The aspect of Reykjavik from the sea is more unlike its description by travellers than, perhaps, anything that I have yet seen—even Humboldt’s Tenerife. One expects, after the Haurán-like profile of the coast, to see a “Giant City of Bashan” rising from the waves. Old sketches suggest the “negative features” of John Barrow, the miserable show of a few tarred pent-roofs topping the black shingle, but free trade has changed all that. Even on this dull day, when it looks its worst, we cannot call its aspect “triste, morne, désolé.” Where, again, are the gaudy colours noticed by Mr Bryson? We see nothing but dingy-white, dull-gamboge, verging on rhubarb, slate-grey, and tar-black, a perfect contrast with the Norwegian town—
“Where tawdry yellow strives with dirty red.”
At both extremities, east and west, the ground is stony, and rudely-formed basaltic pillars line the water, guarding ragged scatters of fishermen’s huts. The right point (west) is called the Hliðar-hús (lith-house), a classical name. On the left a grassy earthwork and a flagstaff still remain to remind us of a quaint passage in local history. Icelanders are much given to boasting that their island, which contains the population of a third-rate English town, was never conquered; that Thule is still invicta. Yet in 1809, Mr Sam. Phelps, of London, a soap boiler, who considered himself aggrieved by the authorities, landed a dozen jailbirds from Gravesend, and forcibly took possession of the capital. He established an independent republic under the wing of England; and his Cromwell was a Danish seaman, Hr Jörgen Jörgensen, “Protector of Iceland, and Commander by sea and land.” This Dictator, a bad Masaniello, seems to have acted with peculiar energy: he threw up the redoubt; armed it with six small cannon, brought from Bessastaðir; and hoisted over it the flag of independence, three slit cods (stockfish) argent in an oval garland, on a champ azure. Better, at any rate, than Yarmouth, with its three bloaters! The ridiculous affair was squashed by an English frigate, the “Talbot” (Captain Jones): the earthwork was disarmed, and the guns were thrown upon the beach; whilst “Mercator Phelps,” as Bishop Pètursson calls him, Jörgensen, & Co., were removed to England. It was the second time that the island, “bound in with the triumphant sea,” nearly fell to the “Britishers’” lot.[358] Christian II. was upon the point of pledging it, as the Orkneys and Shetlands were temporarily transferred to the Scottish Crown, but he was deposed before the bargain was struck.
Between the points lies the inner or boat harbour, clear water in which floats a crop of “sea-ware,” especially the long, tufty hair of the Hoy or Haar-teari (Fucus aculeatus): it is supposed by some to have named the Færoe Islands. But, however clean the water, it is considered too cold for uso esterno; and the English eye at once misses the machines and sheds and other appurtenances of a bathing place. The ripple is confined by unclean black sand, strewed with boards, nets, and offals of all kinds, especially thorsk or cods’ heads. There are fair landing-places, plank pierlets, kept steady by caissons full of stones, and not removed in winter: the traveller may see the same style all round the coast, and perhaps he will remember making Venice through the “Murazzi.” The principal buildings, beginning from the right as you face the town, are the Glasgow House, the Bridgehouse, the Post-office, the Club, the merchant stores, and the coal-depots belonging to the Government and to Mr Slimon. Behind rises the steepled Dóm-Kirkja (cathedral), and we see with pleasure that the College, alias the Latin School, is larger and more important than Government House. The tenements mostly face the beach; the roofs, pitched steep against the snow, are slated or boarded; tiles are common, and turf is preserved only by the poorest. They are built of planks like Valparaiso, earthquakes being not unfrequent; but I could hear only of one fire—a notable contrast to the “Vale of Paradise,” where the stone house is impossible, and where being burnt out is purely a question of time. Above the west point is the Catholic chapel and a windmill; the winds can never be very violent, or this thing would soon be blown up like a tent high in the air. The opposite rise is garnished with another windmill, also lacking steerer; and with a double-storied tower of solid masonry, called the Observatory. The surface of the upper country has that dull, dark-green tint, so difficult to shoot against, and so characteristic of the Emerald Isle in early autumn. The people complain that the rains have been scant this year, that hay will be scarce and dear, that the fishing season has been bad, and so forth. The inland view is bounded by a long, unbroken range, which we shall see on the first clear day.
All Reykjavik assembled to gape and chat upon the shore, whilst a torrent of strangers poured on board. They were assailed with questions by the tourists, and the answers were satisfactory as usual. The Hotel had been abolished. The Club did not receive guests; never a room was to be had for love or money. We must pitch tents upon the beach—pleasant during this weather, a bad November in England! There was hardly a riding-pony within fifteen miles, although some four hundred were awaiting embarkment. Guides were unprocurable, all hands at Reykjavik being thoroughly engaged, and the telegraph scheme making even the idlest unwilling to take temporary service. No one would change sovereigns for rixdollars. At the same time, if we would put ourselves unreservedly in the hands of our kind and courteous informants, who were of the horsiest, we might possibly find lodgings, ponies, guides, dollars.
Before landing, I discipline myself severely. From London and Edinburgh, even from Leith, the fall to Reykjavik being heavy, the traveller’s eye is apt to view everything through a jaundiced medium, and the consequence is undue depreciation. Everywhere, and at all times, it is difficult to find a standing point of comparison from which to prospect persons and things, and which shall be fair to the subject, and intelligible to the reader. One man sets out with “the City” in view, and is called a “Cockney traveller;” another and a numerous class looks at matters through the spectacles of civilised life in England, perhaps the easiest way when writing for Englishmen; whilst those who have seen much of the world make themselves unintelligible and unpleasant (myself, alas!) by drawing parallels between scenes unknown or unfamiliar to their Public, who resents the implied slight accordingly. Hence it is generally said that works of exploration are mostly read only because they must be read, and that the book which treats of the land best known to us is that which gives the highest enjoyment. For here we have the pleasure of comparing the impressions made by the same things upon the writer’s mind and upon our own, a process far more personal and more satisfactory than mastering mere discoveries or pursuing a tale of extraordinary adventure, which we often only half believe. And when reading travels in absolutely new lands, we feel that we are reading the opinions of another man, without the concurrence which alone can check them. But the veteran voyager is a practical “Pantisocrat,” and he must especially adopt the advice of Juvenal:
“Audeat ille palam qui vidit, dicere vidi.”
And nowhere is greater care required than in studying a mother-city, the characteristic of its race, the living photograph; the manifest expression of its manners and customs, and especially of its short-comings. “Capitals represent doctrines.” Apply this to the old drab-coloured utilitarian London, now happily passing away, with its boxes of mean brick and of hideous “stone-colour,” where every man’s house, reckless of order, regularity, and economy of space, was his castle, small, dull, and dry as the educated mind; with its Belgravian “palaces” and wretched porticos, which an hour with a crowbar would demolish, expressing a rental more than sufficient for a “hôtel entre cour et jardin” in Paris, Vienna, or Rome; with its utterly tasteless and artless works of art which sadden the civilised eye, looking, a foreigner observed, as if the foul fiend had scattered them flying; with its slushy and greasy streets, the richest population in the world being apparently too poor to keep them clean; and with its shops exposing, even in Bond Street, corpses of poultry, sheep, pigs, and cattle for the use of carnivorous denizens. We can hardly wonder when the “wild-cat correspondent” of the Yankee paper describes it as “a vast wilderness of dingy brick and stone, of huge half-empty palaces and roaring torrents of humanity—a money-snatching metropolis where vice and poverty herd and breed in filthy alleys behind the abodes of the great and wealthy.”
We bid adieu to the “Queen,”
“That white-winged monastery moving still,
Of rugged celibates against their will.”