a desolate plain of lava that once must have boiled up red-hot from some distant gateway of hell, and fallen hissing into the sea. No tree or bush relieves the dreariness of the landscape, and the mountains are too distant to serve as a background to the buildings; but before the door of each merchant’s house facing the sea there flies a gay little pennon; and as you walk along the silent streets, whose dust no carriage-wheel has ever desecrated, the rows of flower-pots that peep out of the windows, between curtains of white muslin, at once convince you that, notwithstanding their unpretending appearance, within each dwelling reign the elegance and comfort of a woman-tended home.”
55. GOVERNOR’S RESIDENCE, REYKJAVIK.
Twenty years since, Reykjavik was no better than a wretched fishing-village, now it already numbers 1400 inhabitants, and free-trade promises it a still greater increase for the future. It owes its prosperity chiefly to its excellent port, and to the abundance of fish-banks in its neighborhood, which have induced the Danish merchants to make it their principal settlement. Most of them, however, merely visit it in summer like birds of passage, arriving in May with small cargoes of foreign goods, and leaving it again in August, after having disposed of their wares. Thus Reykjavik must be lonely and dreary enough in winter, when no trade animates its port, and no traveller stays at its solitary inn; but the joy of the inhabitants is all the greater when the return of spring re-opens their intercourse with the rest of the world, and the delight may be imagined with which they hail the first ship that brings them the long-expected news from Europe, and perhaps some wealthy tourist, eager to admire the wonders of the Geysirs.
The most busy time of the town is, however, the beginning of July, when the annual fair attracts a great number of fishermen and peasants within its walls. From a distance of forty and fifty leagues around, they come with long trains of pack-horses; their stock-fish slung freely across the animals’ backs, their more damageable articles close pressed and packed in boxes or skin bags.
The greater part of the trade in this and other small sea-ports—such as Akreyri, Hafnafjord, Eyrarbacki, Berufjord, Vapnafjord, Isafjord, Grafaros, Budenstadt, which, taken all together, do not equal Reykjavik in traffic and population—is carried on by barter.[2]
Sometimes the Icelander desires to be paid in specie for part of his produce, but then he is obliged to bargain for a long time with the merchant, who of course derives a double profit by an exchange of goods, and is loth to part with his hard cash. The dollars thus acquired are either melted down, and worked into silver massive girdles, which in point of execution as well as design are said, on good authority,[3] to be equal to any thing of the kind fashioned by English jewellers, or else deposited in a strong-box, as taxes and wages are all paid in produce, and no Icelander ever thinks of investing his money in stocks, shares, or debentures.