Ultima Thule; or, A Summer in Iceland. vol. 2/2

by Sir Richard Francis Burton

The next morning was spent in prospecting the humble wonders of Thingvellir; the Tingvold of Norway; the Dyngsted of Oldenburg;[116] the Dingwall of Ross-shire; the Tingwall of Hjaltland; and Tynwald of Dumfries and the Isle of Man. This assembly plain owes all its fame to history; its civilising influence upon the race reminds us of the annual reunions of the Greeks at Delphi, and the Hebrews at Jerusalem. Sentimentalists would restore the obsolete practice, and transfer the legislators from their comfortable hall at Reykjavik to this wild and savage spot—why not propose that the barons of England meet in parliament at Runnymede?

The lake is computed at thirty miles in circumference, and the depth in places to exceed a hundred fathoms. The aspect on a cloudless morning is that of the humble Scotch waters, wanting only gentlemen’s seats and a small steamer: here, however, we are in Snowland, and we see it. The depressed plain begins with the rugged delta of the Öxará,[117] or Axewater, and runs to the north-east about four miles each way: the limits north and south are mountains and hills, east and west run the twin “stone-streams.” Maps and plans make all the lava flow to the south-west from Skjaldbreið: this must be an error, as in parts it would flow upwards. I suspect a crater behind Hrafnabjörg, whence issued the double stream, which can be seen from Thingvellir: the two forks circled round that burnt red cone, anastomosed, and formed the Hrafnagjá and two shorter Geos in the eastern half of the same stone-torrent: the latter do not cut the road, but they are visible from every height. The fiery flood west of the plain which forms the Almannagjá (all-men or great rift),[118] is not so easily traced. A traveller might pass a satisfactory week to himself and others by journeying to Skjaldbreið, where a path leads, and by ascending the mountain high enough to map the lava-sources and the streams which form the two Geos.

LÖGBERG AND ALMANNAGJA.

The popular theory is, that the whole plain, an item of the pyroxenic plateau from Reykjavik to Geysir, has bodily “dropped at once and subsided” to its present level, leaving exposed a section of the rent rocks on either side. It reposes solely on the evidence of the two parallel Geos, and I do not see that they bear it out. Both of the inner sides have sunk, not from subterraneous crevassing, but because the strips of ground which subtended them could not bear the weight. Mr Scrope would account for the fosses, not by vertical settlement of superficial lava into any cavity beneath, but by the “simple and usual process, the bulk of the semi-fluid lava-stream, upon the cessation of supply from above, having run out into the depths of the Thingvalla Lake.” The normal operation of this movement, however, is to form a tunnel, not an open trough, and this objection is one of the least.

The contrast of mountain and water, as usual, gives a certain picturesqueness to the site. South-east of the lake rises the Búrfell, here a goodly presence, and no longer the little cone seen from about Reykir; south lies familiar Ingólfsfjall, and south-west towers the “tall hanging hill,” Hengilshöfði, famed for sulphur springs; snow-streaked, blue-tinted, and shaped somewhat like an elephant’s head. Wheeling round to face north-west, we see the pinnacles of Súlarfell, bristled as with trees; the fretted peaks about Gagnheiði; the dull black heap of Ármannsfell, so called from Orman the Irish giant, who there lies in his grave; and the ridgelet of Jornkliff, crouching below it. There to north-east stands Skjaldbreið, shield-shaped as its name says, ending in a snow-flaked umbo which suggests a crater. The peaks of Tindaskagi at its foot apparently connect with the great Hrafnabjörg; and far behind them, but brought near by the surpassing atmospheric clearness, sparkle the snows of Lángjökull. The eastern view ends with the quaint serrations of Dímon, which may be either lava blisters, or the lips of a true crater, with the long buttress-like promontory of Arnarfell, and with the background heights of Miðfell.

