64. HOME OF SEA-BIRDS.
At a later period in the season they go and get the young birds, and then they have often desperate battles with the old ones, who will not give up fighting for their offspring till their necks are broken, or their brains knocked out with a club. Where the cliffs are not accessible from the top, they go round the bottom in boats, and show a wonderful agility and daring in scaling the most terrible precipices.
In summer they get the eggs and the fresh meat of the young birds, which they also salt for the winter. The feathers form their chief article of export, besides dried and salted codfish, and with these they procure their few necessaries and luxuries, consisting principally of clothing, tobacco and snuff, spirits, fish-hooks and lines, and salt. As there is no peat on these islands, nor dried fish-bones in sufficient quantity, they also make use of the tough old sea-birds as fuel. For this purpose they split them open, and dry them on the rocks.
The Westmans form a separate Syssel, or county, and they have a church, and usually two clergymen. Their church was rebuilt of stone, at the expense of the Danish Government, in 1774, and is said to be one of the best in Iceland. Unfortunately the two clergymen to whom the spiritual care of the islanders is confided seem to have but a very indifferent flock, for their neighbors on the mainland give rather a bad character to the inhabitants of Heimaey, describing them as great sluggards and drunkards.
The population, which was formerly more considerable, amounts to about 200 souls, but even this is more than might be expected from the dreadful mortality which reigns among the children. The eggs and the oily flesh of sea-birds furnish a miserable food for infants, particularly when weaned, as is here customary, at a very early age; but the poor islanders have nothing else to give them, except some fish, and a very insufficient quantity of cow’s or sheep’s milk. This unhealthy diet, along with the boisterous air, gives rise to an incurable infantile disease, called Ginklofi (tetanus). Its first symptoms are squinting and rolling of the eyes, the muscles of the back are seized with incipient cramps and become stiff. After a day or two lock-jaw takes place, the back is bent like a bow, either backward or forward. The lock-jaw prevents swallowing, and the cramps become more frequent and prolonged until death closes the scene. The same disease is said to decimate the children on St. Kilda in consequence of a similar mode of life.
The only means of preserving the infants of Heimaey from the Ginklofi, is to send them as soon as possible to the mainland to be reared, and thus a long continuance of bad weather is a death-warrant to many.
Who would suppose that the Westman Islanders, doubly guarded by their poverty and almost inaccessible cliffs, could ever have become the prey of freebooters? and yet they have been twice attacked and pillaged, and well-nigh exterminated by sea-rovers.
I have already mentioned, in a previous chapter, that before the discovery of the banks of Newfoundland, the English cod-fishers used to resort in great numbers to the coasts of Iceland, where some of them—now and then—appeared also in the more questionable character of corsairs. One of these worthies, who, like Paul Clifford, or Captain Macheath, so effectually united the suaviter in modo with the fortiter in re, as to have merited the name of “Gentleman John,” came to the Westmans in 1614 and set the church on fire, after having previously removed the little that was worth taking. After this exploit he returned to Great Britain, but King James I. had him hung, and ordered the church ornaments which he had robbed to be restored to the poor islanders. It was, however, written in the book of fate that they were not to enjoy them long, for in 1627, a vessel of Algerine pirates, after plundering several places on the eastern and southern coasts of Iceland, fell like a thunderbolt on Heimaey. These miscreants, compared with whom John was a “gentleman” indeed, cut down every man who ventured to oppose them, plundered and burnt the new-built church, and every hovel of the place, and carried away about 400 prisoners—men, women, and children. One of the two clergymen of the island, Jon Torsteinson, was murdered at the time. This learned and pious man had translated the Psalms of David and the Book of Genesis into Icelandic verse, and is spoken of as the “martyr” in the history of the land. The other clergyman, Olaf Egilson, with his wife and children, and the rest of the prisoners, was sold into slavery in Algiers. The account of his sufferings and privations, which he wrote in the Icelandic language, was afterwards translated and published in Danish.
It was not until 1636, nine years after their capture, that the unfortunate Heimaeyers were released, and then only by being ransomed by the King of Denmark. Such was the misery they had endured from their barbarous taskmasters, that only thirty-seven of the whole number survived, and of these but thirteen lived to return to their native island.