Chapter 22

[288]Every serious Icelandic traveller of the nineteenth century has alluded more or less to the career of the Rev. Jón Thorláksson, parish priest of Backa, who lived as best becomes a poet, in poverty, and who died in poverty, æt. seventy-five, in 1819. He thus laments his hard fate:“Yes; Penury hath been my brideSince e’er I saw the world of men;And clasped me to her rugged breastThese seventy winters all but twain:And if we separate here below,He only knows who made it so.”His “living,” besides glebe and parish gifts, was £6 per annum, of which half was paid to an assistant (Henderson and Barrow); and he did not live to receive the £20 collected for him in England. He translated Pope’s Essay on Man, Klopstock’s Messiah, and Paradise Lost. The three first books of the latter were printed by the Islenzka Lærdómslista-fèlag (Icel. Lit. Society) before it was dissolved in 1796. The original MS. is deposited in the rooms of the Literary Fund, London.[289]Forn-yrði, an old word, an archaism; hence Eddaic verse. We may illustrate its alliteration by Peirce Plowman:“Ilookedon my left halfAs theLadyme taught,And waswareof awomanWorthlyithclothed.”Finn Magnússon and Rask thus converted Virgil into narrative verse:“Arma virumqueCano, TrojæQui primus ab orisItaliam,Fato profugus,Lavinaque venitLittora,” etc.[290]As will appear in the Journal, all the principal streams have ferries or somesuccedanea, and no Iceland guide is in the habit of exposing himself recklessly.[291]Hunter & M’Donald of Leith sell sou’-westers for 2s.; outer and inner hose, at 3s. 6d. and 2s. 6d.; sailors’ trousers, for 10s.; stout oil coats, at 18s. 6d.; and fishermen’s mitts, at 1s. 3d. Foreman, also of Leith, supplies excellent boots for £2, 10s.[292]A very young traveller, Mr John Milne, F.G.S., has thus taken the author to task: “Fancy yourself with forty horses, riding over snow bridges by the dozen.” Is it then necessary to explain that the ponies are intended for the Ódáða Hraun, a tract about the size of Devonshire? When Mr Watts started on his second expedition, he declared it was “essential that the party should not be less than six,” and he preferred eight, calculating that the expenses would not exceed £50 per man.[293]“Ropeing” is not a new thing, as many Alpine travellers seem to think. Pállson, when ascending Öræfa Jökull (1794), used “a rope about ten fathoms in length,” and “left a distance of two fathoms” between himself and his two companions. The latter is the modern average, the extremes being nine and fifteen. The author never heard of Icelanders objecting to this precaution, but “G. H. C.,” who in August 1, 1874, inspected the Kötlu-gjá (Field, October 10, 1874), says that his two guides “apparently regarded such proceeding in the light of a capital joke, and, connecting the idea with that of horses (í taumi) at a sale, declared ‘they had never heard of a horse-fair on a Yokull.’”[294]Every kind of snow requires its own shoe. Thus the Norwegian “skies” are very different from the Iceland skí, which resembles the Finn “öndrar,” or “andrar.” These articles are six, seven, and even twelve feet long, by five inches wide, in fact like large cask-staves. The front ends are a little bent up, and the sides are garnished with iron (saddlers’) D’s, through which leather thongs, or bands of willow-withes, are passed to secure the feet. Sometimes for facility of turning, one is made longer than the other, and the Lapps sole the right foot with hairy skin, so as to hold the snow in the back stroke. The alpenstock in Iceland is a bone handled staff, with a stout spike: the author never saw the stick shod with a wheel three inches broad, and safe against sinking, which is used on the Continent.[295]One of the thermometers was broken on the way to Edinburgh, and, curious to say, it could not be repaired in the capital of Scotland. Professor C. Vogt prefers to the Alpine Sympiesometer, theBarometre Compensée Metalliqueof M. Richard, Rue Fontaine du Roi, Paris: he used it in Iceland, and found it answer admirably.[296]TheSaturday Review(December 14, 1872) informs its readers that the Danish mail packet runs from Leith—which it does not.[297]From most parts of the world, too, even from Hungary and Fiume, the casks are sent back to the United States, not broken up, but in bulk, because the heavy freight pays well where labour cannot be bought.[298]I need hardly remark that this was written before the glorious days of February 1874, when the English nation, centuries ahead of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, by one of the noblest constitutional revolutions known to its history, buried thatfelo-de-se, the Radical Cabinet, and pulled down its programme Disestablishment, Retrenchment, and Non-intervention, the latest modification of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, and—Death.[299]We have seen that in Iceland the Lögberg, or Hill of Laws, was confined to the Althing.[300]After many years of the “quousque tandem?” state of mind, my astonishment at the amount of legal murder authorised and sanctioned by authority in England, and my wonder that abuses so hideous did not become a public scandal, have been explained away by the sacrifices which the patriotic Mr Plimsoll found necessary before he could obtain a hearing. The manner in which his small inaccuracies of detail have been made to obscure the whole “palpitant question,” the counter-charges of sensationalism and ultra-philanthropy which have been brought to refute the main charge, and the notable worship of Mammon and vested abuses, are hardly encouraging to the optimist’s view of “progress.” But the day is now done, let us hope, when crews of “murdered men” can be sent to sea in floating coffins insured at thrice their value. The simplest preventive would be an order that every consul should report all flagrant cases, with the express understanding, however, that he should not be punished nor be made to suffer for doing his “unpleasant duty.”[301]Found in St. Helier, and written “Helyer” in the Scoto-Scandinavian islands. Evidently the Icelandic Hellir (plur.Hellar), a cave, common in local words,e.g., Hellis-menn, the cave-men; it is akin to Hallr, a slope, a boulder, much used for proper names of men and women, as Hall-dór (Hall thor) and Hall-dóra (Cleasby).[302]John Brand (A Brief Description of Orkney, etc., Edinburgh, 1701, Pinkerton, iii. 731) writes Dungisbie Head, and Duncan’s Bay. The Scandinavian form of Duncansbay Head is Dungalsnýpa.[303]Pettlands Fjörð in Icelandic from Pight-land or Pict-land.[304]For other interesting details see the Gróttasöngr, or Lay of Grótti.[305]The old Cape Orcas, derived, as has been said, from Latin Orca, Gaelic Orcc or Orc, and Icelandic Orkn—“Delphinus orca,” a dog-seal—the addition of-ey, an isle, makes Orkney. This point is the Ptolemeian Tarbetum or “Taruedum, quod et Orcas promontorium, finis Scotiæ dicitur,” and unduly placed in N. lat. 60° 15´, and long. 31° 20´ (lib. i., cap. 3). The word derives from the Gaelic Tarbet, a drag, a portage, a haul-over, common names in Scoto-Scandinavia, and equivalent to the Icelandic Eið (aith). It lies only six miles from the nearest of the archipelago, which Pomponius Mela called Orcades, evidently a Roman corruption of the indigenous “Orkneyjar,” the Irish Innsi Orcc, and the Inis Torc of Ossian. Fordun’s “Scotichronicon” (ii. 2) calls the Orkneys “Insulæ Pomoniæ;” and Buchanan says, “Orcadum maxima multis veterum Pomona vocatur.” Aspomaare not abundant there, the name has caused considerable argumentation. In the “Société Royale des Antiquaires du Nord” (1845-49), and in the “Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland” (Edinburgh, Neill, 1852), Professor A. Munch, of Christiania, contributes an able paper, “Why is the Mainland of Orkney called Pomona?” Before his time Dr (D.D.) George Barry, in an excellent book, “History of the Orkney Islands” (London, Longmans, 1805) had derived Pomona from “pou,” small (query, “Bú,” a settlement, or “bol,” corrupted to “bull,” a house?), and Mon, Patria; also from the Norsk terms signifying “Great-land.” Professor Munch quotes Torfæus (Orcad., p. 5), “Pomona ... a Julio polyhistore Diutina appellatur.” Solinus Polyhistor, facetiously known as Plinii Simius, says of Thule (chap. xxv.), “Ab Orcadibus Thyle usque quinque dierum et noctium navigatio. Sed Thule larga et diutina pomona copiosa est” (Thule is a fertile country, and plentifully productive of long-lasting corn). He would read the evidently mutilated text, “Sed Thule larga et Diutina pomona copiosa est,” or “Sed Thule larga et diutina, Pomona copiosa est,” and he finds that “DiutinaergòPomona—ab esse ad posse valet consequentia.” But it is over ingenious to account by the error of a text for a popular term four hundred years old,e.g.,“Our rare Pomonia, which the natives styleThe Mainland.”[306]To quote the Dean’s English, “it is part of a (Radical?) movement to help forward the obliteration of all trace of the derivation and history of words:” as such it may be highly recommended to the “Japs.” The Icelandic or pure Scandinavian form, simple and compound, isey(gen. and plur.eyjar); each vowel being pronounced distinct, and not confounded, as some foreigners do, with the Germanöor the Frencheu.Eyis the Keltic “hy,” as found in the classical Hy Brazile, the mysterious island west of Galway, and so called during centuries before the real Brazil was discovered. Again the form appears in “Ireland’s Eye,” which Cockneys pronounce Ireland’s H’eye; the pure Irish form isI(O’Brien’s Irish-English Dictionary, sub voce), oraoi, an island or region, which that learned writer derives (?) from the Hebrew “ai,” insula, regio, provincia. “The Norwegianöy, the Danishöe, the Swedishö, the Anglo-Saxonêg(-land), and the Germanaue, are found in ey-ot and Leas-ow, Chels-ea and Batters-ea; and whilst the Orkneys corrupt it wofully, we retain it pure in Cherts-ey, Aldern-ey, and Orkn-ey” (Cleasby). Munch (Ant. du Nord) has corrected the error of Webster, who derives “island” fromeaorey, water (!), andland. It is simplyey-land, “terra insularis.”