No. II.—Distribution of the Population of Iceland according to ages in 1855.
No. III.—Table showing the Means of Support of the Population of Iceland on the 1st October 1855.
The following are the latest returns:
Table showing the Population of Iceland on the 1st October 1860 and 1870.
The following is the official list of households for 1872:
According to Mr Vice-Consul Crowe (Report), during the average of ten years (1855-65) there was annually—
In 1855 there were 202 blind and 65 born surd-mutes. In 1870 the former numbered 225 (160 men and 65 women), and the latter 50 (20 + 30).
In table III. (1855), we see that of 64,603 souls, 52,475, about three-fourths of the heads of families and those who provide support, lived by farming, that is, by cattle-breeding, whilst more than four-fifths of the entire population thus derived their maintenance. At the same time, 5055 were fishermen, and only 703 were traders, showing a primitive state of society. Mr Consul Crowe (Report, 1870-71) remarks: “Somewhat more than the 75 per cent. of the total population were engaged in sheep rearing and agricultural pursuits; and, notwithstanding the steady and lucrative nature of the fisheries, only about 10 per cent. were engaged in them.” The mechanics may be further distributed as follows:
The following is a table of ages in 1870:
According to Mr Consul Crowe (Report, 1870-71), the proportion between births and deaths was:
The tables of 1855 gave an excess of 2865 women. Mackenzie (1801) shows 21,476 males to 25,731 females, or 4255 out of a total of 47,207. In 1865 the proportion of men to women was 1000: 1093. In 1870 the conditions had improved, the surplus being only 3554 out of 69,763, a small percentage of waste labour.
It is easy to account for the preponderance of women, as well as their superior longevity, without entering into the knotty subject of what determines sex. They lead more regular lives, they have less hardship and fatigue, and they are rarely exposed to such accidents as being lost at sea or “in the mist.” According to Mr Vice-Consul Crowe, in 1865-66, of every forty-two deaths one was by drowning.
There is a tradition that Iceland during its palmiest days contained 100,000 souls, but it seems to rest upon no foundation. On the other hand, the old superstitious belief that some fatal epidemic invariably follows an increase beyond 60,000, has, during the last few years, shown itself to be equally groundless. It is probably one of thepost hoc, ergo propter hocconfusions so popular amongst the vulgar; and, unhappily, not confined to the vulgar.
§ 2.General Considerations.
“The first inhabitants of the northern world, Dania, Nerigos, and Suæcia,” says Saxo Grammaticus, repeated by Arngrímr Jónsson, “were the posterity and remnant of the Canaanitesquos fugavit Jesus latro—expulsed from Palestine aboutA.C.1500 by Joshua and Caleb.” Duly appreciating the ethnological value of this tradition, we may remark that the occupation of Ultima Thule, which the ancients evidently held to be inhabited—tibi serviatmust mean that there were men to serve—has not yet been proved. But Mongoloid or præ-Aryan colonies in ancient days seem to have overrun all the Old, if not the New World, and we must not despair of tracing them to Iceland.
The modern Icelander is a quasi-Norwegian, justly proud of the old home. His race is completely free from any taint of Skrælling, Innuit,[166]or Mongoloid blood, as some travellers have represented, and as the vulgar of Europe seem to believe. Here and there, but rarely, a dark flat face, oblique eyes, and long black horsehair, show that a wife has been taken from the land
“Where the short-legged EsquimauxWaddle in the ice and snow.”
“Where the short-legged EsquimauxWaddle in the ice and snow.”
“Where the short-legged EsquimauxWaddle in the ice and snow.”
In the southern parts of the island there is apparently a considerable Irish infusion; and we often remark the “potato face” and the peculiar eye, with grey-blue iris and dark lashes so common in outer Galway, and extending to far Tenerife.
It has been the fashion for travellers to talk of “our Scandinavian ancestors in Iceland,” to declare that the northern element is the “backbone of the English race,” and to find that Great Britain owes to the hyperborean “her pluck, her go-ahead, and her love of freedom.”
