“De lebirmere
Ein mere ist giliberot
In demo wentilmere westerot
Sô der starche Wint
Giwirffit die Skef in den Sint,” etc.
The portentous waves remarked by old Icelandic sailors between Iceland and America, are termed by them Haf-girðingar, or Seafens, and the Polar wastes between Norway and Greenland were known as Haf-botnar (deep-sea bay) and Trölla-botnar, because here was the abode of Tröll-carl and Titan. The mighty breakers of the North Atlantic are known to picturesque and poetical tourists, not to seamen, as “Spanish waves.” The sky, before clear, was all cirrus and cirro-cumulus, and the slaty green seas made the too lively “Queen” dance and reel with excitement. The cabin table was put into its straightest waistcoat, and men avoided the deck—on shipboard, as in maritime Iceland, once wet, you cannot dry again. Our numbers shrank at mess, and the passengers seemed to become like the royal and feminine Legs of Spain. Ghostly sounds issued from the cabin; one “Caledonian stern and wild,” attached to a black dog, big as a donkey and hairy as a bear, made fierce attempts to violate the toilette tables and glared hideously at expostulation. Our only consorts were spirting whales and audacious troops of numerous gulls—these escorted us with sundry reliefs of guard as far as Iceland.
Presently we sighted the “Stack,” a split rock with a bald white head, and further to starboard the Bird Skerry, a low dome wholly unprovided with lighthouse—how many a good ship, densely be-fogged, has run her bows upon this Rock of Death, and melted away in the yeasty waves! At 6.30 P.M., we passed the “two solitary islands,” Ronan and Barra, alias Sulisker, of old Sulnasker, north-easternmost outliers of the Hebrides. The former appears in hay-cock shape, the latter is a long flat-backed “horse,” bluff as usual to the north, with a precipice 300 feet high. Both are uninhabited, and might serve for fancy eremites. To starboard rises Fair Isle, half-way between the Orkneys and the Shetlands, once belonging to the former, now to the latter. This rock supplies the shops of Lerwick and Kirkwall with its peculiar hosiery; and the primary colours, blue, red, and yellow, of the Etruscan tombs, and the Temple of Ephesian Diana,[337] are those which Algiers, Morocco, and the East, still know so well to blend. Mixed in the most daring way they are never inharmonious, glaring, and grotesque. It is well worth the artist’s time and trouble to investigate and determine the delicate differences of proportion which can make the “Devil’s livery” so brilliant and pleasing to the eye. “Ye Yle of Fare,” I need hardly note, is supposed to have derived its art from the shipwrecked seamen of the Spanish Armada. “Insula Bella,” says Buchanan; of which Brand remarks, “I neither did see, nor was I informed of anything that affords us any reason why this isle should be so appellatively taken and denominated bella or fair.” The Scandinavian name is Friðarey; otherwise we might believe Fair Isle to be a congener of “Færoes,” from Fier, feathers, or from Fær, a sheep, because plena innumerabilibus ovibus” (Dicuil).
June 6.
Still, as the weather waxed fouler, the aneroids rose higher and higher. We had exchanged an angry Auster, which filled the raw air with damp, for a wrathier Boreas that tore the clouds to tatters. All the northerly winds, which rarely outlast the fortnight in this capricious and treacherous climate, are cold and dry, consequently heavy, whilst those from the rain-bringing south notably want pressure. We are now approaching the region of paradoxes, a practical joke of Nature, where the Rule of Reverse seems generally to apply. Travellers tell us that presently we shall see nine suns, which do not give the light and warmth of one; sub-glacial volcanoes; fire issuing from icebergs—is this not a dream of old Uno Von Troil?[338]—a summer without thunder which is confined to winter; stone crumbling soft under the touch; stalactites and stalagmites of lava, not of lime, Pluto doing Neptune’s work; rivers now bone-dry, then raging floods; forests sans trees; fuel thrown up by the furious sea; deep swamps clothing the high hill-slopes; lakes supplying ocean cod; and wild ducks swimming the almost boiling springs; a land where the men draw and carry water, and a population which, thriving in the worst weather, sickens and dies of malignant catarrh (the Kruym of the Færoes) when the heavens deign to bestow a rare smile.
Our only passe-temps is that of calculating successive positions on the chart. There to starboard lies Foula, which some write Fowla and Foulah, and is evidently Fogla-or Fugla-ey,[339] fowl’s or gull’s eyot. The claims of the “stately headland” to represent
“Thule, the period of cosmographie,”
have been discussed in another place. It belongs to Dr Scott (R.N.) of Melby; it numbers about two hundred souls, and it rejoices in a revenue of some £200 per annum—when fishing and crops are favourable. Like other islands, it has its magic carbuncle. Beyond it lies Papa Stour; Papey, the eyot of Culdees and anchorites: its natural arch will appear familiar after Iceland. About noon we found ourselves off the Færoes, and the rest of the day was spent upon the Ferry of the Northern Sea. We steam all unconscious over the “Sunken Land of Bus,” in N. lat. 58° 2´ and long. 29° 55´; “Arctis,” a continent which has lately been revived, and whose fragments are supposed to be Iceland, the Færoes, Greenland, Spitzbergen, and Franz-Josef’s Land. This is a restoration, or rehabilitation, of Unger’s Miocene Atlantis, which imitates Bailly’s “in having taught us everything but its own name and existence.” Older hydrographic books assure us that the western coast once “occupied many leagues of extent, but that after being overflowed, it is now not more than a league round when the sea is high. There was some years ago a large island named Finsland here, which was full a hundred leagues in circumference, and on which were many villages.” Similarly, Brasil Rock (“Hy Brazile”) was placed in N. lat. 57° 10´ and long. 16°: we have also the submerged land of Lionnesse (Leonnais) extending to the Scilly group and the drowned city of Ys, for which mass was recited till the beginning of the present century; the island of St Brandan, the Masculine and Feminine Islands, the island Scoria with its archbishop, and the island Antillia with the “Septem Cidade,” mythical features, spawns of the old “Atlantis.” Hr Thorsteinnsson of Reykjavik showed me the origin of Finsland, more generally called Friesland, upon a fragment of vellum chart, dating from the sixteenth or seventeenth century, almost “rotten with age,” and ignobly converted into a book-cover. Evidently the “Isola Frislanda” of Messer Antonio Zeno, in A.D. 1380, is a mere clerical or cartographic error for the Færoes appearing in the shape of a large tract of ground close to and south-west of Iceland. Every map of the period supports its existence.
June 7.
As we approach Snow-land the north wind seems to fall, or rather, to judge from the cirrous sky, it blows high overhead. Sailors in these northern seas believe that after passing beyond the “roaring Sixties” they begin to sail “under the wind.” In other words, they hold that the Polar current, rushing to supply the ascending atmosphere established by solar action at the equator, and forming the upper trades, describes an arc which touches the earth about lat. 60°; whilst in the higher latitudes of both hemispheres, the greatest force of the draught is high overhead. So, on the summit of Tenerife, we stand in a perpetual gale of upper trades, which farther north sinks to the sea surface and overflows Europe.