[289] Forn-yrði, an old word, an archaism; hence Eddaic verse. We may illustrate its alliteration by Peirce Plowman:
“I looked on my left half
As the Lady me taught,
And was ware of a woman
Worthlyith clothed.”
Finn Magnússon and Rask thus converted Virgil into narrative verse:
“Arma virumque
Cano, Trojæ
Qui primus ab oris
Italiam,
Fato profugus,
Lavinaque venit
Littora,” etc.
[290] As will appear in the Journal, all the principal streams have ferries or some succedanea, and no Iceland guide is in the habit of exposing himself recklessly.
[291] Hunter & M’Donald of Leith sell sou’-westers for 2s.; outer and inner hose, at 3s. 6d. and 2s. 6d.; sailors’ trousers, for 10s.; stout oil coats, at 18s. 6d.; and fishermen’s mitts, at 1s. 3d. Foreman, also of Leith, supplies excellent boots for £2, 10s.
[292] A very young traveller, Mr John Milne, F.G.S., has thus taken the author to task: “Fancy yourself with forty horses, riding over snow bridges by the dozen.” Is it then necessary to explain that the ponies are intended for the Ódáða Hraun, a tract about the size of Devonshire? When Mr Watts started on his second expedition, he declared it was “essential that the party should not be less than six,” and he preferred eight, calculating that the expenses would not exceed £50 per man.
[293] “Ropeing” is not a new thing, as many Alpine travellers seem to think. Pállson, when ascending Öræfa Jökull (1794), used “a rope about ten fathoms in length,” and “left a distance of two fathoms” between himself and his two companions. The latter is the modern average, the extremes being nine and fifteen. The author never heard of Icelanders objecting to this precaution, but “G. H. C.,” who in August 1, 1874, inspected the Kötlu-gjá (Field, October 10, 1874), says that his two guides “apparently regarded such proceeding in the light of a capital joke, and, connecting the idea with that of horses (í taumi) at a sale, declared ‘they had never heard of a horse-fair on a Yokull.’”
[294] Every kind of snow requires its own shoe. Thus the Norwegian “skies” are very different from the Iceland skí, which resembles the Finn “öndrar,” or “andrar.” These articles are six, seven, and even twelve feet long, by five inches wide, in fact like large cask-staves. The front ends are a little bent up, and the sides are garnished with iron (saddlers’) D’s, through which leather thongs, or bands of willow-withes, are passed to secure the feet. Sometimes for facility of turning, one is made longer than the other, and the Lapps sole the right foot with hairy skin, so as to hold the snow in the back stroke. The alpenstock in Iceland is a bone handled staff, with a stout spike: the author never saw the stick shod with a wheel three inches broad, and safe against sinking, which is used on the Continent.
[295] One of the thermometers was broken on the way to Edinburgh, and, curious to say, it could not be repaired in the capital of Scotland. Professor C. Vogt prefers to the Alpine Sympiesometer, the Barometre Compensée Metallique of M. Richard, Rue Fontaine du Roi, Paris: he used it in Iceland, and found it answer admirably.