That a little of this strong liquor may have done abundant good to the puerile, futile Anglo-Kelt, and the flabby andphlegmatic Anglo-Saxon, there is no doubt, but happily we have not had a drop too much of northern blood. The islanders are by no means slow to claim descent from the old Jarls of Norway and Sweden, whilst some of the peasantry have asserted, and, it is said, have proved, consanguinity with the Guelphs: this would make them Germans, like the Royal Family of Denmark, who enjoy only poetical and laureated connection with the “Sea-Kings.” Those who reject these pretensions reply that every noble house emigrating from Scandinavia in the ninth and tenth centuries brought with it a train of serfs and thralls; for instance, Njál headed nearly thirty fighting men, serviles included, and Thráin led fifteen house-carls trained to arms. And genealogical statistics prove that while the Jarl’s blood dies out, the Carl’s increases and multiplies.
The Saga’s description of Gunnar Hamondsson is that of a well-favoured Icelander in the present day: “He was handsome of feature and fair-skinned; his nose was straight and a little turned up at the end (‘tip-tilted’); he was blue-eyed, and bright-eyed, and ruddy cheeked; his hair was thick and of good hue, and hanging down in comely curls.” And Skarphèdinn Njálsson may stand forth as the typical “plain” Thulite: “His hair was dark-brown, with crisp curly locks; he had good eyes; his features were sharp, and his face ashen pale; his nose turned up, and his front teeth stuck out, and his mouth was very ugly.”
The Icelander’s temperament is nervoso-lymphatic, and, at best, nervoso-sanguineous. The nervoso-bilious, so common in the south of Europe, is found but rarely; and the author never saw an instance of the pure nervous often met with in the United States and the Brazil. The shape of the cranium is distinctly brachycephalic, like the Teuton who can almost always be discovered by his flat occiput and his projecting ears. The face is rather round or square than oval; the forehead often rises high, and the malar bones stand out strongly, whilst the cheeks fall in. A very characteristic feature of the race whose hardness, not to say harshness, of body and mind still distinguishes it from its neighbours, is the eye, dure and cold as a pebble—the mesmerist would despair at the first sight. Evenamongst the “gentler sex” a soft look is uncommonly rare, and the aspect ranges from a stoney stare to a sharp glance rendered fiercer by the habitual frown. Hence probably Uno Von Troil (p. 87) describes the women as generally ill-featured. The best specimens are clear grey or light blue, rarely brown and never black; and the iris is mostly surrounded by a ring of darker colour, the reverse ofarcus senilis. Squints and prominent eyeballs, in fact what are vulgarly called “goggle eyes,” are common; and even commoner, perhaps, are the dull colourless organs which we term “cods’ eyes.” The “Irish eye,” blue with dark lashes, is still found in the southern part of the island, where, perhaps, thralls’ blood is most common. A mild and chronic conjunctivitis often results from exposure to sun-glare after dark rooms and from reading deep into the night with dim oil lamps. The nose is seldom aquiline; the noble and sympathetically advancing outlines of the Mediterranean shores will here be sought for in vain.[167]The best are the straight, the worst are offensive “pugs.” Only in two instances, both of them men of good blood, I saw the broad open brows, the Grecian noses, the perpendicular profiles, the oval cheeks, and the chins full, but not too full, which one connects in idea with the Scandinavian sea-king of the olden day. As a rule, then, the Icelandic face can by no means be called handsome.
The oral region is often coarse and unpleasant. Lean lips are not so numerous as the large, loose, fleshy, andbordésor slightly everted, whilst here and there a huge mouth seems to split the face from ear to ear. The redeeming feature is the denture.The teeth are short, regular, bright-coloured, and lasting, showing uncommon strength of constitution. They are rarely clean when coffee and tobacco are abused, and they are yet more rarely cleaned. Doubtless a comparatively scanty use of hot food tends to preserve them. The jowl is strong and square, and the chin is heavy, the weak “vanishing” form being very uncommon. The beard is sometimes worn, but more often clean shaved off; it seldom grows to any length, though the mustachios, based upon a large and solid upper lip, are bushy and form an important feature. Thick whiskers are sometimes seen, and so are “Newgate frills,” from which the small foxy features stand sharply out.
