Iceland: Horseback tours in saga land

by W. S. C. Russell

Glaciers and Moraine on Arnavatnsheiði.

This shelter stands on the shore of the lake just under the shoulder of Eyriks Jökull. As this was one of the most unusual so was it the choicest of our experiences this summer. In front of the hut is a waterfall which connects the upper with the lower lake. Here upon this point of land Grettir lived for many years during his exile, six I believe. In ancient days this desert was infested with outlaws, desperate men, living upon sheep and cattle stolen from the farmers along the borders of the desert. Usually these were men who had taken human life and were ready to take others if it would secure to them their wild liberty. Considering the history of the place, its rough and weird aspect, its proximity to the life-destroying glaciers and the chaos so heavily stamped upon the land, it is not to be wondered that imagination has peopled this unfrequented area with trolls and witches, nor that a few people may be found to-day who tell their children that outlaws still live in the interior around the glaciers and in the lava caves.

In the summer of 1913 I was camping at Hvitávatn, White-Lake, on the east side of Láng Jökull with the same Icelander, Ólafur Eyvindsson, who was with us in 1910. He said that he first visited White-Lake in 1909 and that after he had retired with another Icelander to their tent which was beside that of Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Wright of Washington, D. C., they were thinking about the outlaws and Ólafur wondered if there was really any truth in the current stories of outlaws living here at the present time. At the close of conversation when sleep had fallen upon him, he awoke as with the sound of two men talking in a low tone in the Icelandic. He cautiously put his head out of the tent and with something like fear. He listened a few moments, the men drew nearer and he went to meet them.

To his pleasant surprise he found them to be a well known physician and his friend from Reykjavik. And this is all the truth there is to-day about outlaws in the interior of Iceland. There is only one thing to fear,—shortage of grass for the ponies. Grass the pony must have and feeding it to him is like feeding shavings to a roaring furnace. It is a rare sight to see an Icelandic pony lying down, for he will carry you all day and feed all night.

During the evening Ólafur and I shod the ponies, for the rough blocks had made havoc with their little feet. This was my first experience in the art of farriery. We hobbled them for the night and turned them into the bog beside the upper pond. Then we made great inroads upon our provisions. We gathered a few fragments of birch twigs and roots and some dried sheep manure and with this fuel were able to warm two cans of soup and to smoke the hut thoroughly. The smoke had the wholesome effect of driving out the dampness.

That evening is long to live in memory. We were fortunate in having no fog and a perfectly clear atmosphere. The vastness of the lava-riven plain, rolling away to the distant mountains, the network of ponds and glacial streams, glimmering in the lingering sunlight of the Arctic summer night, the great glacier, with blue-green walls and prismic domes, upon whose front hung scores of streams like strings of shining pearls,—such was the framework of the picture. The smoke from our root fire curled lazily upwards into the clear and rarified air from the diminutive pile of turf and lava that was to be our shelter for the night. The swan led their young from lake to lake in front of the camp and sang throughout the glorious night.

The hardness of the improvised bed of boards and saddles, or, perhaps it was the charm of the landscape, forbade my lengthened morning slumber and three o’clock found me crouched in the shelter of the cairn, drinking in the wonders of the scene,—glacier, lake and rolling moraine with the sunlight over all.

Eight in the morning, breakfastless, found us in the saddle. The ponies had fared poorly here, and if we were not to spend another night in the desert we must ride until we found grass, where pony and man could eat to repletion.