Ástkaera fósturmold,
Fjallkonan fríð,
Mögum pín muntu kaer,
Meðan lönd gyrðir saer,
Og gumar girnast maer,
Gljár sól á hlíð.”
At that time I did not distinguish the Icelandic from the Danish but I knew the tune, America, and I mingled the good English words of Dr. Smith with the lisping gutturals of the Scandinavian. Norse and Yankee are well met in this Icelandic sea and I doff my cap to the descendants of those sturdy mariners who discovered Iceland, Greenland and America before Columbus was born, who Anglicised Celt and Britain and eventually made possible our own dear New England.
The morning vapors are scattered. The ocean is a thing of life. It rolls in all the wild freedom of the north, rich in livid shades of blue and green in the nearer circle of our vision while on the far horizon it is a sparkling amethyst beneath the deeper azure of the bending sky. To the north, the circle is broken by the abrupt basaltic towers of Ingölfshofði. Beyond these rise the red and brown fragments of extinct craters, and yet beyond and towering far above them are the glaciated Jökulls down whose sides rush mighty torrents to dash in uncounted waterfalls into the impatient sea. It was at this point that the foster brothers cast overboard the temple pillars of Ingölfr, who vowed by Odin, that upon whatever coast they were cast, there would he found his colony. Hjörleifr went to the neighboring islands, the Westmans, where he was soon afterwards murdered by his Irish serfs. Ingölfr tarried here for about three years and sent parties along the coast to search for the lost pillars.
This bold promontory is also noted in the Saga of Burnt Njal as being the place where Kari, the blood-avenger of Njal was wrecked when returning from his exile. Near here stood the house of Flosi, the lifelong enemy of Kari. The incident shows the sacredness of hospitality among these savage people. Kari went boldly to Flosi and asked for succor from the storm. The Burner, in spite of the sworn enmity to Kari, granted his request, welcomed him with a Scandinavian welcome and afterwards they became lifelong friends.
We came close in under the bare black walls of Eyjafjalla, Island-Mountain, and gazed up to Skogafoss, Forest Waterfall, tumbling one hundred and eighty feet of unbroken water into the breakers which boiled with the black volcanic sand. At length we came to Vestmannaeyjar, Westman Isles, which, like the fingers of the Norns had been beckoning to us all the morning.