The other strong points are the skin and hair. The former is almost always rufous, rarely milanous, and the author never saw a specimen of the leucous (albino). The “positive blonde” is the rule; opposed to the negative or washed out blonde of Russia and Slavonia generally. The complexion of the younger sort is admirably fresh, pink and white; and some retain this charm till a late age. Its delicacy subjects it to sundry infirmities, especially to freckles, which appear in large brown blotches; exposure to weather also burns the surface, and converts rose and lily to an unseemly buff and brick-dust red. It is striated in early middle-age with deep wrinkles and it becomes much “drawn,” the effect of what children call “making faces” in the sunlight and snow-blink. In the less wholesome parts of the island the complexion of the peasantry is pallid and malarious.
Harfagr (Pulchricomus) is an epithet which may apply to both sexes. The hair, which belongs to the class Lissótriches, subdivision Euplokomoi, of Hæckel and Müller (Allg. Ethnographie, 1873), seldom shows the darker shades of brown; and in the very rare cases where it is black, there is generally a suspicion of Eskimo or Mongoloid blood. The colour ranges from carrotty-red to turnip-yellow, from barley-sugar to theblond-cendréso expensive in the civilised markets. We find all the gradations of Parisian art here natural; the “corn-golden,” theblonde fulvide, the incandescent (“carrotty”), theflavescentor sulphur-hued, thebeurre frais, thefulvastreor lion’s mane, andtherubideor mahogany, Raphael’s favourite tint. The abominable Hallgerda’s hair is the type of Icelandic beauty; it was “soft as silk and so long that it came down to her waist.” Seldom straight and lank, thechevelureis usually wavy, curling at the ends, when short cut, as in England. The women have especially thick locks, which look well without other art but braiding, and many of the men have very bushy hair. As in the negro, baldness does not appear till a late age, and perhaps the Húfa (cap) by exposing the larger part of the surface acts as a preservative; old men and women, though anile beauty is very rare, are seen with grey and even white locks exceptionally thick. Canities comes on later than in Scotland and Sweden, yet scant attention is paid to the hair beyond washing at the brook. The body pile is as usual lighter coloured.
The figure is worse than the face, and it is rendered even more uncouth by the hideous swathing dress. The men are remarkable for “champagne-bottle (unduly sloping) shoulders,” “broad-shouldered in the backside,” as our sailors say. They are seldom paunchy, though some, when settled in warmer climates, develop theschöne corpulenzof the Whitechapel sugar-baker. They have the thick, unwieldy trunks of mountaineers, too long for the lower limbs—a peculiarity of hill-men generally, which extends even to the Bubes of Fernando Po. The legs are uncommonly sturdy; the knees are thick and rounded, an unpromising sign of blood; the ankles are coarse, and the flat feet are unusually large and ill-formed, like the hands, a point of resemblance with the Anglo-Saxon pure and simple. Hence they are peculiarly fitted for their only manly sport, besides skating and shooting, “Glímu list:” this wrestling has a “chic” of its own, though very different from the style of Cumberland and Cornwall. The gait, a racial distinction, is shambling and ungraceful, utterly unlike the strut of Southern Europe and the roll of the nearer East; the tread is ponderous, and the light fantastic toe is unknown. This “wabble” and waddle result from the rarity of walking-exercise compared with riding and boating, and from the universal use of the seal-skin slipper. The habit becomes a second nature: all strangers observe the national trick of rocking the body when sitting or standing to talk, andthey mostly attribute it to the habit of weaving, when it is practised by thousands who never used a loom. The feminine figure is graceful and comparatively slender in youth, like the English girl of the “willowy type,” but the limbs are large and ungainly. After a few years the “overblown” forms broaden out coarsely. Women do not draw the plough, as in Greece and parts of Ireland, but they must take their turn at all manner of field-work. TheFrauen-cultus, said to be a native of Europe north of the Alps, has not extended here, at least in these days.[168]Hence the legs and ankles, hands and feet, rival in size and coarseness those of the men. As wives, they would be efficient correctives to the “fine drawn” framework and the over-nervous diathesis of southern nations. Cold in temperament, they are therefore, like the Irish, prolific, which may also result from the general fish-diet. Dr Schleisner, who resided in Iceland under the Danish Government, has proved the temperature of the blood to be higher than amongst other races. Assuming the average of Europeans at C. 36°·5 (= F. 97°·7), nine persons out of twelve exceeded C. 37° (= F. 98°·6): the maximum was C. 37°·8 (= F. 100°); the minimum was C. 36°·5, and the average was C. 37°·27 (= F. 99°·09).[169]
Intermarriage is so general that almost all the chief families are cousins; yet among several thousands the author saw only one hunchback, two short legs, and a few hare-lips. It is almost needless to say that the common infanticide of pagan days is now unknown, and that we must seek some other cause for the absence of deformity. It may be found, perhaps, in the purity of unmixed blood, which, mentioning no other instances, allows consanguineous marriages to the Jews, the Bedawin Arabs, and even to the Trasteverino Romans;[170]whereas composite andheterogeneous races like the Englishman, the Spaniard, and especially the New Englander, cannot effect such unions without the worst results—idiocy and physical deformity.
