I have a few words for my friends the geographers, who, in their anxiety to Anglicize geographical names, so completely change them that the natives of a country would not recognize their own rivers and mountains when once disguised in an English dress. The Icelandic is the only one of the old Scandinavian tongues that has the sound of th; and they have two different letters, one to represent th in thank, and the other the th as heard in this. The latter sound is heard in fiorth and in north[[3]]—different from our pronunciation of north; and as the letter representing this sound of th is a character that some resembles the letter d, we find the above words written and printed by the English as fiord and nord. With the Danes and Swedes, who have neither the sounds nor the letters, it is not to be wondered at that they use d or t for these sounds. I shall give the Icelandic names in their native spelling, as near as possible, with perhaps the exception of the name of the country,—which they write Island, but now with us is thoroughly Anglicized as Iceland. They pronounce it ees-land, the a in the last syllable rather broad. I see no particular objection to using y for j in jokull, as it has that sound; or in substituting i for the same letter in fjorth, Reykjavik, Eyjafjalla, and similar cases. I will, however, protest against an Icelandic Thane being turned into a Dane, without as much as saying, “By your leave, sir,” or ever asking him if he wished to change his allegiance.
If this chapter is dry and technical, it has at least the merit of brevity.
FOOTNOTES:
[3]. Icelandic; fiorð, norð.
CHAPTER VII
“And yet but lately there was seen e’en here,
The winter in a lovely dress appear.”
PHILLIPS.
ON a bright and beautiful morning, as my agreeable company of the day previous disappeared behind the walls of the Almannagjá, my small party turned towards the east, the bridle-path leading through a forest several miles in extent. Before getting into the thickest of the wood, we found the ground covered with immense rocks of lava, and look which way we would, except a few feet of the path directly before us, the country appeared quite impassable. It may excite a smile to talk of a forest, with the largest trees but six or seven feet high; but these patches of shrubbery dispersed over Iceland, are of great value to the people. They are composed principally of birch and willow. Though nothing but scraggy brush, it is used to make roofs to their houses, and much of it is burned into charcoal for their blacksmithing. I have seen one of their coalpits where they were burning charcoal, and a bushel basket would have nearly covered it. Attached to every farm-house is a “smithy,” where scythes, pitchforks, spades, horse-shoes, and other articles, are made. Every man is a blacksmith; and some travelers have asserted that the clergy are the best shoers of horses in the land. A Gretna Green blacksmith will answer in case of emergency for a clergyman; and Sir George Mackenzie, while traveling here, had his horse shod several times by Iceland priests. I have not yet had an opportunity of testing the skill of one of these clerical blacksmiths. They have, at least, a poetical license for practising the two trades; though perhaps they do not put the shoe on the horse as much as formerly, but