Across Iceland

by W. Bisiker

We ought to have sailed late in the evening, but a thick fog settled over the land and prevented a start. Wonderful echoes can be produced at Seythisfjord; the steam-whistle was sounded several times, and the sound echoed and re-echoed again and again, the reverberation continuing for many seconds before it died away in the distance among the mountain tops. Fog and misty rain continued through the night and well into the small hours of the morning; but at about five o'clock it lifted sufficiently to allow the Ceres to put to sea. Progress was slow, and the frequent blasts of the steam-whistle that disturbed our morning slumbers indicated the state of the atmosphere; however, we entered Vopnafjord soon after mid-day, and shortly afterwards came to an anchorage opposite the town.

Vopnafjord is one of the homes of the eider duck, and it was on the rocky islets opposite to the town that we first saw those birds in their natural surroundings. We borrowed one of the ship's boats and rowed over to the rocks. It was difficult to get near, for the ducks were very shy—more so than usual just then, because many had young; but as they were too young to fly, we did get fairly near by rowing round their rocks. The nesting season was over, and many of the birds had gone away. The production of eider down is an industry that is increasing; the birds are rigorously protected, and a fine of ten kronur (eleven shillings) is the penalty incurred by any one killing an eider duck.

In the afternoon we went ashore in a hired boat that leaked very badly; but we reached the shore without anything very exciting happening. The return journey, however, was attended with considerable risk, for in the meantime the wind had risen, and there was a nasty choppy sea beating against us when we attempted to make the Ceres. Water entered the boat through the leaky spots, and more was shipped; we were near being swamped, but we made the gangway, and got on board without anything worse than a wetting. At the various ports of call there was often considerable difficulty in obtaining a boat, and the passenger wishing to get ashore had to take whatever craft was available, for they were very scarce. Often they were dirty and very leaky. Sometimes a passage was refused, and on one occasion a cargo-boat starting for the shore declined a fare of two kronur, although going direct to the wharf not far distant—the Icelander is an independent personage, and unless it suits his convenience he sometimes refuses a job.

While at Vopnafjord we met with a man, an Icelander, who could speak a little English; we soon discovered that he was proud of having acquired a few British swear words. Thomas and I were taking shots at a number of fish-cleaners at work on the beach, when this man came along; we had previously been in conversation with him, so he remarked airily as he passed that the result of our snap would be "a hell of a picture." We laughed, but he went on a few paces and then stopped beside a fellow-passenger, a man of strict views and ideas, who was photographing the same subject. The Icelander, encouraged, I suppose, because we had laughed, went one better on what he had said to us, and gave his opinion that this result would be "a blank, blanketty blank picture"!—he seemed surprised at the freezingly cold way in which his remark was received.

We left Vopnafjord in the afternoon and in four hours made Langanes, a narrow, flat-topped peninsula several miles long, a perfectly horizontal lava flow, with faces that rise vertically from the sea; the section is exactly the same, whether through the end or side of the peninsula. The whiteness of the points of rock and of the face generally, evidenced the fact that many sea-fowl resort there, and that the rock-face is covered with a deposit of guano.

At midnight we were inside the Arctic circle, and had the weather been favourable, we should have seen the sun just above the horizon. But His Majesty was not on view, for though the fog had lifted in the morning and had enabled us to make Vopnafjord, the weather had been dull all day, with the sun quite obscured, and the same conditions prevailed through the night. It was a pity, because it would probably be our only chance of seeing the midnight sun, for next day we should be in Akureyri, a town lying at the head of a long fjord, and nearly a degree south of the Arctic circle, where the view would, we thought, be obscured by intervening hills and mountains.

Husavik in Skjalfandi was our next port of call, and we arrived there early enough in the morning for us to go ashore before breakfast. Thomas and I were interested in a reported "raised beach"—land originally formed on the margin of the sea, and subsequently raised by tectonic (subterranean) disturbances to a height above sea-level. Miss Hastie was also desirous of seeing the raised beach, and trudged along with us over the hills to the bay where we expected to find it; but on arrival we could see no raised beach: there was some volcanic conglomerate, the rounded and smoothed stones of which had perhaps caused it to be mistaken for a raised beach—unless, indeed, we ourselves were on the wrong track and had mistaken the spot; nevertheless, there was nothing else in view that looked like what we were in search of, so we returned to Husavik over the hills again. Not long ago these hills were completely covered with fine yellow ferruginous loam—a comparatively recent deposit; but it is now being rapidly eroded, and the older moraine beneath laid bare.

At Husavik there is a great accumulation of moraine matter that has been brought down from the valley at the back. It is a terminal moraine that comes right down to the sea, which washes at the foot of its almost vertical face, fifty to sixty feet high. The town stands on the edge of the moraine, and the only approach from the pier is by a long flight of wooden steps; goods are conveyed in trucks that run up a steep inclined tramway, and these are raised and lowered by cables and the use of a windlass and friction brakes. Behind the town great fields of peat are being excavated and stacked ready for use as fuel.

On the voyage from Husavik to Akureyri, one of our fellow-passengers was the Icelandic minister of the church at Akureyri, a man who had a very fine tenor voice, the best in Iceland according to repute; at our request he sang to an accompaniment played on a small harp by a travelling companion. One thing he sang was the Icelandic National Hymn, entitled the "Hymn of Praise," composed by S. Sveinbjornsson to celebrate Iceland's thousand years of freedom. The thousand years were completed in 1874 (874 to 1874), and the fact was celebrated in that year with festivities and general rejoicing, the King of Denmark taking part in them.