In the southern parts of the island there is apparently a considerable Irish infusion; and we often remark the “potato face” and the peculiar eye, with grey-blue iris and dark lashes so common in outer Galway, and extending to far Tenerife.
It has been the fashion for travellers to talk of “our Scandinavian ancestors in Iceland,” to declare that the northern element is the “backbone of the English race,” and to find that Great Britain owes to the hyperborean “her pluck, her go-ahead, and her love of freedom.”
That a little of this strong liquor may have done abundant good to the puerile, futile Anglo-Kelt, and the flabby and phlegmatic Anglo-Saxon, there is no doubt, but happily we have not had a drop too much of northern blood. The islanders are by no means slow to claim descent from the old Jarls of Norway and Sweden, whilst some of the peasantry have asserted, and, it is said, have proved, consanguinity with the Guelphs: this would make them Germans, like the Royal Family of Denmark, who enjoy only poetical and laureated connection with the “Sea-Kings.” Those who reject these pretensions reply that every noble house emigrating from Scandinavia in the ninth and tenth centuries brought with it a train of serfs and thralls; for instance, Njál headed nearly thirty fighting men, serviles included, and Thráin led fifteen house-carls trained to arms. And genealogical statistics prove that while the Jarl’s blood dies out, the Carl’s increases and multiplies.
The Saga’s description of Gunnar Hamondsson is that of a well-favoured Icelander in the present day: “He was handsome of feature and fair-skinned; his nose was straight and a little turned up at the end (‘tip-tilted’); he was blue-eyed, and bright-eyed, and ruddy cheeked; his hair was thick and of good hue, and hanging down in comely curls.” And Skarphèdinn Njálsson may stand forth as the typical “plain” Thulite: “His hair was dark-brown, with crisp curly locks; he had good eyes; his features were sharp, and his face ashen pale; his nose turned up, and his front teeth stuck out, and his mouth was very ugly.”
The Icelander’s temperament is nervoso-lymphatic, and, at best, nervoso-sanguineous. The nervoso-bilious, so common in the south of Europe, is found but rarely; and the author never saw an instance of the pure nervous often met with in the United States and the Brazil. The shape of the cranium is distinctly brachycephalic, like the Teuton who can almost always be discovered by his flat occiput and his projecting ears. The face is rather round or square than oval; the forehead often rises high, and the malar bones stand out strongly, whilst the cheeks fall in. A very characteristic feature of the race whose hardness, not to say harshness, of body and mind still distinguishes it from its neighbours, is the eye, dure and cold as a pebble—the mesmerist would despair at the first sight. Even amongst the “gentler sex” a soft look is uncommonly rare, and the aspect ranges from a stoney stare to a sharp glance rendered fiercer by the habitual frown. Hence probably Uno Von Troil (p. 87) describes the women as generally ill-featured. The best specimens are clear grey or light blue, rarely brown and never black; and the iris is mostly surrounded by a ring of darker colour, the reverse of arcus senilis. Squints and prominent eyeballs, in fact what are vulgarly called “goggle eyes,” are common; and even commoner, perhaps, are the dull colourless organs which we term “cods’ eyes.” The “Irish eye,” blue with dark lashes, is still found in the southern part of the island, where, perhaps, thralls’ blood is most common. A mild and chronic conjunctivitis often results from exposure to sun-glare after dark rooms and from reading deep into the night with dim oil lamps. The nose is seldom aquiline; the noble and sympathetically advancing outlines of the Mediterranean shores will here be sought for in vain.[167] The best are the straight, the worst are offensive “pugs.” Only in two instances, both of them men of good blood, I saw the broad open brows, the Grecian noses, the perpendicular profiles, the oval cheeks, and the chins full, but not too full, which one connects in idea with the Scandinavian sea-king of the olden day. As a rule, then, the Icelandic face can by no means be called handsome.
The oral region is often coarse and unpleasant. Lean lips are not so numerous as the large, loose, fleshy, and bordés or slightly everted, whilst here and there a huge mouth seems to split the face from ear to ear. The redeeming feature is the denture. The teeth are short, regular, bright-coloured, and lasting, showing uncommon strength of constitution. They are rarely clean when coffee and tobacco are abused, and they are yet more rarely cleaned. Doubtless a comparatively scanty use of hot food tends to preserve them. The jowl is strong and square, and the chin is heavy, the weak “vanishing” form being very uncommon. The beard is sometimes worn, but more often clean shaved off; it seldom grows to any length, though the mustachios, based upon a large and solid upper lip, are bushy and form an important feature. Thick whiskers are sometimes seen, and so are “Newgate frills,” from which the small foxy features stand sharply out.
