The day broke frosty but kindly, like a fine November in England, with a sharp north wind, and an oily sea under lee of the land: stationary cirri stood high in air, and westward gleamed a clear stretch of green-blue sky. After Patriksfjörð, another remnant of the Írar or Eriners, and Tálknafjörð (whalebone firth), both of small importance, we open Arnarfjörð (Erne firth), the most important in the north-west after the Ísafjörð. Each greater massif is jagged into a saw-blade of minor peninsulas, forming shallow arcs, probably the work of ancient glaciers meeting the Greenland icebergs, and every valley is now bisected by its own drain, set free from the upper snow-fields. There is similarity but no sameness in the wild view. The cliffs give the idea of having been shot up their present height perfect and complete; the tableland, some 2000 feet high, and, of course, snow-covered, appears evenly upraised, yet laterally split in all directions by jagged rifts. Seen in profile, the cliffs form a long perspective of headlands, quoins, and bluffs, ranging between 500 and 1500 feet in height; and the strata appear to be horizontal, or little inclined. The bluffs, when faced, represent trap-ladders alternating with layers of reddish tuff: when distinctly stepped, they often fall steep and sheer to the unfathomed sea; in other places they are footed by a talus of débris. The former shape appears most commonly in the southern projections; in the northern tongues the Plutonic spines occupy far less area than the verdant lowlands which depend upon them, and these shallow slopes and plainlets are the sites of homesteads. The bleak table-lands above the bluffs are barely grown with hardy shrubs and gramens; the snow gradually increases as we go northwards; the patches and powdering become long streaks, and at last they touch the water’s edge, where every wave besprinkles them. Thule is here fairly Snowland.
All these projections culminate southwards in the great Gláma (clatter) system, and northwards in the Dránga Jökull, these two being the only important masses in the north-western corner of the island. They are said by those who have ascended them[76] to be becoming one great glacier, but as yet there are no exact data whereby to calculate either the measure or the periodicity of abnormal glacier action. The Gláma throughout our cruise was capped by clouds, which occasionally burst, and showed the slope and shoulders of the great hunchback.
We then opened the long and winding sea-river known as Dýrafjörð (wild-beast firth),[77] at whose northern bend rose the ridge of Gnúpr (Cacumen montis), foreshortened to a regular cone. A few farms were scattered about; and behind Gnúpr lay Mýrar, the northern station of the French frigate. The sea was by no means desert, we saw at the same time a schooner and half-a-dozen luggers, Gauls and Danes, the latter mostly confining themselves to the Arnarfjörð and the Ísafjörð. This must be a good line to attack the western horn of the Gláma, upon which Gunnlaugsson places a trigonometric mark, with farm-houses and “Skóg” (forest) extending eastward to its very base.
The next feature was the Önundarfjörð (Önundr’s firth), whose tenants are famed for wearing the longest beards on the island. The Súgandafjörð is distinguished by its deposits of Surtarbrand or lignite, which the people throughout this part of Iceland declare to be found on the headlands, not where we might expect it, in the bays. Fine specimens were sent to England last year (1871), and it is believed that a foreign company will take the semi-mineral in hand.
We were now approaching our third station, and shortly after mid-day we turned “Jón’s” head east. Isafjarðardjúp,[78] the deep of the ice-firth, and the largest of the north-western inlets is so called because when first sighted by Flóki it was filled with polar icebergs,[79] merits the terminal, as no bottom can be found at 300 fathoms, and it gives a name to the northernmost Sýsla. There is a curious contrast between the shores of the great bay—the northern side, Snæfjallaströnd, is lee land, whose snowy heights are subtended by a smooth, straight shore-line, whilst the southern is jagged and hacked by currents, floes, and the violent north-wester. To starboard before we round the corner crouches the fair, green vale of Skálavík (hall bay), dotted with farms, and flanked eastwards by Stigahlíð, the “stair-ledge” or slope, whose reddish trap produces abundant Surtarbrand. Opposite the upper jaw of the mighty gape is Grænahlíð, streaked with thin verdure, and striped, despite southerly frontage, by snow descending to the sea. The central projection of Snæfjallaströnd, representing the tongue of the gape, is tipped by Bjarnagnúpr, the bear’s knoll, where the “old man with the fur coat” has often landed from his floating home, weak and famished, a ready victim to gun, club, and scythe. He is always the white ice-bear; the other two kinds known in Norway are strangers to Iceland.[80]
A green bulge, an impasse between two mighty blocks, with a little stream in the middle, shows us the farms of Hóll—fishing-boats on the shore, and houses built upon tumuli, to guard against the periodical ragings of the brook. These settlements upon the western and northern shores assume somewhat the aspect of villages; in the interior, however, here as elsewhere, they diminish to scattered farms. The path from Hóll to Eyri. is a noted “ú-færa:” one would hardly suspect danger unless warned; yet during the course of the day we saw a land, or rather a stone, slip from the loose trap cliffs. Where the strand is barred by rocks the line runs up and down the débris; in other parts it lies upon the sands, and here the traveller pricks as fast as he can.
