“The clergymen having erected a pile of stones in memorial of their visit, they went towards an immense rifted rock at the higher extremity of the valley, and there discovered a cave, with an opening towards the north, and looking down the valley. There was another opening, like a window, into the cavern, commanding the east. The door was exactly square, and just opposite it was a big square stone. This, as well as the cave, was of sandstone. This was the only block of stone thereabouts. The clergymen found that they were half the height of the cave; so that it must have been from ten to twelve feet high. The window on the east was oblong, and they conjectured that it had been made by the wind and rain, though it had possibly been the work of former inhabitants of the cave. The explorers supposed that the slab opposite the door had been thrown down from above, and that there had originally existed no door, except the rift they first discovered. The rift faces the west, and to enter the cave one must climb several ledges in the rock. This cavern is sufficiently extensive to hold a couple of hundred persons. Its floor is of sand, and it is well lighted through the window. They did not find any antiquities; but they supposed this to have been the cave occupied by Thorir and his daughters.
“The men cut their initials on the rocks; Björn cut B. S. on that opposite the door, and Helgi cut a single H. on the eastern wall of the cave, just below the window. Björn Jónsson cut his opposite, but Helgi’s was the deepest engraved, and will stand longest. When they had finished this, they sat down and took some refreshments, and remarked, as they drank their brandy, that this was in all probability the first time that the smell of brandy had been snuffed in that place.
“It was now getting late; however, they ascended a mountain peak, on the west side of the cave, and separate from it by a sweep of snow, and this peak they believed to be visible from Kaldidalr; it was very steep and difficult to climb, so they rested twice on their way. They went up on different sides as the clink-stone rolled away beneath their feet on those behind. Björn, the priest, was the first to attack the peak, but Helgi reached the summit first, and found it so sharp at the top as to afford hardly enough standing-ground for the three. They heaped a cairn on the top and put in it a flat stone, which they placed in a vertical position, and made fast with other stones. In it is a small rift; and they arranged it so that, by placing the eye at this rift, it looks eastward, through the door of the cave.
“The party then returned the same way that they had come, and parted in the morning in the middle of Kaldidalr, Björn going southward, and Helgi towards the north.”
We think that the clergymen were mistaken in supposing that this clink-stone cone is visible from Kaldidalr, for we saw no appearance of it. From Skjaldbreid a peak is distinguishable, however, but more to the south-west than that described by the priests.
Apparently, three ways of entering the mysterious vale present themselves, that which we ourselves intended being impracticable. One is to follow the route of the bold explorers, Björn and Helgi; a second is to camp the horses at Hlitharvellir, grassy plains between Skjaldbreid and Hlothufell, and to follow the stream that issues from the glacier ravine into the recesses of the Jökull. A third course, and that which we expect would prove the easiest, though the least interesting, would be to encamp on the grass-land round the lake Hvitarvatn, to the east of the Jökull, where the mountains are lower, and the existence of a large sheet of water, from which issues a considerable river—the Hvitá—points to this being a place to which the drainage of a very considerable portion of the glacier converges.
It is not a little remarkable that the huge extent of Lang Jökull feeds scarcely any other rivers. It is true that the Nordlinga fljot, another Hvitá and Asbrandsá, have their sources under the Lang Jökull, but they are only small streams, whereas the Hvitá bursts out of its lake a wide and deep river; and we think that this is accounted for by the presence of a depression towards the interior of the range which gathers the drainage from the surrounding glaciers, and then pours the flood in a sub-glacial torrent into the lake. The opening to this valley we suppose to be blocked above the lake by the glaciers from Hrutafell and Blàfell’s Jökull, which meet and overlap.