[281] Dr Hjaltalín has written many articles on sanitary matters and the natural history of Iceland, which have appeared in various periodicals, Icelandic, Danish, and English. He has also published for several years the “Heilbrigðistíðindi” (Sanitary News).
[282] Near the end of the paper we read, “Iceland was now (after union with Norway) governed as a colony;” this assertion, it is said, belongs not to the author but to the editor.
[283] Laing’s “Heimskringla” is a work of a very different kind, not translated from the original.
[284] The author can practically answer for its value. When travelling in 1872 he had only the first volume, and thus whilst tolerably acquainted with the words between A and the first half of H, he found it impossible, within given limits, to master the rest. In the “Days of Ignorance” it was necessary to learn Danish in order to use the Icelandic Dictionary. It is only to be hoped that the English-Icelandic half of the work will follow in due season, and doubtless some enterprising publisher, like Mr Trübner, will presently give us portable editions of both.
[285] Possibly a confusion with the pied crow (C. Leucophæus) of the Færoes. In Scandinavian mythology the raven was white, but, like the Hajar el Aswad of Mecca, it turned black in consequence of babbling and tale-bearing.
[286] He made an expedition to East Greenland in 1828-29; and his volume was translated by the late E. Gordon Macdougall, and published (London, Parker, 1837) by the Royal Geographical Society of Great Britain—a most sensible step. His determination that the East Bygð was on the west coast has of late been successfully questioned by Mr R. H. Major (Ocean Highways) through the 1507 edition of Ptolemy, the map of Van Keulen (circ. A.D. 1700), and the “Chorography” of the old Greenland colony, with sailing directions for reaching it from Iceland by Ivar Bardsen, steward of the colonial bishop. Captain Graah had denied the existence of Gunnbjörn’s Skerries, and so forfeited the guidance of Ivar Bardsen. His book, however, is a valuable study of hyperborean regions generally, and especially useful as a standard of comparison between Iceland and Greenland. In the latter we find the hot springs of Onnartok depositing silicious sinter, like the Geysir and Strokkr, whilst the unfinished church of Kakortok reminds us of Færoese Kirkjubæ.
[287] The fact is, it has become a party question. Hence strangers who, like Dr W. Lander Lindsay (p. 7, “On the Eruption, in May 1860, of the Kötlu-gjá Volcano, Iceland”), are otherwise employed than in making general inquiries, ignore the basis. When this great opus was printed (1844), few countries in Europe had charts on such a scale, so accurately detailed, and so well engraved. Even at present it wants only the names of places being made more legible; it is still the standard work, for which seamen and landsmen have reason to be grateful, and it forms a solid foundation for future addition to all time. Mr Thorne (Ramsdale, Thorne, & Co.) kindly lent his copy to the author, who ungratefully kept it nearly three years.
[288] Every serious Icelandic traveller of the nineteenth century has alluded more or less to the career of the Rev. Jón Thorláksson, parish priest of Backa, who lived as best becomes a poet, in poverty, and who died in poverty, æt. seventy-five, in 1819. He thus laments his hard fate:
“Yes; Penury hath been my bride
Since e’er I saw the world of men;
And clasped me to her rugged breast
These seventy winters all but twain:
And if we separate here below,
He only knows who made it so.”
His “living,” besides glebe and parish gifts, was £6 per annum, of which half was paid to an assistant (Henderson and Barrow); and he did not live to receive the £20 collected for him in England. He translated Pope’s Essay on Man, Klopstock’s Messiah, and Paradise Lost. The three first books of the latter were printed by the Islenzka Lærdómslista-fèlag (Icel. Lit. Society) before it was dissolved in 1796. The original MS. is deposited in the rooms of the Literary Fund, London.