[307]Properly Sand-eið, or Sand-aith, a sand-isthmus connecting two headlands.[308]“Links,” from Lykkur, locked or closed fields.[309]“Bismari” in Icelandic is a steelyard, and “bismara-pund” a kind of lb. The Norwegian Bismerpund is = 12 Skaalpunds (100:110 Eng. avoird.), and the Lispund is = 16 Skaalpunds. The Icelandic word is Lífspund, from Lifl, and = 18 lbs. Scots (Cleasby).[310]Varangian, Icel. Væringi, from Várar, a pledge (al. Wehr, Vær, ware or active defence): the Væringjar of the Sagas, the Russian Varæger, the Βαράγγοι of Byzantine historians, and our Warings, popularly known through Gibbon and “Count Robert of Paris,” formed the Scandinavian bodyguard of the Eastern empire. These battle-axe men were at first Northmen from Kiew inA.D.902, under the Emperor Alexis, and successively Danes, Norwegians, and Icelanders (Cleasby and Mallet: Mr Blackwall, note ‡, p. 193, attempts and fails to correct Gibbon). What possessed Mr A. Mounsey (Journal through the Caucasus and Persia) to derive “Feringi” (Frank) from Varangian?[311]Popularly but erroneously derived from Kolbeinsey or Kaupmannsey, “Chapman’s Isle.”[312]Mr Blackwall (p. 257) more modestly says the “first European.”[313]“Peerie-folk” means the fairies, both words evidently congeners of the Persian Pari or Peri. Grimm, an excellent authority, derives the French Fée, the Provençal Fada, the Spanish Hada, and the Italian Fata, from the Latin Fatum—remarking that Fata and Fée have the same analogy asnataandnée,amataandaimée. In connection with “Simmer” or “Sea,” “Peerie,” meaning little, is by some deduced from the French “petit;” in the Shetlands it is further emphasised to Peerie-weerie-winkie (of a foal, etc.).[314]The ordinary runes, I need hardly say, have been shown by Rafn to be derived from archaic Greek; and probably from coins which found their way north during the first centuries of our era.[315]Gen. Lim-rúnar (lim or limr being the limb of a tree opposed to the bole), which Cleasby explains as “a kind of magical runes.”[316]“Hubby” is a loose robe, erroneously derived, like the Scotch Joop, the German Giup, the Italian Giubba and Giubbone, the French Jupe and Jupon, and the Slav Japungia, from the Norsk Hwipu. All these are simply corruptions of the Arabic “Jubbeh.”[317]These Northmen left their handiwork even on the “Stones of Venice.” Readers may not be unwilling to see the legend upon the maneless and melancholy lion, the statue of Pentelic marble, ten feet high, once at the harbour mouth of the Piræus (Porto Leone), where the pedestal still stands, now fronting the arsenal, Venice, where, after the retreat from Greece, the Doge Morosini carried it in 1687. The hardly legible inscription on the right side of the animal is supposed to be, “Asmundr graved these runes united with Asgeir, Thorlief, Thórd, and Ívar, at the request of Haraldr Háfi (the Tall); although the Greeks, taking thought, forbade it.” It is supposed that this Harold was the same who had the promise of seven feet in English ground. The left flank and shoulder are less uncertain, and the legend reads as follows: “Hakun, united with Ulfr (Wolf) and Asmundr and Aurn (Örn), conquered this port. These men and Haraldr Háfi, on account of the uprising of the Greek people, imposed considerable fines. Dálkr remained (prisoner?) in remote regions. Egill fared with Ragnar to Rumania ... and Armenia.”The inscriptions were first published in 1800 by Åkerblad, a Swedish savant; they have been frequently revised, and the last study is the “Inscription Runique du Pirée, interpretée par C. C. Rafn; et publiée par la Société Royale des Antiquaires du Nord,” Copenhagen, 1856.[318]The old Norsk Megin-land, land of might, or mainland, is evidently, like the Scotch Mickle, connected with the Persian Mih or Mihin, great, powerful, but not, as Mr Blackwall conceives, with “miracle.” The classical name of the Orkney group, then numbering only seven, is Acmodæ in Pliny, iv. 16, and Hæmodæ in Mela, iii. 6. The Icelandic term is Hjaltland (pronouncedZhatland), hence Zetland, Hetland, and Shetland. Thus it still preserves the fame of old Hjalti, the Viking of the ninth century, who also survives in the modern “Sholto.” Munch suggests that Hjaltland, hilt-land, may have been given from a weapon dropped in it; so trivial were the names of olden Scandinavia: he also mentions the legend of Swordland, a great country now submerged, between Norway and Hjaltland, its hilt.[319]In Scandinavian, Dynröst, “thundering roost,” from “að dynja,” to din; hence the Tyne and Dvina Rivers. The Icelandic Röst, or current, is the French Raz; that of “Petlandsfjörð” is especially celebrated. In the Orkneys “Roust” is a stormy sea caused by the meeting of tides; “Skail” (Icel. Skellr) is the dashing of surf upon the shore; “Skelder,” the washing of waves, is a common name for farm-houses near the beach; and “Swelchie,” which explains its own meaning, is the Icelandic Svelgr.[320]Fit Fiall,i.e., “planities pinguis,” or, better still, Fitfulglahöfði, sea-fowl cape.[321]An abstract printed in “Illustrations of Northern Antiquities,” one vol. 4to, Edinburgh, 1814; reprinted verbatim in “Northern Antiquities,” edited by Mr J. A. Blackwall, London, Bohn, 1859. In it we may note the origin of Norna the sibyl’s “improvisatory and enigmatical poetry.”[322]Originally Brúsey, from Brúsi, a proper name.[323]Skála-vegr, the way of the court-house.[324]Also written Brough, meaning a round tower. The word is usually derived from the Gothic “berga,” to defend, but it has a far nobler origin. It is the Chaldee “burgadh,” the Arabic “burj,” the Armenian “pourc,” the Greek “πύργος,” and the Latin “burgus;” the Gothic “baurg,” the Mæso-Gothic “bairg,” and “borg,” a mountain; the Scandinavian “borg,” a fortress; the Armoric, Irish, and Welsh “burg,” also found in Teutonic and Saxon; the Anglo-Saxon “beorh” and “beorg,” a rampart, and “burh” or “bureg,” a castle; the Belgian “burg,” the Gaelic “burg,” the French “bourg,” the Italian “borgo,” the North British “burgh” and “burg,” as Edinburgh and Corrensburg; the Scoto-Scandinavian “brogh” or “broch,” with the guttural uncompounded, and even “borve,” as in Sianborve, and “burr,” as in Burraness; and, finally, the English “burg” and “burgh,” “borough” and “burrow.” Such are a few of its titles to antiquity and extent of domain.[325]I am well aware of the difficulties, and especially of the expense, objected to condensing peat. But peatau naturelcan be burnt as themottesin France and Holland have been used for generations. And I am also aware of the immense interests wielded by the Coal League—surely these must sooner or later succumb to the public good. Lands without coal leagues find no difficulty in the operation. The two companies lately established at Oldenburg use a large flat-bottomed steamer, which opens a canal 20 feet broad and 6 deep at the rate of 10 to 12 feet per hour: the soil is heaped up on the banks, and is cut into brick-shape, after which mere drying makes it fit for fuel.[326]After Australian diggers had asserted for years that gold would be found in Bute, a specimen was lately (1874) extracted from a vein of quartz which runs out into the sea below the Skeoch plantation.[327]Jerome Cardan, travelling in Scotland (1552), remarked the popular fondness for thePlatanus, and explains it thus: “I think they take a special delight in that tree, because its foliage is so like vine leaves.... ‘Tis like lovers, who delight in portraits when they can’t have the original.” Colonel Yule (Geograph. Mag., Sept. 1, 1874) asks whether these trees were the real plane (P. Orientalis) or the maple (Acer pseudo-platanus), commonly but erroneously so called in Scotland, and still more erroneously in England, “Sycamore.” Hence also, he observes, by propagation of error Eastern travellers translate the Persian “Chínár” (Platanus) by Sycamore.[328]Especially “Shetland,” etc., by Robert Cowie, M. A., M. D. Edinburgh: Menzies, 1871. Will the author allow me to suggest that in his next edition of this valuable work—an exceptional guide-book, amusing as well as instructing—the medical part from page 56 to page 88, and especially Chapter XIV., should be placed in an appendix? At present it reminds me of a volume which I read with the liveliest interest, “The Luck of Roaring Camp,” regretting only that the order of the tales had not been systematically reversed. Dr Cowie has been kind enough, at my request, to draw up an account of the pre-historic collection at Lerwick, which will be found in the note at the end of this chapter.Since these lines were written, the papers have informed me that Dr Cowie, after printing a second edition of his admirable guide-book, has passed from this world when in the prime of manhood.[329]The number of these places of refuge shows the Shetlands in proto-historical times to have been densely peopled. I have made the same remark about the Istrian Castellieri.[330]Etymological Glossary of the Shetland and Orkney Dialects, by Thomas Edmonston. Edinburgh, 1866.[331]Hence the name of Malestrom or Moskoestrom.[332]“Lappmark’s land-plague,” says Mr Shairp, author of “Up in North” (London: Chapman & Hall, 1872), is of three kinds:1. Mygg, or long nose (Culex pipiens), the wretch of stinging bite and blasphemous song.2. Knott (C. reptans), a villain that keeps close to the ground, and avoids horses.3. Hya or Gnadd (C. pulicaris), the smallest of the family, but when it “sticks,” as the Swedes say, violent itching is the result.[333]The fowl rope contained sixteen ox hides, and the seven pieces each measured eighty fathoms. Early in the present century it cost only $10.[334]One of those in the Lerwick Museum was taken out of the peat-moss six feet beneath the surface.[335]On some Remarkable Discoveries of Rude Stone Implements in Shetland, by Arthur Mitchell, F.S.A., from Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, vol. vii, 1866-67.[336]Dr Mitchell, paper supra cit.[337]At Ephesus blue formed the background of enrichments and sculpture in relief, whilst brilliant reds and yellows were applied to the parts requiring greater prominence. The idea that red, green, and blue, are primitives, with yellow, sea-green, and pink for complements, is very modern and rather startling.