The ornaments, belts, buttons, bodices, chains, and rings, mostly heir-looms, are as numerous as the articles of dress: they are survivals of the time when people wore all their wealth. Some of the Hnappar (buttons), round and of worked surface, have one or more figures of the Crucifixion hanging to them. These are no longer made. There are Ermahnappr, silver-gilt buttons, for the sleeves,[12] and much larger, with clasps, for the waist; bodkins (Laufa priónar), ornamented with silver; Keðja, chains of sorts; Hálsfesti for the neck, and Herðafesti for the shoulder; rings of gold, silver and brass, one of them spiral and elastic; Nisti (bracelets), and Mallinda, velvet girdles, embroidered with silver. Some of the belts are plates of gold and silver, linked together, and hanging down in front almost to the knees. There is an immense demand for these curios: every stranger carries off some specimens of the old work, with which the owners are compelled by necessity to part: the country people would be buyers, not sellers. Modern imitations are made without any success at Reykjavik, but not elsewhere. You give German dollars to Páll Eyúlfsson, or to Hr Sigfusson, if the latter is sober, and they convert them into filigree work, which does not contrast well with the neat, plain jewellery of Norway, now becoming known in England. Needless in these days to warn strangers against counterfeits, the “Iceland snuff-boxes” of walrus tooth are mostly made in Germany.
Near the door is a quaint bird’s-eye sketch, dating from 1770, brought from the Borgafjörð Sýsla, and illustrating the dress of the time at a Bær,[13] or farm-house. In front of the buildings, which are all out of perspective, as if the painter had Chinese eyes obliquely set, stand groups of men and women, walking, riding, and working. The former have knee-breeches, and one of them not a little resembles in suit the portraits of Doctor Johnson. There are two sawyers, and others ply the iron-shod wooden spade, of which a specimen hangs in the room. The women, raking hay, or pumping, drawing, and carrying water in pails, bear the Skaut-faldr, now confined to Sundays and festivals. Another portrait of a woman (1772) wears a foulard round the head, instead of the skull cap or foolscap. A curious pencil sketch, probably copied from the original in the Skarð church, Breiðafjörð, shows Daði Bjarnarson (ob. æt. 68, A.D. 1643) and his wife Arnfrydur, both kneeling with cuffed hands: he wears a Skegg (beard), in cut and shape most like a tile, huge trunk hose, tight stockings, and shoes with big rosettes.
The same room contains a variety of domestic implements, especially worked tapestry: in another part specimens of large-meshed white lace are preserved. There is a bed, dating from 1740, box-shaped, but not so much as the modern: on the outer side the occupant and the clothes are guarded by rudely carved Rúm fjöl (bed foils) or planks, five feet long, still used here and at the Færoes. Being carpentered into the chamber-walls, the other side requires no such protection. Curtains shelter it from the cold: there are coverlets and a night-cap, in those days often used as a day-cap; and the outer corners are supplied with rude human figures. The mannikin at the tester holds a kind of candlestick, evidently to facilitate the practice, pleasant but wrong, of reading in bed. Upon the top of a press stands a lantern, with scanty glass, and woodwork rising flamboyant, or rather like green sausages, above it. All the rooms contain upright planks, grotesquely carved: these are lineal descents from the consecrated high seats of the heathenry, and in more modern times they were ranged round the hall, with hangings between. One of them shows a mermaid with pendent bosom and child; of course, desinit in piscem. The single chair has a tall carved back and inside the two doors are sets of ornamental iron work. The quaint-shaped knockers are purely Roman—they are still dug up in Syria.
