August 4.
This was a day of peculiarly hard work; I look back upon it with pleasure, because it introduced me to two new features, the cage and the sand-desert. The forenoon began with the inspection of the Jökulsá, here a frequent name: there are three which drain the Vatnajökull northwards—;the Little Jökulsá, from Snæfellsjökull, forming the headwater of the Fljótsdalr; the Great Easternmost Jökulsá, known to the people as the Vale River (á dalr), or the Bridge Stream (á Brú); and the Great Westernmost Jökulsá, or the Hill River (á fjöllum). Icelanders apply the term Jökulsá Eystri (eastern) and Jökulsá Vestri (western) to the chief headwaters of the Skagafjörð, as those who have read Chapter X. may remember. Our river, an ugly gutter-water, milky, mineral as the drain of a Cornish mining village, and consequently desert of fish, runs in an old valley; and the ledges between the hills and stream are the sites of frequent farms. The deep perpendicular rifts, cut by rain-torrents, are filled with wintry snow; and throughout this part of the country the people use sledges, heavy, tasteless board-boxes on iron runners, wanting all the finish of Russia and North America. The modern bed is mostly a crevasse of grey-blue basalt, black when wetted, built in regular strata, and pitted with drusic pock-holes: the perpendicular walls are split into thick and thin slicings; and slaty débris and spoil-banks deform the “broads” where the cliffs sink low into the valley.
The narrowest parts of the bed are naturally chosen for passage; in these gorges there is a great rush from sides to centre, with a furious boiling of the foul stream, tossing up dirty waves, from which there would be scanty hope of escape. On one precipice two ends of Kaðlar (cables), here inch ropes, knotted to one cross-piece, and passed over a second, are made fast under piles of rough stone: on the farther side the cords are roven with a round turn over the cross-piece, and are kept clear of the rock by a wooden bar, battened and rag-garnished, to prevent slipping and chafing. The Kláfur, or cage, is a lidless box, a stool, whose upturned legs are provided with pulleys; it is, in fact, the “cradle” which once crossed the chasm, 65 feet wide, between the Heights and the Holm of Noss in the Shetland Isles. The passenger, sitting or standing, is towed across by one of the two guys, fastened fore and aft. The passage takes about half a minute; you descend the sag with a little run, and are slowly hauled up the other section of the arc. Wire might be an improvement, but it would certainly be rejected as liable to cut the pulleys. Meanwhile, the guy is always snapping and wanting “splicing;” so, að fára í Kláfi, is by no means pleasant to the nervous man, who looks down upon
“The hell of waters, where they howl and hiss,
And boil in endless torture.”
I need hardly observe that the “cradle” is a form still ruder than the rudest Andine or Himalayan swinging-bridge, which gave a hint—for “travelling teaches”—to the civilised suspension.
We wasted four hours at this river, the chief delay being caused by the horses. The caravan then gathered at Eyríkstaðir, the large farm of Hr Jón Janssen. Whilst the nags were being shod, we drank “blanda,” milk mixed with water, the best procurable remedy for thirst. Inquiring about the stage ahead, we were told that it would take four, six, eight, or ten “tíma” (times), not to be confounded with “Klukku-stundir.” As the student Thorsteinn had left us, we here engaged for the day’s march the owner’s brother, Hr Gunnlaugr Janssen, who also gave complete satisfaction.
The afternoon had passed away before we began to clamber up the high eastern bank of the Jökuldalsheiði: presently we came upon a lake country, a scatter of tarns large and small. The map shows half-a-dozen, but not the largest, Ánavatn. Between them lie various hill-ranges, the Western Knefill and Sval-barð (the cool hill-edge), which yesterday appeared to us in epauletted form: to the west lay a Thríhyrningr, with triple peak on a meridian concealing the broad shoulders of Herðubreið. Where hill and water were not, sand, here chocolate-coloured, there bright yellow, gave unusual opportunities for a gallop, especially where the ground was free from dwarf-willow, deep earth-cracks, and streams whose black arenaceous beds bent and swayed under the horses’ weight. We were shown our line far ahead, marked by five bits of snow, which, disposed upon a hill-side, passably imitated the human face: it veiled and unveiled itself like a plain coquette.
On such a formation we expected a devious path hard to find; but we were bitterly disappointed by the absence of game, where heads in thousands have formerly been seen. Here and there lingered a duck or a teal, a snipe or snippet, too wild to approach; the Arctic tern (Sterna Arctica, Preyer) was not coy, but a solitary skua (Lestris Thuliaca? Pr.), that had gone a-fishing, kept well out of our reach. A sharp canter from No. 2 lake, Gripdeilir,[154] “Certamen ovium,” according to our literary guides, soon placed us at the lakelet and farmlet of Vetur-hús—winter-house, as opposed to Setr. It is neutral ground between the swamps, which, probably, are under water every spring, and the dry sands of the old sea-shore farther west. The owner, Páll Vigfússon, owns a boat for char-fishing, and a fine flock of goat-like sheep: his kailyard is well manured, to judge from the quantity of soft and brittle puffs (Icel. Gorkúla; Agaricus fomentarius), which here take the place of mushrooms.[155] The farm-box was a burrow worthy of St Kilda or Rona in the olden day, entered by a hall like a mine-gallery; the Baðstofa was fouler than the forecastle of a Greek brig; and the three bunks which serve as dinner seats, as well as beds, gave one the shudders. The only caloric was the natural form, which sheep have learned to utilise; and the only chimney was a hole in the kitchen roof. Yet the farm contained provision-room, smithy, workshop, byre, and sheep-house. It was my fate to sleep there on the return march, but I persuaded the good Paudl to put me in a hay-garret. After all, we must remember Sir James Simpson’s description of the Barvas district in the Isle of Lewis, where, during the last generation, neither window nor chimney, chair, table, nor metal vessel existed. What a national scandal was this barbarism!
After Vetur-hús we passed sundry farms, and we drank at every place, as if on the banks of the Congo. Men, boys, and maidens came out to be kissed by the two young guides, but we had only once reason to envy their island-privilege. Beyond the Ánavatn lay the Sænaut lakelet, once upon a time haunted by the fabled sea-cow; another pond was passed on the left, whilst swampy ground extended far to the right. We then ascended a ridge of sand scattered over with basaltic fragments, and saw the Grjótgarðr, or stone-fence. It has a singular appearance, a line of blocks, some of them ten feet square, roughly piled upon one another, and extending half an English mile across the neck of ground. The cubical masses appear like the produce of some quarry. The general look suggests the line of rocks subtending the Grind of the Navir: I can only conjecture that icebergs here meeting and grounding, have deposited their burdens of huge boulder-rocks. The legend is that two Trolls, one a sea-giant and the other a Jökull-giant, agreed to divide their domains; the former started from the north, the latter from the south; they built this wall at the place where they shook hands, and they lived in peace—I was not told whether they married—ever afterwards.
Descending from the Grjótgarðaháls, we halted near the last lake, and collecting a cart-load of willow-roots, which here represent the sage of the Far Western Prairies, we kept out the mist and cold with a roaring fire. The students, too lazy to follow our example, lay upon the ground; yet when riding, these shuddering tenants of the frigid zone muffled their throats in huge comforters, enclosed their hands in worsted gloves, and wore vast waterproofs of oilskin, with other signs of softness. It was the first fire, though not the last, that I saw in Iceland travel.