[338]He attributes (p. 49) the fire to crushed driftwood, but Adam of Bremen declares the ice to be so dry that it can burn.[339]The Icelandic “fugl” is especially applied to the gull. “Fowl-isle” amongst the Scandinavians meant an isolated rock lying far out to sea, and supposed to represent a bird swimming.[340]Raven—old German, Hraban; modern, Rabe; Icel. Hrafn (pron.Hrabn); Anglo-Saxon, Hræfn; Dan. Ravn; and Slav. Vran—is derived (says Max Müller, “Science of Languages,” Longmans, 1862) from the Sanskrit Rn or Krn, “to cry,” whence “raucus,” and other kindred words. Like the pigeon, the genus Corvus (Corax and Cornix) crops up in all mythology, even where least expected; witness the Hierocorax of Mithras and the marvellous changes by which Apollo and Athene became crows.[341]The very word is Norsk, “leiðar-(Anglo-Saxon, lâd) steinn,” not “lapis viæ,” but leading stone (að leiða), or lode-stone; like lode-star and lodesman, “a pilot.” It is also called Sólar-steinn, or “sun-stone.”[342]Cleasby derives it from Kúði or Kóð, the fry of trout and salmon.[343]Several Icelanders (see Dr W. Lauder Lindsay) have visited the rift which engulphed Katla, the murderess and suicide; a name well known by the translation of Powell and Magnússon. “G. H. C.,” before quoted, who explored it in August 1874, after being misled by the map, found on the southern face “a deep circular indentation where black volcanic sand could be seen uncovered by snow and ice.” We can now explain by the usual method the glacier which, according to Professor Steenstrŭp, was torn from its moorings in 1721 by water within or below: evidently the heated ground melted the whole of the uppercalotteand caused the catastrophe. Other traces were concealed by the snow-fall which, consolidating into glacier-ice, accumulates annually twenty feet, and fourteen years have elapsed since the last eruption. The guides were surprised that “their natural foe should present phenomena of a character no more startling and tremendous. What had they expected to find? Perhaps a vast yawning gulf, over whose edge might be watched the spirit of Katla, whirling like a second Francesca di Rimini in the sulphurous depths below.” Yet Henderson could descry from Skaptafell “the aqua-igneous volcanoKötlu-giá, whose tremendously yawning crater was distinctly visible” (i. 264).[344]In Iceland the reflection of field-ice is brightest, but yellow; new ice is grey, and drift-ice is purest white. The use of “blink” is not happy: Ross employs it in “ice-blink” to denote a cliff or barrier; others talk of land-blink,i.e., the reflection of the sky upon the earth.[345]The English “tern” is from the Icel. Therna (Sterna hirundo).[346]Hence “Lundy” in the Bristol Channel.[347]Baring-Gould (pp. 418, 419) gives four kinds of skuas—Catarrhactes(great skua),Pomatorhinus,Parasiticus(Arctic skua), andBuffoni. He makes “Kjór” the Icel. name for No. 3: I heard it so applied, but the Dictionary gives “a sea-bird of the tern kind; Hill’s Sterna.” We find the family mentioned by Pigafetta, the circumnavigator (A.D.1519-22), under the libellous name “Cagassela” or “Caca uccello,” and he himself oftentimes witnessed the practice which survives in the term Stercorarius. It is an Antarctic as well as an Arctic “pirate of the seas.”[348]A term of daily use, derived from “að hrynja,” to flow, to stream down; its pronunciation (Hroyn) induces the facetious traveller to call it the “road to ruin,” and Henderson wrote as he spoke, Hroyn. “Gullbringu” is usually translated gold-bringing; but Cleasby, sub voc. “bringa,” derives the word differently, and makes “Gull-bringur” signify the Golden Slopes. In Sect. VII. of Introduction a third signification has been given.[349]Hence the country word “Kaarl Cat,” for tom cat, still preserved in heraldry. The Icel. Karl is pronouncedKatlorKadl.[350]Farther south the Fulmar is called the Mollie-moke; hence the “mollie,” or mild orgie on broad northern whalers.[351]The following is the whole text of the letter upon the “Expected Eruption of Mount Hecla” (which did not take place):“Manse of Arbuthnott,July 2, 1872.“Sir,—Will you permit me to add the following to your paragraph with the above heading in theScotsmanof to-day? While doubling Cape Reikianess, the south-west promontory of Iceland, on the morning of Saturday, June 8, we saw a remarkable Geyser a few miles inland, shooting up water at regular intervals of about five minutes to a height of at least 100 feet. All on board who had ever heard of the Great Geyser, so graphically described by Madame Ida Pfeiffer and others, but which is sometimes so unpolite as to keep sightseers waiting two days before it favours them with an exhibition, were amazed at a spectacle so remarkable, and yet so unremarked by any who before us had visited Iceland.“After attending service at the church of Reikiavik on Sunday, I did myself the honour to call upon the Bishop of Iceland, an excellent, courteous old gentleman, who, if he does not dwell, like the Psalmist, in a ‘house of cedar,’ dwells, like his flock, in a house of Norwegian fir. He could not speak English, but he spoke French well. To him I mentioned the phenomenon we had seen, believing that he was as likely as any one to know whether or not it was new. He told me that he knew the district well, but that there was no Geyser there at his last visit; that what we had seen, therefore, was quite new. In answer to my inquiry whether there had been any recent volcanic disturbance in the island, he informed me that there had been a violent earthquake in the northern region about the middle of April. This outburst of a new Geyser (which we observed in full play on our homeward voyage on Tuesday, June 11) and the earthquake in the north, seem premonitory of an eruption either of Hecla, or of some other of the other seven mountains which Keith Johnston, in his Physical Atlas, marks as active volcanoes. I hope we shall shortly have a description of any such occurrence, if it do take place, from the graphic pen of Captain Burton, whose society made our outward voyage a rare treat.—I am, etc.“(Signed)R. M. Spence.”[352]Reyk = reek (Kelt. Ruagh, Reâc, and Ruah, the German Rauch), seems to be a word common to the Aryan and Semitic families. Old philologists derive it from the Hebrew Ruach, Arab. Rúh or Ríh, wind, breath, mind, spirit. Spinoza, the Hebraist, translates, apparently with reason, “Ruach Elohim” (the Spirit of Elohim or Gods, Gen. i. 2) by “a strong wind.”[353]“Eyjar” is often used of the Western Isles, Orkneys, Shetlands, and Soder or Suder (Suðr-ey, south isle, whence the diocese of Soder and Man). In south Iceland it is also applied to the Vestmannaeyjar.[354]One of the earliest forms of armour-plating, the old defence still survives in the nettings of our bulwarks.[355]English tautology. Skagi (in Shetland Scaw or Skaw,e.g., the Skaw of Unst) is a low cape opposed to Höfði, a high headland (Cleasby).[356]Originally Örfiris-eye, which has been explained under Orfir of the Orkneys.[357]Heimdall was the doorkeeper of the gods, who kills and is killed by Loki.[358]I dismiss the “Iceland Revolution” in a few lines, for Baring-Gould (Introd. xlii.) has given a very complete account, borrowed from Hooker and Mackenzie.[359]Reykjavíkr in the nominative sing, is an abstract linguistic fiction, from Vík (feminine), a bay, a wich (e.g., Greenwich). Travellers neglect the Icelandic termination, and even English literati omit the-ror-uras superfluous and strictly correct only in the nominative,e.g., Leif for Leifr. From Vík, a bay, comes Víking, a baying-voyage, or seeking the shelter of bays, and Víkingr, a baying-voyager, or a voyager from the fjords. This word, sometimes written Vi-king in English, suggests a wrong etymology. Cleasby warns us that the termination-wickor-wichis Norsk only for maritime places, the inland “wicks” derive from the Latinvicus. Local names beginning withReykare unknown to Scandinavians, and peculiar to Iceland where the pillars of steam must have struck the colonist’s eye.[360]Taken at the cathedral. The longitude (G.) given by Norie is W. 21° 51´ 3´´, by Raper 21° 55´ 2´´; Norie gives the lat. 64° 9´ O”, Raper 64° 8´ 4´´. The variation of the compass is roughly 36° off Berufjörð; 35° 15´ off the eastern Jökull; and 45° off Reykjavik: it was in 1814 (Henderson, i. 250) “two points towards the west;” in 1840 (French charts) it was W. 43° 21´. M. Lottier (1838) made it 43° 14´; and in 1871 (Admiralty chart, by Captain Evans) it was 44°, still increasing at the rate of 5´ per annum. Consequently the people have two norths—north by compass and true north, the latter at Reykjavik fronting the mountain-block Akrafjall. The inclination (dip) of the magnetic needle (French chart of 1840) is 76° 45´. The vulgarEtablissement du port(Hafenzeit, high water at full and change), French chart, is at 5h. Om.; and the maximum height of the tides 5m. 35 cent. The Admiralty tables give spring-tides a rise of 17½ feet and the neaps 13¼.[361]The Dictionary translates it “home of the Thronds” (Thrændir).[362]From “And,” opposite, and “Vegr,” an “opposite seat,” a “high seat.” In the old timbered hall the benches (bekkr) were ranged along the walls with the two seats of honour in the middle facing one another. The northern, fronting the sun, was called Öndvegi æðra, first or higher high-seat, reserved for the master, and the other was Úæðra, the lower or second, kept for the chief guest. In England the master and the mistress sitting opposite each other at table, may be a remnant of the old Scandinavian custom. The sides of the high seat were ornamented with uprights (öndugis súlur) carved with figures, such as a head of Thor: these posts were regarded with religious honour and were thrown into the sea as guides. When a man of rank died, the son, after all rites performed, solemnly sat in his father’s seat, as a sign of succession, but this was not done if the paternal murder remained unavenged (Cleasby).

