The Icelander is a large-brained and strong-brained man, essentially slow and solid in point of intellect, and capable of high culture, of wide learning, and of deep research. This lesson is taught by the whole of his literature; although the muse no longer sings of love and war, she is by no means mute—her turn is now the theological, the philological, and the scientific. Arngrímr Jónsson well describes his countrymen as “Ad totius Europæ res historicas lyncæi.” But the islander never attains his full development except out of his own country, and this condition dates from past ages. Throughout the north, from England[176] and Val-land (France and Italy), to Mikligarðr (Constantinople),[177] he has distinguished himself and proved
“That every country is a brave man’s home.”
Abroad, his emulation is excited, his ambition is roused, and his slow sturdy nature is stirred up to unusual energy. At home he can command no serious education, nor can he escape from the indolent and phlegmatic, the dawdling and absolutely unconditioned slowness of the country, where time is a positive nuisance, to be killed as it best can. In Iceland the author met several Danes, but only two Icelanders, who spoke good English, French, or German; it is far otherwise in Europe, and especially, we need not say, in England.
As the notices of emigration will show, Iceland, like Ireland, is instinctively seeking her blessing and salvation, the “racial baptism.” One traveller records the “inexpressible attachment of the islanders for their native country.” Their Sehn sucht in a mountainless land, and the time-honoured boast, “Hið besta land solin skínr uppá” (Iceland is the best land upon which the sun shines).[178] So Bjarni Thorarensen sings, “World-old Iceland, beloved foster-land, thou wilt be dear to thy sons, as long as sea girds earth, men love women, and sun shines on hills.” But all the people of all the poorest countries console themselves in the same way, and geographical ignorance confirms an idea which to the traveller becomes simply ludicrous: moreover, northerners, it need hardly be said, gain more by removal, and therefore emigrate more readily than southerners. The latter express themselves unmistakably:
“Ἀνδρὶ γάρ τοι, κἄν ῦπερξάλλῃ κακοῖς
Οὐν ἔστι θρεψαντος ἤδιον πέδον.”
And “Ulysses ad Ithacæ suæ saxa properat, quemadmodum Agamemnon ad Mycenarum nobiles muros; nemo enim patriam amat quia magna, sed quia sua” (Seneca), They are happy at home; why should they leave home?
The Icelander cannot be called degenerate. He is what he was. But whilst the world around, or rather beyond him, has progressed with giant strides, he has perforce remained stationary. His mother country forbids him to decuple the human hand and arm by machinery; the enormous water-power of his rivers is useless, and thinness of population bars out the appliances of civilisation—how can he expect to hold a fair place in the race of life? Moreover, like another small and heroic kingdom, modern Greece, Iceland has suffered from ages of virtually foreign dominion, not to say tyranny, and from restrictions of trade, which, small as items, combined to form a system of grinding oppression. His brightest days were those when, like the Goth and Hun, the Arab and the Tartar, he devoted himself to plundering the wealthy weak. But the times for these nomad incursions are past, until at least China can renew them; and he hopelessly sank when no longer able to harry the southern islands, to break down London bridge, to plunder and massacre Luna, and to spread
“Beneath Gibraltar to the Lybian sands.”
His future career is in his own hands, and improvement must be sought in extended stock-breeding, in better use of the fisheries, and in extensive emigration. With free institutions he will bring to the task the same high and steadfast spirit which distinguished him in his prime. Anthropologists justly object to the popular theory of a nation degenerating, unless, indeed, there be a mixture of foreign and inferior blood; but they see everywhere in history the decline and fall of races, whenever the stronger neighbouring peoples rise to the same or to a higher level of civilisation. The Roman and the Athenian still greatly resemble the conquerors of Europe and Asia, but in those days the Gauls and the Germans, the Scandinavians and the Britons, were mere barbarians, uneducated and undisciplined. Now all are on a level, and, as we saw in the late Franco-Prussian war, the physically strongest wins—the north beats, and will ever beat, the south.
The islanders, like their brother Scandinavians and the Teutons, had no idea of towns. We may apply to them the description of Tacitus (Germ., c. xvi.), “Nullas Germanorum populis urbes habitari satis notum est ... colunt discreti ac diversi, ut fons, ut campus, ut nemus placuit.” In Norway the first town, Níðar-ós, par excellence called Kaupang, was built by the two Olaves (Ó. Tryggvason or Trusty-son, and Ó. Helgi the Saint) in A.D. 994-1030; the real founder of cities was Olave the Quiet (1067-1093). Thus in old Norse codes the Town-law is an appendix to the Land-law. As late as 1752, Reykjavik was a single isolated farm.