‘O come with us out seaward, come away!’”
We stopped for lunch beside a singing brook flowing down from the ridge on our left and springing into the Hörgá. The grass was in excellent condition and the ponies grazed as if they had knowledge of the poor quality of this necessity and its scarcity during the following days. The cotton grass spread its sheets of pearly white around us, forget-me-nots and marguerites, the wild arnica and the violets reveled in the glory of their bloom. We ate our lunch and reclined upon the grass in full enjoyment of the scene and recalled the former importance of this valley. It is as beautiful to-day as when the Vikings first entered it. Since their time no blasting volcano with fiery breath has scorched its foliage nor poured its glinting lava in destructive streams over the meadows and humble homes. The days of feudal strife passed with the Christian education of that sturdy race and the peace of the Cross now rests upon the valley like the “shadow of a great rock in a weary land.”
The time of its literary importance passed with the decline of its Abbey and the passing of Sira Jón Thorlakson, the Icelandic Milton. Across the river, and shaded by a noble clump of the mountain ash, stands the home of this venerable poet and priest, Baegisá. A century ago he translated Paradise Lost, Pope’s Essay on Man, portions of Shakespeare, masterpieces of German and Scandinavian literature into the Icelandic. Besides being a translator, he composed a large amount of Icelandic poetry in the Eddic phraseology which competent judges say equalled and often surpassed the masterpieces of the ancient scalds. He was sorely fettered by poverty. When commenting upon the high morality of his race and the great freedom from the use of intoxicants by his people at that time he said,—
“Our poverty is the bulwark of our happiness.”
Again, speaking of poverty, the common lot of most poets of all lands, and in all ages, he says, literally from one of his poems,—
“Ever since I came into this world, I have been wedded to poverty, who has hugged me to her bosom these seventy winters all but two; whether we shall ever be divorced here below, is only known to Him who joined us together.”
From our vantage point we looked down upon three beautiful valleys with as many rivers joining to form the valley of the Hörgá and its mighty stream. These are the Hörgárdalr, Öxnadalr and Baegisádalr. The mountains rise to an elevation 4000 feet above the valley, capped with snow or perpetual ice, their slopes slashed into wild ravines and terraced with lava cliffs down which course numerous cascades from the melting snows. It is a fair and peaceful scene, this at our feet: it is a grand and awesome sight, that greets the lifted eye.
Fastening forget-me-nots into the manes of the ponies we resumed our ride up the valley and turned into the Öxnadalr, Ox-Valley. It is a fine illustration of a glacial valley. The cross section is nearly a semicircle and the sides are deeply grooved; the glacial carving is much more pronounced than that of the lower end of Seyðisfjörðr. We stopped over night at Thverá, Tributary-River, in a humble home perched upon the steep hillside above the river and just below the ice cliffs.
Across the river rise the Hraundrangar, Lava Pillars, which tower in a long chain of spires above the castellated ridge, a prominent feature in the landscape for miles up and down the valley. High up between the ridges there is a sheet of water which pours out through a small rift in the nearer ridge and falls into the valley as if some Moses had smitten the lava wall with his rod of wrath.
We enjoyed our stay at Thverá and experienced several things of interest. It is an ancient farm located on the trail through the defile where Icelanders have passed between the east and west for a thousand years. A newly wedded couple had just taken up their abode under the paternal roof in this historic spot and were beginning the problems of life where generations of their ancestors had solved the same enigmas with the variations which the succeeding centuries have added. They were attentive to our necessities with the inborn hospitality of the race but there was something in the atmosphere that revealed the newness of the work and the shyness of the wedded couple added much to our amusement.