“Yes; Penury hath been my brideSince e’er I saw the world of men;And clasped me to her rugged breastThese seventy winters all but twain:And if we separate here below,He only knows who made it so.”

His “living,” besides glebe and parish gifts, was £6 per annum, of which half was paid to an assistant (Henderson and Barrow); and he did not live to receive the £20 collected for him in England. He translated Pope’s Essay on Man, Klopstock’s Messiah, and Paradise Lost. The three first books of the latter were printed by the Islenzka Lærdómslista-fèlag (Icel. Lit. Society) before it was dissolved in 1796. The original MS. is deposited in the rooms of the Literary Fund, London.

[289]Forn-yrði, an old word, an archaism; hence Eddaic verse. We may illustrate its alliteration by Peirce Plowman:“Ilookedon my left halfAs theLadyme taught,And waswareof awomanWorthlyithclothed.”Finn Magnússon and Rask thus converted Virgil into narrative verse:“Arma virumqueCano, TrojæQui primus ab orisItaliam,Fato profugus,Lavinaque venitLittora,” etc.

[289]Forn-yrði, an old word, an archaism; hence Eddaic verse. We may illustrate its alliteration by Peirce Plowman:

“Ilookedon my left halfAs theLadyme taught,And waswareof awomanWorthlyithclothed.”

Finn Magnússon and Rask thus converted Virgil into narrative verse:

“Arma virumqueCano, TrojæQui primus ab orisItaliam,Fato profugus,Lavinaque venitLittora,” etc.

[290]As will appear in the Journal, all the principal streams have ferries or somesuccedanea, and no Iceland guide is in the habit of exposing himself recklessly.

