| Crown hundreds, | 8,886⅓ |
| Priest hundreds, | 15,3095/12 |
| Hospitals and poor hundreds, | 1,099½ |
| Farmers’ hundreds, | 62,363 |
The proportion has declined from half to little more than a third, but it is still abnormal.
The power of landed property, combined with superior education and the facility of evicting tenantry, makes the Iceland parson a “squarson” of purest type, as the witty compounder of the word understood it. He inherits, moreover, not only the respect, but even the political power of the old pagan Goði. He commands elections as a rule,[207] and can return himself, as well as his friends, to the Althing. Indeed, nothing in Iceland struck the author more than the despotism of the Lutheran Church. It is like the state of Bavaria, where the priests manage the polling by threatening the well-known “Fire of Heaven.”
Nothing need be said of legal studies in Iceland, as the course is relegated to Copenhagen.
The island being divided into medical districts, gives a certain impulse to aspirants. The head physician, or surgeon-general (Land-physicus) of Iceland, who, after being passed by the Faculty of Copenhagen, lectures at Reykjavik, is Dr Jón Jónsson Hjáltalín: his publications are well known throughout Europe, and he will often be mentioned in the following pages. His salary is $1766 a year, and he supervises the eight, formerly seven, district Doctores Medicinæ. These at present are:
1. Dr Thorgrímr Ássmundsson Johnsen, stationed in the eastern part of the Southern Quarter.
2. Dr Thorsteinn Jónsson, in the Vestmannaeyjar, where his treatment has been most successful.
3. Dr Hjörtur Jónsson, in the southern part of the Western Quadrant.
4. Dr Thórvaldur Jónsson, in the northern part of do.
5. Dr Jósep Skaptason, in the Húnavatn and Skagafjörð Sýslas.