The weapons, which date from A.D. 1050 to 1400, are represented by old spears and halberts. A good imitation Toledo blade, with sunk midrib; daggers and battle-axes, one of which was taken from under a heap of stones in the Vestmannaeyjar; chain armour, and a variety of large and small Bigones (hones), of smooth compact basalt, for cleaning and sharpening weapons. A saddle cloth, hanging against the wall, shows figures of various animals, tolerable tambour work, in the Persian style. There is a collection of iron, wooden, and bone stirrups, and sundry prick-spurs. The cups are interesting; and one of them, probably intended for a man and his wife, contains at least a quart bottle. The finest are made of walrus teeth (Rostungr, Trichecus rosmarus), the animal being often cast ashore in the north: poorer specimens are of horn. Here we find the material for the Guma Minni, or memorial bowls; the Guðfödurs Minni, or cup quaffed to God the Father; the Heilags Anda Minni, to the Holy Ghost; the toast to the Archangel Michael, a fighter like old Thor; the Mariu Minni, of the Blessed Virgin; and the Marteinn’s Minni, to Martin (Turonensis). The snuff-boxes are unlike the horns now used: one is an oval, with an upper plate of ivory and wood below, hooped round with brass, and containing a cullender, probably used for pulverising the leaf. Mangling seems to have been a favourite occupation; the hand articles (Kefli) are found in numbers: the roller is smooth; the upper stick is carved, and gaudily painted;[14] and the étuis are as numerous as the mangles. One case containing bobbins is fastened to an embroidery cushion; another bears date 1677. Some hold horn spoons, others razors, others buttons, and all are shaped like the inkstands of the East, and curiously but artlessly carved. There is a coarse plane for the carpenter. The weaver of rude cloth worked his sword-shaped shuttle of polished bone, yielded by the whale, whose ribs also supplied rafters, more expensive but more durable than wood. The mammal gave material for dice and draughtsmen played at Kotra (tables), and these are the nearest approaches to the “chessmen made of fish bones,” mentioned in old books. There is a specimen of the Langspiel (violin), and its horsehair bow, formerly so well known in the Scoto-Scandinavian islands.[15] This instrument has three pegs for strings, and seventeen frets, but no bridge: possibly it was played with the thumb, as the Barber of Seville is still wont to do. Uno Von Troil supplies it (p. 92) with six brass wires, acting strings; but I do not understand what his “symphon” is. Mackenzie sketches it, but shows the side instead of the face; and Hooker, drawing it from memory, draws it incorrectly.
The spoils of the Old Church are not numerous: they consist of two altar-cloths embroidered in colours; the altar stone from the Skálholt Cathedral, white marble, blackened above by use; an antique monstrance with a Latin inscription; and some fine enamelled and jewelled crucifixes, said to date from A.D. 1300: many of the stones have been picked out, but the eyes remain. There is also a rudely carved salmon, supposed to have been an ex voto.
In the same room stand two cases (unnumbered) containing finds from a grave opened at Baldursheim in the north, and supposed to date before the Christian era (A.D. 1000). Besides a few bits of rusty iron, serving for different purposes, it has a calvaria without front teeth, and with a large occipital projection like a woman’s. A third case, also from the same place, shows fragments of another calvaria, a large jaw and other bones, a small tooth-comb, and sundries. A fourth has horse-bits of bronze and rust-eaten iron, shaped like the modern, and huge spurs with and without rowels, now unknown in the island except to foreigners. A fifth and a sixth preserve fine old filigree buttons and gold brooches, larger than crown pieces, used as fibulæ for the breast and shoulders: they are said to be pre-Christian; and the Edda (Völundarkviða, 24) alludes to a curious ornamentation:
“But of the teeth
Of the two (children),
He (Völundr, or Wayland Smith[16]) breast ornaments made.”
And even in modern days maternal affection sometimes mounts a sucking-tooth in a ring. The necklace beads are very interesting; some are of jade, others of crystal, and others of amber. There is a long blue bugle, not unlike the Popo bead of West Africa, and the specimen which Mr Rattray found at Sáhib el Zamán (Cælesyria), and presented to the Anthropological Institute. Others are irregular tubes with green, red, and white upon black ground; the forms, and even the decorations, may be found everywhere, from the British Islands to the Arabian Desert. It is hard to say whence these articles came to Iceland, beads are indestructible as gums and cowries: of all ornaments they seem to have travelled farthest.
There are also two presses containing antiquities, presented by Mr Henderson, son of the well-known Icelandic traveller; the Lord’s Prayer in old characters, ancient annotations of music, and a document with the signature of the martyr (?) Jón Árason, “Biskup à Hólum.” The seal, printed on red wax, bore a crucifix with the bishop standing to the left: on the right was a mitre and a shield charged with a lily.
The most interesting parts of the collection to me were what have been contemptuously called in Scotland “chuckie stanes.” Strictly speaking, no pre-historic remains exist in Iceland: perhaps it is safer to say that none have yet been found. At present we must believe, despite the synecdoche of “Ultima Thule,” that the island, when colonised by the Irish monks, was a desert, and we must continue to hold this opinion until Mongoloid skulls or other remains shall have been discovered. The neolithic-stone age still endures in Iceland, as it does in the Brazil, not to mention other countries. Here almost every cottage, in places where iron is wanting, has a stone-hammer for pounding fish: it is a rounded ball of porous basalt about four inches in diameter, and bored through to admit a wooden handle. The general use of the article may convince students that the pierced celts and stone axes which, on account of easy fracture, were held to have been intended for worship or display, and, perhaps, for reproducing copper or bronze forms, might have been used for battle if not for work.