[291]Hunter & M’Donald of Leith sell sou’-westers for 2s.; outer and inner hose, at 3s. 6d. and 2s. 6d.; sailors’ trousers, for 10s.; stout oil coats, at 18s. 6d.; and fishermen’s mitts, at 1s. 3d. Foreman, also of Leith, supplies excellent boots for £2, 10s.

[292]A very young traveller, Mr John Milne, F.G.S., has thus taken the author to task: “Fancy yourself with forty horses, riding over snow bridges by the dozen.” Is it then necessary to explain that the ponies are intended for the Ódáða Hraun, a tract about the size of Devonshire? When Mr Watts started on his second expedition, he declared it was “essential that the party should not be less than six,” and he preferred eight, calculating that the expenses would not exceed £50 per man.

[293]“Ropeing” is not a new thing, as many Alpine travellers seem to think. Pállson, when ascending Öræfa Jökull (1794), used “a rope about ten fathoms in length,” and “left a distance of two fathoms” between himself and his two companions. The latter is the modern average, the extremes being nine and fifteen. The author never heard of Icelanders objecting to this precaution, but “G. H. C.,” who in August 1, 1874, inspected the Kötlu-gjá (Field, October 10, 1874), says that his two guides “apparently regarded such proceeding in the light of a capital joke, and, connecting the idea with that of horses (í taumi) at a sale, declared ‘they had never heard of a horse-fair on a Yokull.’”

[294]Every kind of snow requires its own shoe. Thus the Norwegian “skies” are very different from the Iceland skí, which resembles the Finn “öndrar,” or “andrar.” These articles are six, seven, and even twelve feet long, by five inches wide, in fact like large cask-staves. The front ends are a little bent up, and the sides are garnished with iron (saddlers’) D’s, through which leather thongs, or bands of willow-withes, are passed to secure the feet. Sometimes for facility of turning, one is made longer than the other, and the Lapps sole the right foot with hairy skin, so as to hold the snow in the back stroke. The alpenstock in Iceland is a bone handled staff, with a stout spike: the author never saw the stick shod with a wheel three inches broad, and safe against sinking, which is used on the Continent.

[295]One of the thermometers was broken on the way to Edinburgh, and, curious to say, it could not be repaired in the capital of Scotland. Professor C. Vogt prefers to the Alpine Sympiesometer, theBarometre Compensée Metalliqueof M. Richard, Rue Fontaine du Roi, Paris: he used it in Iceland, and found it answer admirably.

[296]TheSaturday Review(December 14, 1872) informs its readers that the Danish mail packet runs from Leith—which it does not.

[297]From most parts of the world, too, even from Hungary and Fiume, the casks are sent back to the United States, not broken up, but in bulk, because the heavy freight pays well where labour cannot be bought.

[298]I need hardly remark that this was written before the glorious days of February 1874, when the English nation, centuries ahead of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, by one of the noblest constitutional revolutions known to its history, buried thatfelo-de-se, the Radical Cabinet, and pulled down its programme Disestablishment, Retrenchment, and Non-intervention, the latest modification of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, and—Death.

[299]We have seen that in Iceland the Lögberg, or Hill of Laws, was confined to the Althing.

[300]After many years of the “quousque tandem?” state of mind, my astonishment at the amount of legal murder authorised and sanctioned by authority in England, and my wonder that abuses so hideous did not become a public scandal, have been explained away by the sacrifices which the patriotic Mr Plimsoll found necessary before he could obtain a hearing. The manner in which his small inaccuracies of detail have been made to obscure the whole “palpitant question,” the counter-charges of sensationalism and ultra-philanthropy which have been brought to refute the main charge, and the notable worship of Mammon and vested abuses, are hardly encouraging to the optimist’s view of “progress.” But the day is now done, let us hope, when crews of “murdered men” can be sent to sea in floating coffins insured at thrice their value. The simplest preventive would be an order that every consul should report all flagrant cases, with the express understanding, however, that he should not be punished nor be made to suffer for doing his “unpleasant duty.”

[301]Found in St. Helier, and written “Helyer” in the Scoto-Scandinavian islands. Evidently the Icelandic Hellir (plur.Hellar), a cave, common in local words,e.g., Hellis-menn, the cave-men; it is akin to Hallr, a slope, a boulder, much used for proper names of men and women, as Hall-dór (Hall thor) and Hall-dóra (Cleasby).

[302]John Brand (A Brief Description of Orkney, etc., Edinburgh, 1701, Pinkerton, iii. 731) writes Dungisbie Head, and Duncan’s Bay. The Scandinavian form of Duncansbay Head is Dungalsnýpa.

[303]Pettlands Fjörð in Icelandic from Pight-land or Pict-land.

[304]For other interesting details see the Gróttasöngr, or Lay of Grótti.

[305]The old Cape Orcas, derived, as has been said, from Latin Orca, Gaelic Orcc or Orc, and Icelandic Orkn—“Delphinus orca,” a dog-seal—the addition of-ey, an isle, makes Orkney. This point is the Ptolemeian Tarbetum or “Taruedum, quod et Orcas promontorium, finis Scotiæ dicitur,” and unduly placed in N. lat. 60° 15´, and long. 31° 20´ (lib. i., cap. 3). The word derives from the Gaelic Tarbet, a drag, a portage, a haul-over, common names in Scoto-Scandinavia, and equivalent to the Icelandic Eið (aith). It lies only six miles from the nearest of the archipelago, which Pomponius Mela called Orcades, evidently a Roman corruption of the indigenous “Orkneyjar,” the Irish Innsi Orcc, and the Inis Torc of Ossian. Fordun’s “Scotichronicon” (ii. 2) calls the Orkneys “Insulæ Pomoniæ;” and Buchanan says, “Orcadum maxima multis veterum Pomona vocatur.” Aspomaare not abundant there, the name has caused considerable argumentation. In the “Société Royale des Antiquaires du Nord” (1845-49), and in the “Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland” (Edinburgh, Neill, 1852), Professor A. Munch, of Christiania, contributes an able paper, “Why is the Mainland of Orkney called Pomona?” Before his time Dr (D.D.) George Barry, in an excellent book, “History of the Orkney Islands” (London, Longmans, 1805) had derived Pomona from “pou,” small (query, “Bú,” a settlement, or “bol,” corrupted to “bull,” a house?), and Mon, Patria; also from the Norsk terms signifying “Great-land.” Professor Munch quotes Torfæus (Orcad., p. 5), “Pomona ... a Julio polyhistore Diutina appellatur.” Solinus Polyhistor, facetiously known as Plinii Simius, says of Thule (chap. xxv.), “Ab Orcadibus Thyle usque quinque dierum et noctium navigatio. Sed Thule larga et diutina pomona copiosa est” (Thule is a fertile country, and plentifully productive of long-lasting corn). He would read the evidently mutilated text, “Sed Thule larga et Diutina pomona copiosa est,” or “Sed Thule larga et diutina, Pomona copiosa est,” and he finds that “DiutinaergòPomona—ab esse ad posse valet consequentia.” But it is over ingenious to account by the error of a text for a popular term four hundred years old,e.g.,“Our rare Pomonia, which the natives styleThe Mainland.”

“Our rare Pomonia, which the natives styleThe Mainland.”