As regards uncleanliness in house and body, it may be said that the Icelander holds a middle rank between the Scotchman and the Greenlander, and he contrasts badly with the Norwegian of modern days. Personal purity, the one physical virtue of old age, is, as a rule, sadly neglected. Concerning this unpleasant topic, the author is compelled to offer a few observations. The old islander could rival the seal: his descendant, like the man of Joe Miller, will not trust himself in water before he can swim. The traveller never sees man or woman in sea, river, or brook, though even the lower animals bathe in hot weather. It is a raceabominantes aquam frigidam, and, even as pagans, their chief objection to Christianity was the necessity of baptism: they compounded for immersion in the Laug or hot spring,[171]and the latter is still, though very seldom, used. Washing is confined to the face and hands; and the tooth-brush is unknown like the nail-brush: the basins, where they exist, are about the size of punch-bowls. Purification by water, after Moslem fashion, is undreamed of. Children are allowed to contract hideous habits, which they preserve as adults; for instance, picking teeth, and not only teeth, with dinner-forks. Old travellers, who perhaps had not observed the cellarman in the wine vaults (London Docks) bore a hole and blow through it to start the liquor, record a peculiarly unpleasant contrivance for decanting the milk-pan into narrow-necked vessels; the same, in fact, adopted by the Mexican when bottling his “Maguey;” and “Blefkenius” alludes to a practice still popular amongst the Somal: it is only fair to own that the author never saw them. The rooms, and especially the sick rooms, are exceedingly stifling and impure. Those who venture upon an Icelandic bed may perhaps find clean sheets, but they had better not look under them. The houses, except in the towns, or the few belonging to foreign merchants, have no offices, and all that have, leave them in a horrible condition: there is no drainage, and the backyard is a mass of offal. Suchis the effect of climate, which makes dirt the “poor man’s jacket” in the north; which places cleanliness next to godliness in the sub-tropical regions, and which renders personal uncleanliness sinful and abominable to the quasi-equatorial Hindú. Nor must we forget that the old English proverb “Washing takes the marrow out of a man,” still has significance amongst our peasantry.
§3.Character.
Appreciations of national character too often depend upon the casual circumstances which encounter and environ the traveller; and writers upon Iceland differ so greatly upon the matter, that perhaps the safest plan will be to quote the two extremes.
The unfriendly find the islanders serious to a fault; silent, gloomy, and atrabilious; ungenial and morose; stubborn and eternally suspicious; litigious and mordant; utterly deficient in adventure, doing nothing but what necessity compels; little given to hospitality; greedy of gain, and unscrupulous in thequocumque modo rem. “Gaiety,” says one, “seems banished from their hearts, and we should suppose that all are under the influence of that austere nature in the midst of which they were born.”
