“Qui fuit eximium gentis decus undique nostræ
Gutthormus, jacet hic tenui Hiorlerius urnâ.”
More satisfactory was the aspect of the farm, which supports 11 cows and 600 sheep. The labourers’ Hey-annir is now begun, and will last for six weeks: they were at work “queerving” the grass, as Shetlanders say, with long thin rakes, so that it may not dry too soon; “mixtæ pueris puellæ,” the lasses with turned-up sleeves and the inevitable gloves: at mid-day all seek shelter from the “torrid sun.” This essential part of Iceland “agriculture” is well and carefully done; and the number of hands enables the farmer far to surpass anything farther south. The “Taða,” or hay from the manured (Tað) infield, opposed to the Ut-hey, or produce of the outfield and hills, is close-shaved, and tedded twice, and even thrice, a day: that wanted for immediate use is carried to the house in Kláfrs (creels or crates), articles of universal use, the Leipur of the Færoes, which also carry peat in the Isle of Lewis; and the rest, when thoroughly dry, is stacked and covered with turf. The implements are mere toys, mounted on rods like billiard queues for easy packing and cheap passage. The scythe is a sickle attached to a two-handed stick nine spans long; the blade of three spans, little more than an inch broad, and sharp as a razor, is used here and in the Færoes because the warty ground permits no other. The rakes are of two kinds, with big pegs and with small teeth, both wholly of wood; and in the best farms there are always wheelbarrows and hand-barrows.
The venerable parson, who appeared somewhat “eld-gamall” (un vieux vieux), consented to give us an extra guide, a student lad named Thorsteinn, from the north country, whose circumstances had not allowed him to keep his term at Reykjavik: he was to receive the unconscionable sum of $4 for one day’s march. We set out in mid-afternoon, and rode down the Lagarfljót’s left bank, in twenty-five minutes, to the ruins of Skriðuklaustr, the last priory founded in Iceland. Two long barrows of earth and stone show the site of the church: they measure 87 feet north to south, and 62 east to west. The fane is surrounded by an enceinte of similar humble material: the northern entrance is apparently ancient; that to the west, modern. The habitations of the reverend men were near, but below the little adjoining farm; and there are still fragments of a built causeway running south-west to the cemetery. The latter lay all around the church, and the old custom has been perpetuated: to the south is the grave of Sýslumaður Winne, who died in the early eighteenth century; whilst another heap, which trends east to west, not north to south, is called the “tomb of the bad fellow”—a point of affinity between Icelandic and New Zealand English. Unfortunately, I had no time for skull-digging, and gaining the title of Haugabriótr (cairn-breaker).
We were not asked to dismount, nor did we dismount, at Bessastaðir: the tumulus of the founder, old Bessi (the bear), is a green heap by the river-side. After a general bout of kissing and rekissing, we began the rugged divide separating the Lagarfljót from the Eastern Jökulsá, and at once blundered northwards: when in the worst quagmire the new guides, Stefán and Thorsteinn, a cock-nosed lad of about twenty-two, quietly said, “Há, we should have gone there!” Gradually we rose to 2000-2200 feet, the average altitude of these Heiðis. The foreground was unusually repulsive, and its aspect suggested frost a few inches below. It was a surface of mosses, ever dank and dew-drenched; of iron-stained swamps; of tarns like horse-ponds; of soppy stream beds, with livid-yellow Palagonite encasing the gashes; of brown heath and black peat; of huge heaps instead of the usual warts, as if the farmer had just drawn the manure—in fact, it was a bad specimen of the worst parts of the New Forest centuries ago.
Our eyes, saddened by a path all steps and drops, were suddenly electrified by the first magical view of the Vatnajökull; it had hitherto been hidden by sundry outliers, especially the Eastern or lesser Eyvindar, a snowless block, or rather double block, curving like a serpent’s tail, from left to front, from south to west (275° mag.). For better examination, we dismounted at Vegup—“Collis viæ,” said the students.
Behind the Snæfell cone a blue distance of lowland sweeps, like a streak of paint, to the very foot of the “Lake Glacier,” whose general aspect is a high dorsum of virgin white, an exaggeration of the Wiltshire downs after a heavy fall of snow. The first thing which strikes me is that the altitude by no means justifies all this eternal frost: we must probably seek a cause in the immense agglomeration of ice behind; in thrust from above, and in the prevalence of southerly, here the frigid, winds. Secondly, the features of the grand névé are perfectly separable and distinct, very unlike the dead blank plateau of all the maps. Beginning from the south-west, we notice the domed Kverk (throat) Jökull, fronted by the feature which gives it a name; the huge gloomy mound, fissured to the north, stands boldly out from the pure expanse, and sinks to the level of the deep-blue air. Successively rise the Skálafell (hall-hill), a double cone, connected by a long yoke of miniver, and fronted by a glistening glacier; the three horns of Sval-barð and the ice-mailed points of Snæfellsjökull, not to be confounded with the isolated Snæfell cone:[153] this small Spitzbergen,
“ribbed and paled in
With rocks unscalable and roaring waters,”
all bristling with pink and silvery spikes, tapering, tooth ranged near tooth, in formidable array, projects a long slope eastwards. Farther on, the line, bombé in the map, bends with a great bay from us. Helped by Olsen and the students, we pick out the various features of the south-eastern corner; the Heinabergsjökull (hone-hill glacier); the Sauðhamarstindr (sheep-cliff point), a dark mound like a brown cloud; and eastward, again, the Kollumúli (hind-mull), alternately a black tower and a ridge-end; whilst behind, and upon another plane, flashes a great and glorious snow-peak which, at other angles, assumes the aspect of a bluff or buttress. To the extreme south-east, the blue and snow-streaked horizon, backed by pearly mists, swells into a gigantic bride-cake, the Hofsjökull, bounded west by a pale saddleback, and north of it lies the now familiar dome of the Thrándar ice-mountain. The gold and purple gleams of the westering sun, the opalline play of the projections and prominences which catch the lights, the faint pink-azure of the shades, and the skylarking of the cloud-hosts over the heads of the tallest peaks, set off by the umbreous black foreground, dull and sodden, by the beggarly features of the middle distance, and by the wash of deep damascene blue at the base, fall into glorious picture; and the presence of black spots, like “erminites,” in the waste of white suggests the haunts of some Troll-like race—I no longer wondered that there are superstitions about this mysterious realm of eternal snow.
After a sketch, for the purpose of better fixing the picture upon the brain-plate, we jogged on, leaving the snow-streaked Knefill (the pole) to the north; and at eleven P.M. we began the short and rugged descent to the Eastern Jökulsá. The mountain flank was gashed with the hideous chocolate-coloured chasms of the Sharon plain; we had to pull our way-fagged horses down boulder and through bog. As we reached the riverine plain, well sheltered from the wind, the poor beasts recovered courage and carried us gallantly into the new farm, with its three-gabled house, Thorskagerði (codfish garth). Whilst Mr Lock and I put up the tent, “Charlie” bolted into the “eld-house” (kitchen), much to the astonishment of the gudewife, who bolted out in demi-semi-toilette: we supped at the “fashionable” hour of one A.M., and we slept in the broad bright dawn.