[306]To quote the Dean’s English, “it is part of a (Radical?) movement to help forward the obliteration of all trace of the derivation and history of words:” as such it may be highly recommended to the “Japs.” The Icelandic or pure Scandinavian form, simple and compound, isey(gen. and plur.eyjar); each vowel being pronounced distinct, and not confounded, as some foreigners do, with the Germanöor the Frencheu.Eyis the Keltic “hy,” as found in the classical Hy Brazile, the mysterious island west of Galway, and so called during centuries before the real Brazil was discovered. Again the form appears in “Ireland’s Eye,” which Cockneys pronounce Ireland’s H’eye; the pure Irish form isI(O’Brien’s Irish-English Dictionary, sub voce), oraoi, an island or region, which that learned writer derives (?) from the Hebrew “ai,” insula, regio, provincia. “The Norwegianöy, the Danishöe, the Swedishö, the Anglo-Saxonêg(-land), and the Germanaue, are found in ey-ot and Leas-ow, Chels-ea and Batters-ea; and whilst the Orkneys corrupt it wofully, we retain it pure in Cherts-ey, Aldern-ey, and Orkn-ey” (Cleasby). Munch (Ant. du Nord) has corrected the error of Webster, who derives “island” fromeaorey, water (!), andland. It is simplyey-land, “terra insularis.”

[307]Properly Sand-eið, or Sand-aith, a sand-isthmus connecting two headlands.

[308]“Links,” from Lykkur, locked or closed fields.

[309]“Bismari” in Icelandic is a steelyard, and “bismara-pund” a kind of lb. The Norwegian Bismerpund is = 12 Skaalpunds (100:110 Eng. avoird.), and the Lispund is = 16 Skaalpunds. The Icelandic word is Lífspund, from Lifl, and = 18 lbs. Scots (Cleasby).

[310]Varangian, Icel. Væringi, from Várar, a pledge (al. Wehr, Vær, ware or active defence): the Væringjar of the Sagas, the Russian Varæger, the Βαράγγοι of Byzantine historians, and our Warings, popularly known through Gibbon and “Count Robert of Paris,” formed the Scandinavian bodyguard of the Eastern empire. These battle-axe men were at first Northmen from Kiew inA.D.902, under the Emperor Alexis, and successively Danes, Norwegians, and Icelanders (Cleasby and Mallet: Mr Blackwall, note ‡, p. 193, attempts and fails to correct Gibbon). What possessed Mr A. Mounsey (Journal through the Caucasus and Persia) to derive “Feringi” (Frank) from Varangian?

[311]Popularly but erroneously derived from Kolbeinsey or Kaupmannsey, “Chapman’s Isle.”

[312]Mr Blackwall (p. 257) more modestly says the “first European.”

[313]“Peerie-folk” means the fairies, both words evidently congeners of the Persian Pari or Peri. Grimm, an excellent authority, derives the French Fée, the Provençal Fada, the Spanish Hada, and the Italian Fata, from the Latin Fatum—remarking that Fata and Fée have the same analogy asnataandnée,amataandaimée. In connection with “Simmer” or “Sea,” “Peerie,” meaning little, is by some deduced from the French “petit;” in the Shetlands it is further emphasised to Peerie-weerie-winkie (of a foal, etc.).

[314]The ordinary runes, I need hardly say, have been shown by Rafn to be derived from archaic Greek; and probably from coins which found their way north during the first centuries of our era.

[315]Gen. Lim-rúnar (lim or limr being the limb of a tree opposed to the bole), which Cleasby explains as “a kind of magical runes.”

[316]“Hubby” is a loose robe, erroneously derived, like the Scotch Joop, the German Giup, the Italian Giubba and Giubbone, the French Jupe and Jupon, and the Slav Japungia, from the Norsk Hwipu. All these are simply corruptions of the Arabic “Jubbeh.”

[317]These Northmen left their handiwork even on the “Stones of Venice.” Readers may not be unwilling to see the legend upon the maneless and melancholy lion, the statue of Pentelic marble, ten feet high, once at the harbour mouth of the Piræus (Porto Leone), where the pedestal still stands, now fronting the arsenal, Venice, where, after the retreat from Greece, the Doge Morosini carried it in 1687. The hardly legible inscription on the right side of the animal is supposed to be, “Asmundr graved these runes united with Asgeir, Thorlief, Thórd, and Ívar, at the request of Haraldr Háfi (the Tall); although the Greeks, taking thought, forbade it.” It is supposed that this Harold was the same who had the promise of seven feet in English ground. The left flank and shoulder are less uncertain, and the legend reads as follows: “Hakun, united with Ulfr (Wolf) and Asmundr and Aurn (Örn), conquered this port. These men and Haraldr Háfi, on account of the uprising of the Greek people, imposed considerable fines. Dálkr remained (prisoner?) in remote regions. Egill fared with Ragnar to Rumania ... and Armenia.”The inscriptions were first published in 1800 by Åkerblad, a Swedish savant; they have been frequently revised, and the last study is the “Inscription Runique du Pirée, interpretée par C. C. Rafn; et publiée par la Société Royale des Antiquaires du Nord,” Copenhagen, 1856.

The inscriptions were first published in 1800 by Åkerblad, a Swedish savant; they have been frequently revised, and the last study is the “Inscription Runique du Pirée, interpretée par C. C. Rafn; et publiée par la Société Royale des Antiquaires du Nord,” Copenhagen, 1856.

[318]The old Norsk Megin-land, land of might, or mainland, is evidently, like the Scotch Mickle, connected with the Persian Mih or Mihin, great, powerful, but not, as Mr Blackwall conceives, with “miracle.” The classical name of the Orkney group, then numbering only seven, is Acmodæ in Pliny, iv. 16, and Hæmodæ in Mela, iii. 6. The Icelandic term is Hjaltland (pronouncedZhatland), hence Zetland, Hetland, and Shetland. Thus it still preserves the fame of old Hjalti, the Viking of the ninth century, who also survives in the modern “Sholto.” Munch suggests that Hjaltland, hilt-land, may have been given from a weapon dropped in it; so trivial were the names of olden Scandinavia: he also mentions the legend of Swordland, a great country now submerged, between Norway and Hjaltland, its hilt.

[319]In Scandinavian, Dynröst, “thundering roost,” from “að dynja,” to din; hence the Tyne and Dvina Rivers. The Icelandic Röst, or current, is the French Raz; that of “Petlandsfjörð” is especially celebrated. In the Orkneys “Roust” is a stormy sea caused by the meeting of tides; “Skail” (Icel. Skellr) is the dashing of surf upon the shore; “Skelder,” the washing of waves, is a common name for farm-houses near the beach; and “Swelchie,” which explains its own meaning, is the Icelandic Svelgr.

[320]Fit Fiall,i.e., “planities pinguis,” or, better still, Fitfulglahöfði, sea-fowl cape.

[321]An abstract printed in “Illustrations of Northern Antiquities,” one vol. 4to, Edinburgh, 1814; reprinted verbatim in “Northern Antiquities,” edited by Mr J. A. Blackwall, London, Bohn, 1859. In it we may note the origin of Norna the sibyl’s “improvisatory and enigmatical poetry.”

[322]Originally Brúsey, from Brúsi, a proper name.

[323]Skála-vegr, the way of the court-house.

[324]Also written Brough, meaning a round tower. The word is usually derived from the Gothic “berga,” to defend, but it has a far nobler origin. It is the Chaldee “burgadh,” the Arabic “burj,” the Armenian “pourc,” the Greek “πύργος,” and the Latin “burgus;” the Gothic “baurg,” the Mæso-Gothic “bairg,” and “borg,” a mountain; the Scandinavian “borg,” a fortress; the Armoric, Irish, and Welsh “burg,” also found in Teutonic and Saxon; the Anglo-Saxon “beorh” and “beorg,” a rampart, and “burh” or “bureg,” a castle; the Belgian “burg,” the Gaelic “burg,” the French “bourg,” the Italian “borgo,” the North British “burgh” and “burg,” as Edinburgh and Corrensburg; the Scoto-Scandinavian “brogh” or “broch,” with the guttural uncompounded, and even “borve,” as in Sianborve, and “burr,” as in Burraness; and, finally, the English “burg” and “burgh,” “borough” and “burrow.” Such are a few of its titles to antiquity and extent of domain.

