It must be observed that the Reykjavik lodging-house has a great advantage over that in England, which exists by petty overcharges and by small robberies. Here also a strange tongue and foreign habits conceal that fearful caricature of “society” ever prominent at home. The chief bane of poverty is not so much that it renders man ridiculous, as that it brings him into contact with a life-form of which only Mr Punch can make fun. I envy the richard in civilisation only because the talk of the Vestibule does not reach the Peristyle: his wealth removes him from all knowledge of what is going on within a few yards of him, the mean jealousies, the causeless hatreds, the utter malice and uncharitableness which compose “high life below stairs.”
By way of simulating civilised existence we converted the tavern into a club, and dined there daily. It is the usual little board-house in the High Street, and the northern wall backs a couple of trees some five feet high, the Sorbier, or service apple (Sorbus aucuparia). Another may be seen in the governor’s “compound,” but apparently one-half of it has lately paid the debt of nature. The dining-room is a stuffy little box, and it is useless to open the windows as they will at once be shut. Often some unwashed and burly traveller from the country precedes us for a feed; a sewing-machine awaits our departure, and we are serenaded by the monotonous croon of the nurse above. Sometimes she breaks out into “Champagne Charley,” with the true British “rum-ti-tiddy” style of performance. The capital has evidently forgotten the “beautiful lullaby,” Ljúflingsmál, composed by a calf-father, and sung at the window; but we have an abundance after this fashion:
On the other side of the hall is the drinking saloon, and beyond it the billiard-table, a highly primitive affair in which the slower balls describe graceful segments of circles: the Russian game is the favourite, and “the price is a penny—it is no more.” The dingy little room is mostly crowded in the evening, peasants and visitors in rags act wall-flowers, whilst the jeunesse dorée performs in the centre—yet note that neither Kirkwall nor Lerwick owns a billiard-room. Groups gather at the tavern door, and there is more life than usual in the High Street. Women flock to the large pump and bear away their full pails with a square fender of lath, like a falconer’s cage; the long bearded and ragged water-carrier is a local curio, and the one carriage sometimes passes. Young ladies, escorted as in France by the bonne, troop by to shop or to pay visits; and now and then an “Amazone,” very unlike her Dahoman sister, ambles by on her little “sheltie.”
The proprietor of our club was Hr Jörgensen, a Dane, formerly valet to Count Trampe; he began by hotel-keeping at the Hospital, but when that failed to keep him he wisely took the pot-house which paid well. He was an independent landlord, disdaining to tout for new comers, and not even advertising himself by means of a sign-board: in fact, he cared for nothing as long as he could tap a barrel of beer per diem. At the end of the season he sold the house and goodwill for $12,000 to Mr Askam, a Yorkshireman, and returned to his native country a “warm man.”
THE ANGLO-ICELANDIC HOST.
You dine at Hr Jörgensen’s café beuglant for the very moderate sum of one rixdollar per diem, including even coffee and petit verre, but not including the “cheap Gladstone” which would be distasteful to the Oinomathic Society of Edinburgh. The hour is three P.M.; you fight for five with the good-tempered mistress and often you lose the battle. Appetite is never wanting near the North Pole, and Reykjavik is a thirstier place, the result of evaporation, than even the banks of Brazilian Sâo Francisco. High spirits, fine air, and free ozone—if such a thing there be—are proof against the excessive greasiness of Icelandic cookery where, however, it must be owned that melted butter now takes the place of tallow. The people have learned the use of salt, which formerly they ignored like the Guanchinets (Guanches) of Tenerife, not to say islanders generally: it is hard to see the hygienic value of the condiment amongst eaters of fish and meat, however necessary it may be to a vegetarian race like Brahmans and Banyans. Icelanders still prefer spices: the nutmeg, clove, and cinnamon which are mixed, in place of pepper, with sorrel or scurvy-grass (Rumex acetosa); and the sugar which is added, even to cabbage, gain for the cook anything but our blessings. Rice pudding with a sauce of currant jelly and water by way of molasses or the Syrian “dibs” (grape-syrup), often after the fashion of Dotheboys’ Hall, precedes soup, and the latter is not rarely milk-soup, or Sod Suppe, the sweet broth of Norway, a slab compound of sago, dry cherries, raisins or plums, coloured with the juice of the imported Tyttebær, Vaccinium myrtillus and vitis-idæa; the Bláber of the Færoes and our own bilberry or blaeberry, red whortleberry or cowberry.
The salmon is excellent, firmer, finer, curdier, and leaner than with us; unfortunately it is cut up into slices. We make ample acquaintance with Australian and other preserved meats, and as might be expected, we find baking in lieu of roasting which seems now almost confined to England—the rationale of the regrettable change is that it saves fuel. The cheese is certainly not from Cheese-shire; it is about as good as bad Gruyère: there is a dark sweet stuff called Mysust (mysa, whey, and ostr, “yeast” cheese), made of pressed curds, which the traveller will certainly not prefer to the Gammell ost, the “old” or common cheese of Denmark.