The other strong points are the skin and hair. The former is almost always rufous, rarely milanous, and the author never saw a specimen of the leucous (albino). The “positive blonde” is the rule; opposed to the negative or washed out blonde of Russia and Slavonia generally. The complexion of the younger sort is admirably fresh, pink and white; and some retain this charm till a late age. Its delicacy subjects it to sundry infirmities, especially to freckles, which appear in large brown blotches; exposure to weather also burns the surface, and converts rose and lily to an unseemly buff and brick-dust red. It is striated in early middle-age with deep wrinkles and it becomes much “drawn,” the effect of what children call “making faces” in the sunlight and snow-blink. In the less wholesome parts of the island the complexion of the peasantry is pallid and malarious.
Harfagr (Pulchricomus) is an epithet which may apply to both sexes. The hair, which belongs to the class Lissótriches, subdivision Euplokomoi, of Hæckel and Müller (Allg. Ethnographie, 1873), seldom shows the darker shades of brown; and in the very rare cases where it is black, there is generally a suspicion of Eskimo or Mongoloid blood. The colour ranges from carrotty-red to turnip-yellow, from barley-sugar to the blond-cendré so expensive in the civilised markets. We find all the gradations of Parisian art here natural; the “corn-golden,” the blonde fulvide, the incandescent (“carrotty”), the flavescent or sulphur-hued, the beurre frais, the fulvastre or lion’s mane, and the rubide or mahogany, Raphael’s favourite tint. The abominable Hallgerda’s hair is the type of Icelandic beauty; it was “soft as silk and so long that it came down to her waist.” Seldom straight and lank, the chevelure is usually wavy, curling at the ends, when short cut, as in England. The women have especially thick locks, which look well without other art but braiding, and many of the men have very bushy hair. As in the negro, baldness does not appear till a late age, and perhaps the Húfa (cap) by exposing the larger part of the surface acts as a preservative; old men and women, though anile beauty is very rare, are seen with grey and even white locks exceptionally thick. Canities comes on later than in Scotland and Sweden, yet scant attention is paid to the hair beyond washing at the brook. The body pile is as usual lighter coloured.
The figure is worse than the face, and it is rendered even more uncouth by the hideous swathing dress. The men are remarkable for “champagne-bottle (unduly sloping) shoulders,” “broad-shouldered in the backside,” as our sailors say. They are seldom paunchy, though some, when settled in warmer climates, develop the schöne corpulenz of the Whitechapel sugar-baker. They have the thick, unwieldy trunks of mountaineers, too long for the lower limbs—a peculiarity of hill-men generally, which extends even to the Bubes of Fernando Po. The legs are uncommonly sturdy; the knees are thick and rounded, an unpromising sign of blood; the ankles are coarse, and the flat feet are unusually large and ill-formed, like the hands, a point of resemblance with the Anglo-Saxon pure and simple. Hence they are peculiarly fitted for their only manly sport, besides skating and shooting, “Glímu list:” this wrestling has a “chic” of its own, though very different from the style of Cumberland and Cornwall. The gait, a racial distinction, is shambling and ungraceful, utterly unlike the strut of Southern Europe and the roll of the nearer East; the tread is ponderous, and the light fantastic toe is unknown. This “wabble” and waddle result from the rarity of walking-exercise compared with riding and boating, and from the universal use of the seal-skin slipper. The habit becomes a second nature: all strangers observe the national trick of rocking the body when sitting or standing to talk, and they mostly attribute it to the habit of weaving, when it is practised by thousands who never used a loom. The feminine figure is graceful and comparatively slender in youth, like the English girl of the “willowy type,” but the limbs are large and ungainly. After a few years the “overblown” forms broaden out coarsely. Women do not draw the plough, as in Greece and parts of Ireland, but they must take their turn at all manner of field-work. The Frauen-cultus, said to be a native of Europe north of the Alps, has not extended here, at least in these days.[168] Hence the legs and ankles, hands and feet, rival in size and coarseness those of the men. As wives, they would be efficient correctives to the “fine drawn” framework and the over-nervous diathesis of southern nations. Cold in temperament, they are therefore, like the Irish, prolific, which may also result from the general fish-diet. Dr Schleisner, who resided in Iceland under the Danish Government, has proved the temperature of the blood to be higher than amongst other races. Assuming the average of Europeans at C. 36°·5 (= F. 97°·7), nine persons out of twelve exceeded C. 37° (= F. 98°·6): the maximum was C. 37°·8 (= F. 100°); the minimum was C. 36°·5, and the average was C. 37°·27 (= F. 99°·09).[169]
Intermarriage is so general that almost all the chief families are cousins; yet among several thousands the author saw only one hunchback, two short legs, and a few hare-lips. It is almost needless to say that the common infanticide of pagan days is now unknown, and that we must seek some other cause for the absence of deformity. It may be found, perhaps, in the purity of unmixed blood, which, mentioning no other instances, allows consanguineous marriages to the Jews, the Bedawin Arabs, and even to the Trasteverino Romans;[170] whereas composite and heterogeneous races like the Englishman, the Spaniard, and especially the New Englander, cannot effect such unions without the worst results—idiocy and physical deformity.