[325]I am well aware of the difficulties, and especially of the expense, objected to condensing peat. But peatau naturelcan be burnt as themottesin France and Holland have been used for generations. And I am also aware of the immense interests wielded by the Coal League—surely these must sooner or later succumb to the public good. Lands without coal leagues find no difficulty in the operation. The two companies lately established at Oldenburg use a large flat-bottomed steamer, which opens a canal 20 feet broad and 6 deep at the rate of 10 to 12 feet per hour: the soil is heaped up on the banks, and is cut into brick-shape, after which mere drying makes it fit for fuel.

[326]After Australian diggers had asserted for years that gold would be found in Bute, a specimen was lately (1874) extracted from a vein of quartz which runs out into the sea below the Skeoch plantation.

[327]Jerome Cardan, travelling in Scotland (1552), remarked the popular fondness for thePlatanus, and explains it thus: “I think they take a special delight in that tree, because its foliage is so like vine leaves.... ‘Tis like lovers, who delight in portraits when they can’t have the original.” Colonel Yule (Geograph. Mag., Sept. 1, 1874) asks whether these trees were the real plane (P. Orientalis) or the maple (Acer pseudo-platanus), commonly but erroneously so called in Scotland, and still more erroneously in England, “Sycamore.” Hence also, he observes, by propagation of error Eastern travellers translate the Persian “Chínár” (Platanus) by Sycamore.

[328]Especially “Shetland,” etc., by Robert Cowie, M. A., M. D. Edinburgh: Menzies, 1871. Will the author allow me to suggest that in his next edition of this valuable work—an exceptional guide-book, amusing as well as instructing—the medical part from page 56 to page 88, and especially Chapter XIV., should be placed in an appendix? At present it reminds me of a volume which I read with the liveliest interest, “The Luck of Roaring Camp,” regretting only that the order of the tales had not been systematically reversed. Dr Cowie has been kind enough, at my request, to draw up an account of the pre-historic collection at Lerwick, which will be found in the note at the end of this chapter.Since these lines were written, the papers have informed me that Dr Cowie, after printing a second edition of his admirable guide-book, has passed from this world when in the prime of manhood.

Since these lines were written, the papers have informed me that Dr Cowie, after printing a second edition of his admirable guide-book, has passed from this world when in the prime of manhood.

[329]The number of these places of refuge shows the Shetlands in proto-historical times to have been densely peopled. I have made the same remark about the Istrian Castellieri.

[330]Etymological Glossary of the Shetland and Orkney Dialects, by Thomas Edmonston. Edinburgh, 1866.

[331]Hence the name of Malestrom or Moskoestrom.

[332]“Lappmark’s land-plague,” says Mr Shairp, author of “Up in North” (London: Chapman & Hall, 1872), is of three kinds:1. Mygg, or long nose (Culex pipiens), the wretch of stinging bite and blasphemous song.2. Knott (C. reptans), a villain that keeps close to the ground, and avoids horses.3. Hya or Gnadd (C. pulicaris), the smallest of the family, but when it “sticks,” as the Swedes say, violent itching is the result.

[332]“Lappmark’s land-plague,” says Mr Shairp, author of “Up in North” (London: Chapman & Hall, 1872), is of three kinds:

1. Mygg, or long nose (Culex pipiens), the wretch of stinging bite and blasphemous song.

2. Knott (C. reptans), a villain that keeps close to the ground, and avoids horses.

3. Hya or Gnadd (C. pulicaris), the smallest of the family, but when it “sticks,” as the Swedes say, violent itching is the result.

[333]The fowl rope contained sixteen ox hides, and the seven pieces each measured eighty fathoms. Early in the present century it cost only $10.

[334]One of those in the Lerwick Museum was taken out of the peat-moss six feet beneath the surface.

[335]On some Remarkable Discoveries of Rude Stone Implements in Shetland, by Arthur Mitchell, F.S.A., from Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, vol. vii, 1866-67.

[336]Dr Mitchell, paper supra cit.

[337]At Ephesus blue formed the background of enrichments and sculpture in relief, whilst brilliant reds and yellows were applied to the parts requiring greater prominence. The idea that red, green, and blue, are primitives, with yellow, sea-green, and pink for complements, is very modern and rather startling.

[338]He attributes (p. 49) the fire to crushed driftwood, but Adam of Bremen declares the ice to be so dry that it can burn.

[339]The Icelandic “fugl” is especially applied to the gull. “Fowl-isle” amongst the Scandinavians meant an isolated rock lying far out to sea, and supposed to represent a bird swimming.

[340]Raven—old German, Hraban; modern, Rabe; Icel. Hrafn (pron.Hrabn); Anglo-Saxon, Hræfn; Dan. Ravn; and Slav. Vran—is derived (says Max Müller, “Science of Languages,” Longmans, 1862) from the Sanskrit Rn or Krn, “to cry,” whence “raucus,” and other kindred words. Like the pigeon, the genus Corvus (Corax and Cornix) crops up in all mythology, even where least expected; witness the Hierocorax of Mithras and the marvellous changes by which Apollo and Athene became crows.

[341]The very word is Norsk, “leiðar-(Anglo-Saxon, lâd) steinn,” not “lapis viæ,” but leading stone (að leiða), or lode-stone; like lode-star and lodesman, “a pilot.” It is also called Sólar-steinn, or “sun-stone.”

[342]Cleasby derives it from Kúði or Kóð, the fry of trout and salmon.

[343]Several Icelanders (see Dr W. Lauder Lindsay) have visited the rift which engulphed Katla, the murderess and suicide; a name well known by the translation of Powell and Magnússon. “G. H. C.,” before quoted, who explored it in August 1874, after being misled by the map, found on the southern face “a deep circular indentation where black volcanic sand could be seen uncovered by snow and ice.” We can now explain by the usual method the glacier which, according to Professor Steenstrŭp, was torn from its moorings in 1721 by water within or below: evidently the heated ground melted the whole of the uppercalotteand caused the catastrophe. Other traces were concealed by the snow-fall which, consolidating into glacier-ice, accumulates annually twenty feet, and fourteen years have elapsed since the last eruption. The guides were surprised that “their natural foe should present phenomena of a character no more startling and tremendous. What had they expected to find? Perhaps a vast yawning gulf, over whose edge might be watched the spirit of Katla, whirling like a second Francesca di Rimini in the sulphurous depths below.” Yet Henderson could descry from Skaptafell “the aqua-igneous volcanoKötlu-giá, whose tremendously yawning crater was distinctly visible” (i. 264).

[344]In Iceland the reflection of field-ice is brightest, but yellow; new ice is grey, and drift-ice is purest white. The use of “blink” is not happy: Ross employs it in “ice-blink” to denote a cliff or barrier; others talk of land-blink,i.e., the reflection of the sky upon the earth.

[345]The English “tern” is from the Icel. Therna (Sterna hirundo).

[346]Hence “Lundy” in the Bristol Channel.

[347]Baring-Gould (pp. 418, 419) gives four kinds of skuas—Catarrhactes(great skua),Pomatorhinus,Parasiticus(Arctic skua), andBuffoni. He makes “Kjór” the Icel. name for No. 3: I heard it so applied, but the Dictionary gives “a sea-bird of the tern kind; Hill’s Sterna.” We find the family mentioned by Pigafetta, the circumnavigator (A.D.1519-22), under the libellous name “Cagassela” or “Caca uccello,” and he himself oftentimes witnessed the practice which survives in the term Stercorarius. It is an Antarctic as well as an Arctic “pirate of the seas.”

[348]A term of daily use, derived from “að hrynja,” to flow, to stream down; its pronunciation (Hroyn) induces the facetious traveller to call it the “road to ruin,” and Henderson wrote as he spoke, Hroyn. “Gullbringu” is usually translated gold-bringing; but Cleasby, sub voc. “bringa,” derives the word differently, and makes “Gull-bringur” signify the Golden Slopes. In Sect. VII. of Introduction a third signification has been given.

[349]Hence the country word “Kaarl Cat,” for tom cat, still preserved in heraldry. The Icel. Karl is pronouncedKatlorKadl.

