[4] And even England lacks the foundations which encourage specialties in Germany. What we want is a number of students who are able to devote their time to pursuits never likely to pay in a publishing sense. Some day, perhaps, one of those philanthropists who give half-a-million sterling to an hospital or to a church, will provide the necessary accommodation in the “Temple of Science”—£15,000 per annum, divided into incomes ranging from £200 to £300, would supply a great desideratum.
[5] The principal are the red-breasted merganser (Mergus merganser); the rare lap-wing (Vanellus cristatus); the water-rail (Rallus aquaticus), also uncommon; the thrush (Turdus eleacus); the willow wren (Motacilla trochilus); and the little regulus with big feet and bill (Troglodytes borealis), the Pjetur Nonsmad, or Peter Dinner of Norway, because he is not seen after noon, and the Fugle Kongr, because he rides the eagle. Curious stories are also told about the wren at Trieste; he appears and disappears with the thrushes, avoiding the heats of summer: the same is said about the Abú Hin (the father of Henna) at Damascus. The black-bird (Turdus merula) is sometimes driven to Iceland by southern gales.
[6] Of local specimens we were shown varieties of the Mó-berg (Palagonite tuff), especially from the Seljadalr, which feels soft, between chalk and steatite, some white or dull yellow, acted upon by acids; others brown and black. Palagonite conglomerate with large pieces of felspar. Blue compact basalt from Kjallarnes, with and without drusic cavities; hexagonal basalt; reniform pebbles of the same material. Jaspers, red, yellow, and green, from the north, the latter containing copper. Dolerite or greenstone. A collection of Hekla lavas, passing from the porous to the highly compact. Micaceous “glimmer schiefer” studded with garnets. Zeolite and Iceland spar; silicates of lime. Quartz needles from the Geysir, and other quartzes, uncrystallised and crystallised into fine hexagons, large and small, often contained in bolides. Aluminous clays and oxide of iron, some with regular angles and metallic revetments. Concretions from Laugarnes and the Geysir, the stalks of plants resembling petrified bones. The Cyprina Gaimardi and Byssomea arctica from the north. Other shells: Balanus, Mya truncata, Venus Islandica, Lepas, Bulla, and Turbinus. True cannel coal from Suderoe, to the west; lignites, old and new; pieces of Surtar-brand, flat, and showing impressions of leaves; large fragments of true pitch-stone resembling, and others in transition to, obsidian. Hrafntinna (Raven-flint, Gagates Islandicus), obsidian or Iceland agate, black and liver-brown, like Jews’ pitch or asphalt, from Mý-vatn and the Hrafnatinnuhraun of Hekla. Henderson (i. 178) mistranslates Hrafnutinna, “Piedra de Galinazzo, or raven-stone” (for buzzard-stone). Agates, chalcedonies, and transitional opals, from Múla Sýsla, Tindastoll, and Heimaklettur, in the Vestmannaeyjar: according to Professor Abel, the south-eastern coast affords the noble stone, and the islanders believe that about 1821 a Mr Methley (?) carried home a valuable collection. Professor Árnason kindly gave me a little box of chalcedonies which looked like onyxes.
[7] The Skýrsla (Report) of the Library gives a total of 387 works, distributed amongst eight stands of sixteen shelves—they are by no means well filled. Classical authors occupy two cases on the left of the entrance; on the right are translations of the Testament, and some elementary works in Arabic and Armenian, Hindostani, Maharati, and Bengali, all “dead letters” here. At the further end are modern books printed in Reykjavik. The small collection of Icelandic manuscripts is all on paper, the more valuable vellum has left the island for “foreign parts.” There are bundles of ecclesiastical archives, tattered and unbound copies of the defunct “Islendingur,” which is more quoted in England than in Iceland; and finally, there is a small set of novelists, Walter Scott (in German), Dickens, and Bulwer, lent to the reading public.
