The stone articles in Iceland seem to be imitated from those of the outer world; and the similarity of type, extending from England to Australia, has not a little astonished anthropologists:[17] “Tant il est vrai,” says Sig. Visconti, “que l’esprit de l’homme, malgré la différence des siècles et des climats, est disposé à agir de la même manière dans des circonstances pareilles, sans avoir besoin ni de tradition ni d’exemple.” Hence the New Zealanders, as well as the old Icelanders, gave names to their ancestral canoes, their paddles, and their weapons. The steatite bowls might be from Minas Geraes: the material, according to the people, was supplied by the southern islands. On the other hand, Mackenzie (chap. ix.) found about Drápuhlíð, “a yellowish white substance, having a smooth, shining fracture; it may be cut with a knife, and appears to be steatite.” He also mentions (p. 428) friable, white and reddish-brown steatite, near the hot springs of Reykjavik. A truncated, tetragonal pillar of bluish soap-stone, with a square cornice and a shallow cup ending in a cylinder pierced right through, is somewhat mysterious: possibly it was used, and so local tradition asserts, as a portable font.
The basaltic specimens are: 1. Weaver’s weight bored for stringing; 2. Sinker for fish-net, with deep groove round the longer waist of the oval; 3. Weight, dating from 1693, shaped like a conical cannon-ball, and adorned with bands and bosses; 4. Circular quern-stone with hole through it; 5. Cone, with flat base, used to grind colours; 6. Rude ladle with broken handle; 7. Pierced stones for spindles, resembling the African; 8. Various hones, before alluded to; 9. Prismatic column with runes, taken from a tomb; and, lastly, what seems to have been a club or axe. Though made of the hardest and closest basalt, with broad ribs whose angles are now rounded, the specimen is imperfect: the handle, one foot one inch long, is partly broken away, and the head, four inches broad, lacks the edged part. Still it is the most valuable of the “ceraunei lapides.”
THE BASALT HAMMER. THE STONE WEIGHT.
The east room has a large central stand of four compartments. We especially remark: 1. The seals of ivory and bone. 2. An iron châtelaine to which hung a knife, a skewer, and a key, not unlike those we use for watches, but with the handle more rounded: it is inscribed I. H. S. 3. A diminutive “Hammer of Thor,”[18] with a magical character on the head which discovered thieves: the only other “Miölner” on the island belongs to a widow at Hofsós. 4. Buttons of horsehair from the mane and tail; they were still used by the Færoese in 1810. 5. Two specimens of the Lausnarsteinn, a flat, hard seed two or three inches in diameter, which here, as in Cornwall, was supposed, when drunk in infusion, to facilitate parturition: the superstition vanished when it was found to be not a magic bean but only a horse-chestnut thrown ashore, like the Dolichos urens and the Entada gigalobium, by the currents. 6. Onyxes and agates, called Nachturn-steinn (nature stones), which, being banded, were held to be charms, and prevented the owner losing his cattle, whilst the Oska-steinn (asking-stone) gave him all he wished. 7. A fine Christ, evidently from a crucifix; the blood is enamelled, and the work appears to be Byzantine.
Two cases to the east contain a few early types cut in wood, and one of them is devoted to those of Hreppsey. Only one letter of 1488 remains, and there are a few capitals used by Bishop Guðbrand at Nupúfell in Eyjafjörð. The drawers beneath protect old manuscripts written with decoction of willow-bark, or with the arbutus-juice which served as cloth-dye: the colour is well preserved. A glass box hanging to the western wall contains German coins, pottery, quaintly rounded silver spurs, and Bishop Guðbrand’s drinking-cup. Another and a similar case shows the only procession flag in the island; it is of faded pink silk, almost colourless, with a white linen cross and an edging of three lappets fringed with green and gold. There are also narrow webs for weaving ornamental cords.
Over the western doorway hangs an old lace bed-curtain, white, and well made. Scattered about the room are various articles—viz.: 1. A wooden plank with an epitaph dated 1755, and quite in the style of the “lying tombstone;” 2. Carved door-posts for the church or the house; 3. A large wooden chair, the arms ending in carved knights, whose horses are those of our chessmen; and 4. A beam, ten feet long, pierced with thirty-two holes—with such an instrument Penelope might have woven her web. There is also a specimen of the old Flekí, two or three boards thirty-two inches long by twenty-eight; it was drilled with holes pierced for snares of twisted horsehair, and anchored off some skerry with ropes, and stones or horse-bones. A decoy bird upon each instrument was useful to catch guillemots.
CHAPTER VII.
TOURISTS AND TOURS—GUIDES AND HORSES—HORSE GEAR, TRAPS, AND TENTS.
Presently the steamers left Reykjavik, and the torpid little community hybernated once more: it will awake and buzz for a while when the next mail comes. In the meantime—