Dasent’s “Topography of the Thingfield,”[119] will confine our notices of details to a narrow range. We inspected the Ell-stone or Fathom-stone, a block of vesicular lava, 4 feet 9 inches high, opposite the church door, and planted upon a rubble foundation. The six lines upon the east face measure 1 foot 9 inches, 11 (10·50), 8, 7, 5, and 4 inches; they may be standards, but they look like the work of nature. We then walked up to the grassy site of the Althing, and that local Sinai, the Lögberg or Moothill, the latter a natural stone-mound to the north. Parliament was formerly held on an island; it was for the best of reasons transferred here, where the public was railed off by deep chasms, and where hon. members could be attacked only by a single gateway. So the Shetland Tingwall (Thingvöllr) was held on a holm,[120] accessible only by stepping-stones, and the Thing-booths were on the lake-plain. East is the Hrossagjá, and 20 yards west, the Nikolásagjá,[121] with the smaller Brennrugjá below the latter. These miniatures of the two great rifts, distant about a mile and a half from the lake, are of crumbling subcolumnar black rock, varying from 16 to 40 feet in breadth, and falling sheer some 30 feet to clear blue-green water, whose depths show detached blocks of lava. The two former unite to the north, the second and third to the south, enclosing a long oval with a natural bridge, a few feet wide, to the south-east. We admired the leap, worthy of Morton and the Black Linn, by which Flosi escaped the “blood-stone;” this article was shown to us on the western bank of the Hrossagjá, a detached slice some 12 feet long, whence the victim would fall into the “Geo.” Below to the west lay the lower Öxará, which has probably changed all its features since Njál’s day. Yet the guides still point out the islet, where holm-gangs were fought in presence of the multitude;[122] and amongst the sand-banks formed by ankle-deep rivulets, the “Thorleifshólmr,” upon which criminals were beheaded.

I passed the greater part of the morning examining the Almannagjá, whose total length is about two miles,[123] and the average breadth 100 feet. Ascending the outer or eastern edge by a slope of 20°, I found the upper strata to be ropy, treacly, and scoriaceous lava, whilst below and inside the couches are hard and crystalline. There is a slip in the “Topography of the Thingfield” (p. cxxvii.), where it says, “about a mile and a half from where the great rift touches the lake, its inner lip ceases,” and the “Enlarged Plan” makes it break off where it is very distinctly marked. The sole was a mass of débris fallen from the sides, and good pasture streaked with many a path. Up the chasm there are rude dry walls of mortarless stone, the Makíl of the Syrian goat-herd, and serving as Sæters for sheep—the guides declare them to be the Búðir of the old Thingmen, but their booths did not extend north of the river. The upper or western wall, whose crest is weathered into pinnacles, varies from 80 to a maximum of 100 feet, whilst the lower ranges from 30 to 50; both are perpendicular and show stratifications which seem to proceed from a succession of discharges.

The Axewater, above the “Geo,” is a stream like an English rivulet, flowing through a wild and desolate Heiði. It tumbles over the western lip by a gap about 50 feet high; here the layers of lava are well defined on both sides, and it is easy to climb up either flank of the toy cascade. This fall was sighted during the last march, and suggested great expectations as the foot was hidden. M. Gaimard takes the liberty of removing the screen, and showing the whole height prodigiously exaggerated. It does not “explode in a cataract,” but falls decently into a font-like kieve, and threads the sand and boulders of the Geo. After a few yards it finds a gap in the inner lip, and here it dashes towards the plain with two falls, mere steps in the rock. In the lower basin, “sack-packed wretched females”—the author must have been dreaming of the Bosphorus—were let down by ropes and drowned as a punishment for infanticide. Farther on, witches were burned; less lucky than other travellers, I could not find their bones. After thus bisecting the Geo from north-west to south-east, the Axewater runs along its eastern base, and enters the Thingvallavatn. The latter is drained to the south-east by the Sog (inlet) outlet, which eventually feeds the Ölfusá or lower Hvítá; it may be reached in five hours’ sharp riding from Thingvellir, and in about double that time from Reykjavik. Here in July any quantity of salmon-trout may be caught; the fish lie above the first foss thick as water-plants. My informant had taken twenty-five in one day; the heaviest was 7 lbs., and only two weighed under 6 lbs.; but he had been almost blinded by the plagues of gnats and flies, which covered his pony with blood-points.