Henderson (i. 34), who represents the bright side of the picture, enlarges upon their calm and dignified, their orderly and law-abiding character; he denies their being of sullen and melancholy disposition; he was surprised at the degree of cheerfulness and vivacity prevailing among them, and that, too, not unfrequently under circumstances of considerable external depression. They are so honest that the doors are not locked at night in their largest town; strangely frank and unsophisticated; ardent patriots and lovers of constitutional liberty; fond of literature, pious, and contented; endowed with remarkable strength of intellect and acuteness; brimful of hospitality, and not given to any crimes, or indeed vices, except drunkenness.
And, upon the principle of allowing the Icelander to describe himself, we may quote as an exemplar of character the following model epitaph: “To the precious memory of A., S.’s son, whomarried the maiden C., D.’s daughter. He was calm in mind; firm in council; watchful, active, his friends’ friend; hospitable, bountiful, upright towards all, and the affectionate father of his house and children.”
The truth is, that although isolation has, as might be expected, preserved a marked racial character, the islandry are much like other Northmen. During the pagan times, and indeed until the sixteenth century, we read “their chief characteristics were treachery, thirst for blood, unbounded licentiousness, and inveterate detestation of order and rule;” but we shall hardly recognise the picture now. They are truthful, and they appear pre-eminently so to a traveller from the south of Europe, or from the Levant. They have a sense of responsibility, and you may believe their oaths: at the same time, they look upon all men as liars, and they are asdesconfiados(distrustful) as Paulistas or Laplanders—a mental condition apparently connected with a certain phase of civilisation. Compared with the sharp-witted Southron, they are dull and heavy, stolid and hard of comprehension as our labouring classes, without the causes which affect the latter. They cleave like Hindús to the father-to-son principle, and they have little at home that tempts either to invention, to innovation, or to adventure. They are a “polypragmatic peasantry;” the love of lawsuits still distinguishes the Norman in France after ages of separation from the parent stock. Even in private debate they obstinately adhere to the letter, and shun the spirit: an Icelander worsted in argument takes up some verbal distinction or secondary point, and treats it as if it were of primary importance. An exaggeration of this peculiarity breeds theQuerelle d’Allemand.
Another peculiarity of the islandry is a bitterly satirical turn of mind, a quality noted of old. We rarely meet with a “Thorkel Foulmouth,” but we see many a Skarphèdinn who delights and who takes pride in dealing those wounds of the tongue which according to the Arabs never heal. An ancient writer gives a fair measure of what could be done by Níðvísur[172](lampoons),which never spared even the kings. They threatened Harold the Dane to write as many lampoons upon him as there were noses[173]in Iceland (Ólaf Tryggvason’s Saga, xxxvii.), and escaped by magic from an invasion. Nor did they spare even the gods; for instance, Hjalti sings (Burnt Nial’s Saga):
“I will not serve an idle log,For one, I care not which;But either Odin is a dogOr Freya is a——.”
“I will not serve an idle log,For one, I care not which;But either Odin is a dogOr Freya is a——.”
“I will not serve an idle log,For one, I care not which;But either Odin is a dogOr Freya is a——.”
The term “Tað-skegglingar,” Dung-beardlings, applied by a woman to certain youths whom she hated, caused a small civil war. When Dr Wormius was Rector Magnificus of the Copenhagen University, an Icelandic student complained of a libellous fellow-countryman. The poet, when summoned, confessed the authorship; contended that it contained no cause of offence, and, with characteristic plausibility and cunning, talked over the simple Vice-Chancellor. Thereupon the plaintiff in tears told the Rector that his fair fame was for ever lost, explaining at the same time the “fables, figures, and other malicious designs under which the malignity of the satire was couched;” and even the “spells and sorceries” which threatened his life. Thereupon Dr Wormius took high ground, and by citing certain severe laws against witchcraft, persuaded the poet to tear up his satire and never to write or to speak of it again. “The student was ravished with joy,” because he had made his peace with a pest who could exceed in power of annoyance Aristophanes, Horace, and Juvenal.
The courage, steadfastness, and pertinacity of the Icelander are proved by his annals, and if he does not show these qualities in the present day, it is because they are overlaid by circumstances. As regards the relations of the sexes, we find nothing in the number of illegitimate children which justifies the poet in singing of the “moral north.”[174]Iceland in fact must be reckoned amongst the