Across Iceland

by W. Bisiker

We invaded the work-room and bed-chamber, which is usually called the bathstofa. As its name implies, this chamber was once the bath-room of the house; but bathing has gone much out of fashion with the Icelander, and he no longer considers a tub at short intervals to be desirable. The bathstofa is now used as a living-room; it is fitted up with a series of open bunks ranged along the sides, in which the various members of the family repose at night; but the bunks serve not only for sleeping purposes—they are often the receptacle for all sorts of things, and we could hardly help noticing in one a miscellaneous collection consisting of sugar, stockings, skin shoes, tea, etc. There were several spinning-wheels in the room, and at our request the lady of the house set to work at one of them. The family made cloth, various articles of clothing from it, sheep-skin shoes, and bone spoons with "Gullfoss" carved on them, for the "trippers" who call when on the way to Gullfoss. One of the daughters was an expert in the use of vegetable dyes; she was not at home, but we saw some of her work. We bought a few things: shoes, stockings, gloves, rugs, etc., and the "handy man" cleared out the stock of cloth and called for more, but more was not to be had there. Later in the day, however, we passed another farm where cloth could sometimes be bought; the "handy man" heard of this, and we lost sight of him for more than an hour while he was, ostensibly, making further purchases, though he did not seem to be overburdened with their weight when at last he turned up. In the evening he remarked on the beauty of a girl that he had seen at the farm, which raised grave doubts as to whether the charms of this beauty had not been the real cause of his long stay there. We thought it mean of him not to have informed us when in the neighbourhood, and told him so; he smiled serenely, for we were then a safe distance away—half a day's journey. We expected to camp that night at Geysir; so when the "handy man" appeared with his bundle of cloth, we pushed on for that interesting spot. We had to cross the river Tungufljot on the way; it is a rather deep and swift-flowing river, but we made an excellent crossing at a recently discovered ford where the water did not reach much above the level of our stirrups.

At Geysir there is a region of hot springs, geysers, and blue, boiling cauldrons, where one can stand on the sinter margins, look deep down into the blue waters, and imagine whence they come. There is also a number of holes where liquid mud bubbles and splutters. There are geysers active, and others quiescent and extinct. Among the latter is the celebrated Strokur—a few years ago it was very active, but now it is quite dead; it died during an earthquake that occurred in 1896. Although the earthquake stopped Strokur, it seems to have caused Great Geysir itself to play with increased energy. Strokur had to be coaxed into activity, but it was easily done by feeding it with lumps of turf, which were thrown into its yawning mouth, wide open always and ready for a meal. It never failed to give a display when properly fed. It was when it had had a surfeit, and was likely to be choked with the turf, that it erupted, ejecting the turf violently, and at the same time shooting upward a column of boiling water and steam. But all this is of the past—no quantity of turf will provoke it into activity now; it is dead, and there is no indication that it was once the scene of violent disturbance; nothing remains as a record of former glories but a hole in the ground a few feet in diameter.

It was late in the evening when we arrived. The weather was not what we should have liked, for it was dull and rainy; there had been much rain at Geysir during the previous few days, and we were informed of the fact by a farmer living in the neighbourhood. It is said that Geysir erupts more frequently during and after a period of much rain, and also when the wind blows from a certain quarter—I forget which quarter, but that is immaterial now, for the all-important thing is that it was then blowing in the favourable direction. Whether there is any real ground for the reports I do not know, but I record the fact that during a stay of about fourteen hours Geysir erupted six times, and that the average is said to be one in twenty-four hours. The first eruption occurred while we were at supper at about 10.15 p.m. There was a dull, deep-seated thud somewhere below, a sort of subterranean rumbling that caused us to inquire of our conductor, who was rather deaf, what it was. We had previously been informed that certain premonitory rumblings always preceded an eruption; but we were doubtful whether what we then heard was the warning. The conductor had not heard it, and he was endeavouring to explain to us the nature of the sound when a guide rushed to the door of the tent to inform us that Geysir was about to play. We hastily left our meal, made an abrupt exit from the tent, and rushed to the spot. Surely enough it was in eruption, for great clouds of steam were rising from the crater and rolling towards us. We got to windward of the steam, and looked towards the crater, and what a sight it was! High into the air, sixty, seventy, eighty feet up, there was shooting stream after stream of boiling water, which fell in showers of spray all around, some descending towards the crater and meeting on its way the outgoing streams. A ring of sinter surrounds the crater; it is raised ten to fifteen feet above the general level of the ground, so the hot water that fell upon it ran off in a ring of little cascades. It was a wonderful sight, this enormous natural fountain; it continued to play for two or three minutes before it gradually subsided and stopped—all was then still, save that the last of the water was streaming over the edges of the sinter ring, whence a little steam was rising. As soon as the eruption came to an end, we climbed upon the ring, which has a diameter of something like a hundred feet; there is a large depression or basin in it that is filled with water before eruption, but it was then empty. In the middle of the basin there is a funnel, said to be about sixty feet deep; at the surface it is about sixteen feet in diameter. We stood on the edge of this funnel or crater, looking down into its depths, the water then standing at a level of something like fifteen feet below that at which we had previously seen it.

THE SINTER RING OF GEYSIR.

We returned to our interrupted meal, congratulating ourselves that we had arrived just in time to witness the fine display, without at all expecting that we should have another opportunity of seeing such a spectacle. But, as I have stated, we were lucky enough to see in all six eruptions, three of which occurred at short intervals during the night. The first occurred at 10.15 p.m.; the others at 1.30, 3.30, 6.30, 8.30, and the last of the series at 10.45 a.m. The finest displays were the first, second, and last. The second, that at 1.30 a.m., occurred just after we had turned in, but the warning rumblings sounded before we had gone to sleep. Each made a dash at some articles of clothing, and hastening into them, made a blind rush through the rain to the side of Geysir, where we presented a curious spectacle: we were a very motley assemblage indeed, and the various costumes it would perhaps be better not to describe accurately. I have not a photographic record of the scene—there had been no time to get out cameras, and the light was very bad.

THE FUNNEL OR CRATER OF GEYSIR.

There is a smaller geyser, known as Little Geysir, distant about a quarter of a mile from its more important neighbour. Now, this happened to be in good working order, for it erupted while we were finishing our evening meal, sending up spray to a height of from ten to twenty feet, and continued more or less active during the rest of the night.

Many were the boiling and bubbling springs that we saw along a line of fissure nearly half a mile in extent. The basins of some of them were very beautiful, one especially, where the water was of a bright blue colour and the edges of the sinter basin quite white. The basins and terraces are composed of the silica that was at one time held in solution in the water that flowed over them; it was gradually deposited layer upon layer, slowly lining the vent through which the water was ejected, and building up the terraces and basins.