Presently we turned south into the Skutilsfjörð (“shuttle,” i.e., harpoon, firth), where the scenery became even more impressive. The bottom of the bay was split, and the two forks, separated by a central buttress, formed amphitheatres hoar with snow above and each traversed by its own runnel. The breadth of the mouth may be ten miles, and the twin cliffs of trap rose at least 1200 feet. Many streamlets dashed and coursed down the slopes; here and there they started from the ground, these features are always pointed out as curiosities, but they simply result from the drainage of the couloirs and snow wreaths disappearing under the rocky ground and reappearing, perhaps, hundreds of feet below. We hugged the eastern side of the picturesque firth, Arnanes, a flat tongue grown over with farms, in order to avoid a fronting spit or shallow. The continuity of the wall was broken by a deep “corrie,” or curved scarp, at whose mouth stood homesteads with scattered sheep, apparently waited upon by ravens. We then rounded a shallow that continues the sandspit of Eyri, and the clear way was hardly the length of our steamer. There is a pilot for this bay, but Hr Wydholm is “very stiff and proud,” demanding, for half-an-hour’s work, the unconscionable sum of ten rixdollars specie. So we did very well without him; likewise did a plucky little Norwegian cutter which followed “Jón” into the inner harbour. Fortunately the weather was fine: in last May Captain Müller had been delayed two days by the snow.
Eyri, in the maps, is popularly known as Ísafjörð. The former term,[81] throughout the island, means a sandspit, in places equivalent to the Greek “Zankle:” it is applied to the sickle-like banks of sand and shingle, which we first noticed from the Esja summit; the effect of confluence, influent meeting effluent. Here the line sets off from the western shore and bends first to the south-west, and then to the south-east, in the shape of an inverted letter S, forming a close dock, seven fathoms deep, along shore: as we glided in, a perfect calm succeeded the cold and violent rafales outside. This Eyri may be 600 feet broad at the base; here are a few scattered hovels, a neglected grave-yard and a wooden church and steeple, with the general look of a card-house. About the middle it thickens to a quarter of a mile, forming the body of the settlement, a bit of enclosed meadow-land and a rough square, the houses being independently oriented, but mostly facing north. The top fines off into a spit sixty feet across, and prolonged under water: it carries a single establishment of five sheds, an incipient windmill, and tarpaulin-covered heaps of dried cod—we shall take in a small cargo of heads for Grafarós. The streets are made simply by removing the stones; we count five flags, all Danish; the old houses are faded black and white, the new pink, grey, and yellow, and there are three roofs of very bright pigs-blood, such as delight the Brazilian eye. A single landing-place and several abortive attempts at piers show private not public spirit. The settlement has been sketched by Mr Shepherd, whose frontispiece makes the Eyri far too narrow; also our view of the same was by no means so romantic and startling in colour as his.
After feeding we ascended the eastern precipice, which shows two distinct steps and a broken coping. The new comer would expect a dry walk over the grass growing below the shunt of rubbish; we now know it to be a quaking bog, the effect of retentive fibrous roots, even upon the rapid slope. Murmuring runnels, which from the shore appear mere threads, become deep gullies, garnished on either side with rocks and boulders, shot down from the perpendicular cliffs. The weather was that of August in England, fostering a pretty little vegetation, yet we soon reached a deep patch of snow. The drainage flows into the Fjörð, and the sea-water tasted almost sweet.
After a bird’s-eye view of the settlement we returned on board. In all these places flaps of whale and porpoise meat hung out to dry, and huge vats and tuns, reeking with high shark-liver, diffuse an odour distinctly the reverse of spicy and Sabæan. The deck was crowded with open-mouthed sight-seers, who walked round us as if we had been lately floated over from Greenland, and who, between cigar-puffs, loudly asked one another, “What can they be?” In the evening they will be “fou” and fond. On our return we were fortunate enough to meet Hr Thorwaldr Jónsson, son of our friend Hr Guðmundsson of Reykjavik: he speaks French, as Médecin d’Isafjörð on his card shows, and he kindly gave me an amulet of Surtarbrand, engraved with “runes”—the form is not found in Baring-Gould’s collection.