[350]Farther south the Fulmar is called the Mollie-moke; hence the “mollie,” or mild orgie on broad northern whalers.

[351]The following is the whole text of the letter upon the “Expected Eruption of Mount Hecla” (which did not take place):“Manse of Arbuthnott,July 2, 1872.“Sir,—Will you permit me to add the following to your paragraph with the above heading in theScotsmanof to-day? While doubling Cape Reikianess, the south-west promontory of Iceland, on the morning of Saturday, June 8, we saw a remarkable Geyser a few miles inland, shooting up water at regular intervals of about five minutes to a height of at least 100 feet. All on board who had ever heard of the Great Geyser, so graphically described by Madame Ida Pfeiffer and others, but which is sometimes so unpolite as to keep sightseers waiting two days before it favours them with an exhibition, were amazed at a spectacle so remarkable, and yet so unremarked by any who before us had visited Iceland.“After attending service at the church of Reikiavik on Sunday, I did myself the honour to call upon the Bishop of Iceland, an excellent, courteous old gentleman, who, if he does not dwell, like the Psalmist, in a ‘house of cedar,’ dwells, like his flock, in a house of Norwegian fir. He could not speak English, but he spoke French well. To him I mentioned the phenomenon we had seen, believing that he was as likely as any one to know whether or not it was new. He told me that he knew the district well, but that there was no Geyser there at his last visit; that what we had seen, therefore, was quite new. In answer to my inquiry whether there had been any recent volcanic disturbance in the island, he informed me that there had been a violent earthquake in the northern region about the middle of April. This outburst of a new Geyser (which we observed in full play on our homeward voyage on Tuesday, June 11) and the earthquake in the north, seem premonitory of an eruption either of Hecla, or of some other of the other seven mountains which Keith Johnston, in his Physical Atlas, marks as active volcanoes. I hope we shall shortly have a description of any such occurrence, if it do take place, from the graphic pen of Captain Burton, whose society made our outward voyage a rare treat.—I am, etc.“(Signed)R. M. Spence.”

[351]The following is the whole text of the letter upon the “Expected Eruption of Mount Hecla” (which did not take place):

“Manse of Arbuthnott,July 2, 1872.

“Sir,—Will you permit me to add the following to your paragraph with the above heading in theScotsmanof to-day? While doubling Cape Reikianess, the south-west promontory of Iceland, on the morning of Saturday, June 8, we saw a remarkable Geyser a few miles inland, shooting up water at regular intervals of about five minutes to a height of at least 100 feet. All on board who had ever heard of the Great Geyser, so graphically described by Madame Ida Pfeiffer and others, but which is sometimes so unpolite as to keep sightseers waiting two days before it favours them with an exhibition, were amazed at a spectacle so remarkable, and yet so unremarked by any who before us had visited Iceland.

“After attending service at the church of Reikiavik on Sunday, I did myself the honour to call upon the Bishop of Iceland, an excellent, courteous old gentleman, who, if he does not dwell, like the Psalmist, in a ‘house of cedar,’ dwells, like his flock, in a house of Norwegian fir. He could not speak English, but he spoke French well. To him I mentioned the phenomenon we had seen, believing that he was as likely as any one to know whether or not it was new. He told me that he knew the district well, but that there was no Geyser there at his last visit; that what we had seen, therefore, was quite new. In answer to my inquiry whether there had been any recent volcanic disturbance in the island, he informed me that there had been a violent earthquake in the northern region about the middle of April. This outburst of a new Geyser (which we observed in full play on our homeward voyage on Tuesday, June 11) and the earthquake in the north, seem premonitory of an eruption either of Hecla, or of some other of the other seven mountains which Keith Johnston, in his Physical Atlas, marks as active volcanoes. I hope we shall shortly have a description of any such occurrence, if it do take place, from the graphic pen of Captain Burton, whose society made our outward voyage a rare treat.—I am, etc.

“(Signed)R. M. Spence.”

[352]Reyk = reek (Kelt. Ruagh, Reâc, and Ruah, the German Rauch), seems to be a word common to the Aryan and Semitic families. Old philologists derive it from the Hebrew Ruach, Arab. Rúh or Ríh, wind, breath, mind, spirit. Spinoza, the Hebraist, translates, apparently with reason, “Ruach Elohim” (the Spirit of Elohim or Gods, Gen. i. 2) by “a strong wind.”

[353]“Eyjar” is often used of the Western Isles, Orkneys, Shetlands, and Soder or Suder (Suðr-ey, south isle, whence the diocese of Soder and Man). In south Iceland it is also applied to the Vestmannaeyjar.

[354]One of the earliest forms of armour-plating, the old defence still survives in the nettings of our bulwarks.

[355]English tautology. Skagi (in Shetland Scaw or Skaw,e.g., the Skaw of Unst) is a low cape opposed to Höfði, a high headland (Cleasby).

[356]Originally Örfiris-eye, which has been explained under Orfir of the Orkneys.

[357]Heimdall was the doorkeeper of the gods, who kills and is killed by Loki.

[358]I dismiss the “Iceland Revolution” in a few lines, for Baring-Gould (Introd. xlii.) has given a very complete account, borrowed from Hooker and Mackenzie.

[359]Reykjavíkr in the nominative sing, is an abstract linguistic fiction, from Vík (feminine), a bay, a wich (e.g., Greenwich). Travellers neglect the Icelandic termination, and even English literati omit the-ror-uras superfluous and strictly correct only in the nominative,e.g., Leif for Leifr. From Vík, a bay, comes Víking, a baying-voyage, or seeking the shelter of bays, and Víkingr, a baying-voyager, or a voyager from the fjords. This word, sometimes written Vi-king in English, suggests a wrong etymology. Cleasby warns us that the termination-wickor-wichis Norsk only for maritime places, the inland “wicks” derive from the Latinvicus. Local names beginning withReykare unknown to Scandinavians, and peculiar to Iceland where the pillars of steam must have struck the colonist’s eye.

[360]Taken at the cathedral. The longitude (G.) given by Norie is W. 21° 51´ 3´´, by Raper 21° 55´ 2´´; Norie gives the lat. 64° 9´ O”, Raper 64° 8´ 4´´. The variation of the compass is roughly 36° off Berufjörð; 35° 15´ off the eastern Jökull; and 45° off Reykjavik: it was in 1814 (Henderson, i. 250) “two points towards the west;” in 1840 (French charts) it was W. 43° 21´. M. Lottier (1838) made it 43° 14´; and in 1871 (Admiralty chart, by Captain Evans) it was 44°, still increasing at the rate of 5´ per annum. Consequently the people have two norths—north by compass and true north, the latter at Reykjavik fronting the mountain-block Akrafjall. The inclination (dip) of the magnetic needle (French chart of 1840) is 76° 45´. The vulgarEtablissement du port(Hafenzeit, high water at full and change), French chart, is at 5h. Om.; and the maximum height of the tides 5m. 35 cent. The Admiralty tables give spring-tides a rise of 17½ feet and the neaps 13¼.

[361]The Dictionary translates it “home of the Thronds” (Thrændir).

[362]From “And,” opposite, and “Vegr,” an “opposite seat,” a “high seat.” In the old timbered hall the benches (bekkr) were ranged along the walls with the two seats of honour in the middle facing one another. The northern, fronting the sun, was called Öndvegi æðra, first or higher high-seat, reserved for the master, and the other was Úæðra, the lower or second, kept for the chief guest. In England the master and the mistress sitting opposite each other at table, may be a remnant of the old Scandinavian custom. The sides of the high seat were ornamented with uprights (öndugis súlur) carved with figures, such as a head of Thor: these posts were regarded with religious honour and were thrown into the sea as guides. When a man of rank died, the son, after all rites performed, solemnly sat in his father’s seat, as a sign of succession, but this was not done if the paternal murder remained unavenged (Cleasby).

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