There are two dormitories in which the little beds stand side by side. Everything is of the humblest description; even the ceiling of the professors’ sitting-room wants repair. A change to the capital has somewhat modified the excessive uncleanness which foreign visitors remarked at Bessastaðir, but there is still much to be desired.
In the Introduction I have given the details of the High School. The programme leaves little to be desired, but sensible Icelanders agree with strangers that the education is sterile and not “serious,” in the French sense of the word invented about 1830. The pupils learn a smattering of many things, but nothing thoroughly. This is doubtless the result of a social condition in which only superficial knowledge is at a premium: the same may be remarked in the United States and in the Brazil, compared, for instance, with Oxford and Coimbra, where students find specialties necessary.[4] The consequences of studying Icelandic and Danish, Latin and Greek, English, French, and German, are that very little can be learned. At the beginning of the century every priest could converse in Latin—I have now met many who cannot speak a word of it, and I have not met one who spoke it even tolerably. The useful cosmopolitan dialect has been exchanged for “modern languages:” similarly the Magyar now cultivates his own dialect, and has abandoned the Latin which, to him almost a mother-tongue, kept Hungary in contact with the culture of the West.
The pupils are hard workers and have excellent memories; they must chiefly, however, depend upon books, and the result is that whilst many of them collect a fair stock of phrases, and pronounce them remarkably well, they can hardly understand a word of the reply. Another and a severer charge is brought against the establishment. The dissipations of Reykjavik appear very mild to a dweller in European cities, but they are, comparatively speaking, considerable. Youngsters between the ages of fourteen and twenty-three easily learn to become boon companions, and to lay the foundation of habits which affect their after-lives. The professorial Hetæra being unknown, the students are apt to make any connections which present themselves, and intrigues with the “ancilla” sometimes end in marriage perforce. Thus the country clergyman or the franklin begins life burdened with a helpmate utterly unmeet for him; who neglects his house and children, who thinks of nothing but dress and “pleasuring,” and who leads him rapidly on the road to ruin, in a country where all domestic comfort and worldly prosperity depend upon the “gudewife.” Hence the old system of schools at Skálholt and Hólar, and even at Bessastaðir, is greatly preferred, and, perhaps, even now the seminary might with profit be removed to Thingvellir. Here it has been proposed to lay out a model farm, where the alumni could add agriculture to their pastoral acquirements.
About the age of twenty-three the Skóla-piltar, or pupils, become “students,” that is to say, B.A.’s. In order to enter the learned professions, especially the law, they matriculate at the University of Copenhagen, where they are housed and receive annual stipendiums of £15 to £20. They distinguish themselves by thrift and canniness, emulation, energy, and abundant application, when the place agrees with them. But often they suffer from the insidious attacks of a climate which even Englishmen would call rigorous; the comparative mildness acts upon them as tropical heat upon us, and in not a few cases they die of pulmonary disease.
Medicine may be studied at Reykjavik. The school is simply a room in the Hospital, and subjects for dissection cannot be had without a permission, which is generally refused. On the other hand, students have the benefit of lectures from thoroughly able men, Drs Hjaltalín and Jonassen. The course lasts from three to five years, and after an examination the Læknir (M.D.) may either practise in private, or aspire to become “physicus,” at some out-station.
Theological students attend the Priests’ Seminary at Reykjavik. It consists of two lecture rooms, fronting the sea, in Hafnarstræti, and furnished with chairs and black desks, a stove, and a list of lectures. The candidates who reside in the town are taught by the Lector Sigurðr Melsted and two “Docents,” Hannes Árnason and Helgi Hálfdanarson. The examinations take place in June and August; the former tests their progress in logic and psychology, the latter in theology, ecclesiastical history, exegesis, and canon law. The course lasts at least two years, and at the age of twenty-five, after the final examination, students obtain the degree of “candidat.” Some do not choose to be at once ordained, reserving the final step for later in life, but the material advantages of the profession in Iceland never allow it to lack recruits. The result of such a course is to saturate the mind with the Bible, learnt from translations and explained by the individual opinions of swarming commentators. It makes men “fall down and worship” (as the great Spinoza has it) “an idol composed of ink and paper, instead of the true word of God.” And when the superficial and ill-taught “divine” has to do battle with a polemical Catholic or a pugnacious Rationalist, the action generally ends in a ludicrous defeat. I especially allude to the late controversies with M. Baudouin, and the disputes with “Free-thinkers,” recorded by Professor Paijkull: the Great Book, or Commentary on St John, written by Candidat (Theologiæ) Magnús Eiríksson, is attacked by an “Old Pastor,” with an obsolete virulence worthy of the Inquisition.
I was introduced to Professor Hannes Árnason, the geologist of the Government College, who kindly showed me the collections of natural history. Of botany there is none, the hortus siccus seems to be generally neglected in the smaller museums of the world: the student must content himself with Dr Hjaltalín’s work, and the “Flora Danica,” of which a good, but untinted, copy is found in the College Library. Zoology is confined to a few stuffed birds.[5] The mineralogical collection is richer; mostly, however, it is a rudis indigestaque moles; the upper part of a chest will be labelled, and the lower drawers in most unadmirable disorder. Moreover, where the traveller wants only local specimens, they are mostly general; for instance, a small cabinet of fourteen drawers contains Germany.[6]
We then proceeded to the College Library, a detached building of solid construction, but suffering sadly from damp accumulating in the porous stone. In the big bluewashed room fires are neglected, consequently the books are damp and mildewed.[7] At the bottom, above a broken globe, is a votive tablet erected to an English benefactor, Charles Kellsall of London, who supplied funds for the building, and who left it a library, which, they say, has not yet begun its journey Icelandwards: there is none to Mr John Heath, who printed the Rev. Jón Thorlaksson’s well-known Eddaic paraphrase of “Paradise Lost,” and to whom the Icelandic Literary Society owes a heavy debt of gratitude.
The principal library is in the Dómkirkja, under the charge of Hr Jón Árnason, inspector of the Latin School—in Iceland, as amongst Moslems, the church is considered the natural place for the library. You open the Lich-gate, ascend the right-hand staircase, and a second dwarf flight leads to the greniers under the roof. When the sun shines, the slates are too hot for the hand: this keeps the collection dry; and the reader is disposed to enjoy it.
The library opens on Wednesdays and Saturdays between twelve and one P.M., when you are allowed freely to borrow after signing your name. The interior is not prepossessing. The total of the volumes may be 14,000; but the catalogue is still to be made. Printed papers lie about in extreme confusion, and “vieux bouquins” are so strewed and piled that you can hardly find what you want. Many of the sets also are imperfect, having been lost or stolen. The three large deal stands, and the shelves ranged against the higher wall, do not supply accommodation enough, and the single writing-table is always desert. The curiously-carved black press from the west, and the pulpit with the four evangelists rudely cut upon it, are interesting, but should be transferred to the Antiquarian Museum.[8]