[8] The only remarkabilities are the Bibles and the manuscripts. Among the first we find the large folio Biblia of 1584—the first entire work—translated from the German version of Martin Luther by Guðbrand Thorlaksson, Bishop of Hólar, and there printed. This admirable work, which rivals our “established version,” is not divided into verses, and is chiefly curious because the mechanical dignitary, who in 1574 imported new types, made his own capitals, plates, and woodcuts. He was assisted by the Icelander Jón Jónsson, and preceded by John Mathieson, a Swede, who brought the first printing press about 1520, and who published the “Breviarium Nidarosiense” in 1521; an ecclesiastical handbook, Luther’s Catechism, and others of the same kind. These works, especially the Breviarium, are so rare as to be practically unprocurable. According to my informants, no “Elucidarius” has ever been published in Iceland. The Rev. Thorwaldr Bjarnason assured me that the oldest Icelandic manuscript is one of these catechisms, translated, as they all were, from Latin, and dating from the thirteenth century. The second Biblia (1644), after the Danish version of Bishop Resinius, is the work of Bishop Thorlak Skurlason of Hólar, who divided it into verses. The type is black letter, ultra-Gothic Gothic, and the two folios are in the best condition. There is a copy of the New Testament (1540, Henderson, ii. 265) translated by Oddr Gottskálksson, with the distinguishing mark
(G. T. and cross), a large and thick duodecimo, with the beginning and the end restored by manuscript—Icelanders, as a rule, are very skilful in supplying lost pages. Of this book only three copies are known, the two others are at the deanery of Hruni and in Glasgow. Another New Testament (1609), reprinted at Hólar by Bishop Guðbrand, whose high-nosed and fork-bearded face remind us of his kinsman Rustam in far Iran, is a small stout octavo, with an old binding and metal clasps.
[9] The valuable printed books are the fourth volume of Finn Jónsson’s “Historia Monastica,” of which only three copies exist in the island; the “Scriptores Rerum Danicarum” (Jacobus Longebek, 8 vols. folio, Hafniæ, 1772); and the “Crymogea” of Arngrimr Jónsson, 4 vols. octavo: the latter is so unhappily divided that it is most difficult to find a passage required. Some of the shelves are filled with presents made by patriotic Icelanders and liberal publishers, such as The Gentleman’s Magazine till 1771; a few Smithsonian and Patent Office Reports; “Le Plutarch Français;” “Conversations Lexicons;” the “Allgemeine Deutsch Bibliotek;” the “Bibliothêque des Romans;” “Chambers’s Information for the People;” “Dictionnaire de Bayle,” and the “Chronique des Religieux de Saint Denis,” by L. Bellaguet—a curious mixture by the side of Thackeray, Dickens, and Marryat. The list of local works, so much wanted by travellers and so rarely found, is eminently defective. Neither the first nor the second volume of Cleasby was among the number, and although the Latin translation of the Njála exists, Mr Dasent’s “Burnt Njál” did not appear. Of Englishmen in Iceland, I found Hooker and Mackenzie, Lord Dufferin, and Symington. Gaimard’s sumptuous and expensive work, including the folio illustrations, is there: its fate has been general abuse and unlimited “cribbing.” I was shown in London some photographs of exploration in the Vatnajökull, which were mere reproductions of the “Sommet du Snæfells Jökull;” and many a book of travels has similarly enriched itself.
[10] The oldest form is Frauva, and the later Frú is probably a contracted form of Fruvu, or of Freyja (Venus), according to the Prose Edda (c. 24), but in the glossary to the Poetical Edda, it is from Friðr, handsome, whence Friðla, a concubine, corresponding with the German Frau, but put after as well as before the name. It was little used before the thirteenth century, and in the fourteenth it was applied to abbesses and the wives of knights, not of priests. At present, it is given without distinction. Húsfreyja is = Germ. Hausfrau = Eng. Housewife, always a married woman. Junfrú is = Germ. Jungfrau, a princess in the thirteenth century, now simply Mademoiselle. Víf (Weib, a wife) is purely poetical in Icel.: it is supposed to be originally a weaver (Vefa, vífiðr). Hence the Anglo-Saxon Wîf-mann = woman, not womb-(Icel. Vömb) man. Herra (= Germ. Herr) was a title given in A.D. 1277 to the new Norwegian creation of barons (Hersar) and knights: bishops and abbots were also so styled. After the Reformation it became an integral part of the address of bishops, as Síra of priests, but only applied like the Latin Don (dominus) to Christian names. Now it is our Mister or Esquire in writing: in conversation Icelanders have no equivalent for these words; the person, if not a clerk, is simply addressed by his Christian name. The old scale of precedence was Konungr, Jarl, Hersir (the baron of Normandy and Norman England), Höldr (yeoman), and Búandi or Bóndi, = Germ. Bauer, a tiller of the ground (Cleasby).
[11] From Falda, to fold, hence the Ital. Falda and Faldetta, head-dress. As women vied in the size of this “stately national head-gear,” it obtained the sarcastic name Stiku-faldr, “yard-long fald.” In modern poetry, Iceland, with her glaciers, is represented as a woman with her fald on. Skaut is the “sheet” or veil, which hung down behind (Cleasby).