Part 2 (1/2)

Dem fterbend feine Buble Einen goldnen Becher gab.

And in one of the most ancient Eddaic songs it is written, ”Drink, Runes, must thou know, if thou wilt maintain thy power over the maiden thou lovest. Thou shalt score them on the drinking-horn, on the back of thy hand, and the word NAUD” (NEED--necessity) ”on thy nail.” Moreover, when it is remembered that the ladies of the house themselves minister on these occasions, it will be easily understood that all flinching is out of the question.

What is a man to do, when a wicked little golden-haired maiden insists on pouring him out a b.u.mper, and dumb show is his only means of remonstrance? Why, of course, if death were in the cup, he must make her a leg, and drain it to the bottom, as I did. In conclusion, I am bound to add that, notwithstanding the baccha.n.a.lian character prevailing in these visits, I derived from them much interesting and useful information, and I have invariably found the gentlemen to whom I have been presented persons of education and refinement, combined with a happy, healthy, jovial temperament, that invests their conversation with a peculiar charm.

At this moment people are in a great state of excitement at the expected arrival of H.I.H. Prince Napoleon, and two days ago a large full-rigged s.h.i.+p came in laden with coal for his use. The day after we left Stornaway, we had seen her scudding away before the gale on a due west course, and guessed she was bound for Iceland, and running down the longitude, but as we arrived here four days before her, our course seems to have been a better one.

The only other s.h.i.+p here is the French frigate ”Artemise,”

Commodore Dumas, by whom I have been treated with the greatest kindness and civility.

On Sat.u.r.day we went to Vedey, a beautiful little green island where the eider ducks breed, and build nests with the soft under-down plucked from their own bosoms. After the little ones are hatched, and their birthplaces deserted, the nests are gathered, cleaned, and stuffed into pillow-cases, for pretty ladies in Europe to lay their soft, warm cheeks upon, and sleep the sleep of the innocent, while long-legged, broad-shouldered Englishmen protrude from between them at German inns, like the ham from a sandwich, and cannot sleep, however innocent.

The next day, being Sunday, I read prayers on board, and then went for a short time to the cathedral church,-- the only stone building in Reykjavik. It is a moderate-sized, unpretending place, capable of holding three or four hundred persons, erected in very ancient times, but lately restored. The Icelanders are of the Lutheran religion, and a Lutheran clergyman, in a black gown, etc., with a ruff round his neck, such as our bishops are painted in about the time of James the First, was preaching a sermon. It was the first time I had heard Icelandic spoken continuously, and it struck me as a singularly sweet caressing language, although I disliked the particular cadence, amounting almost to a chant, with which each sentence ended.

As in every church where prayers have been offered up since the world began, the majority of the congregation were women, some few dressed in bonnets, and the rest in the national black silk skull-cap, set jauntily on one side of the head, with a long black ta.s.sel hanging down to the shoulder, or else in a quaint mitre of white linen, of which a drawing alone could give you an idea, the remainder of an Icelandic lady's costume, when not superseded by Paris fas.h.i.+ons, consists of a black bodice fastened in front with silver clasps, over which is drawn a cloth jacket, ornamented with a mult.i.tude of silver b.u.t.tons; round the neck goes a stiff ruff of velvet, figured with silver lace, and a silver belt, often beautifully chased, binds the long dark wadmal petticoat round the waist. Sometimes the ornaments are of gold instead of silver, and very costly.

Before dismissing his people, the preacher descended from the pulpit, and putting on a splendid cope of crimson velvet (in which some bishop had in ages past been murdered), turned his back to the congregation, and chanted some Latin sentences in good round Roman style.

Though still retaining in their ceremonies a few vestiges of the old religion, though altars, candles, pictures, and crucifixes yet remain in many of their churches, the Icelanders are staunch Protestants, and, by all accounts, the most devout, innocent pure-hearted people in the world. Crime, theft, debauchery, cruelty, are unknown amongst them; they have neither prison, gallows, soldiers, nor police; and in the manner of the lives they lead among their secluded valleys, there is something of a patriarchal simplicity, that reminds one of the Old World princes, of whom it has been said, that they were ”upright and perfect, eschewing evil, and in their hearts no guile.”

The law with regard to marriage, however, is sufficiently peculiar. When, from some unhappy incompatibility of temper, a married couple live so miserably together as to render life insupportable, it is competent for them to apply to the Danish Governor of the island for a divorce. If, after the lapse of three years from the date of the application, both are still of the same mind, and equally eager to be free, the divorce is granted, and each is at liberty to marry again.

The next day it had been arranged that we were to take an experimental trip on our new ponies, under the guidance of the learned and jovial Rector of the College.

Unfortunately the weather was dull and rainy, but we were determined to enioy ourselves in spite of everything, and a pleasanter ride I have seldom had. The steed Sigurdr had purchased for me was a long-tailed, hog-maned, s.h.a.ggy, cow-houghed creature, thirteen hands high, of a bright yellow colour, with admirable action, and sure-footed enough to walk downstairs backwards. The Doctor was not less well mounted; in fact, the Icelandic pony is quite a peculiar race, much stronger, faster, and better bred than the Highland shelty, and descended probably from pure-blooded sires that scoured the steppes of Asia, long before Odin and his paladins had peopled the valleys of Scandinavia.

The first few miles of our ride lay across an undulating plain of dolorite, to a farm situated at the head of an inlet of the sea. At a distance, the farm-steading looked like a little oasis of green, amid the grey stony slopes that surrounded it, and on a nearer approach not unlike the vestiges of a Celtic earthwork, with the tumulus of a hero or two in the centre, but the mounds turned out to be nothing more than the gra.s.s roofs of the house and offices, and the banks and d.y.k.es but circ.u.mvallations round the plot of most carefully cleaned meadow, called the ”tun,” which always surrounds every Icelandic farm.

This word ”tun” is evidently identical with our own Irish ”TOWN-LAND,” the Cornish ”TOWN,” and the Scotch ”TOON,”--terms which, in their local signification, do not mean a congregation of streets and buildings, but the yard, and s.p.a.ces of gra.s.s immediately adjoining a single house, just as in German we have ”tzaun,” and in the Dutch ”tuyn,” a garden.

Turning to the right, round the head of a little bay, we pa.s.sed within forty yards of an enormous eagle, seated on a crag; but we had no rifle, and all he did was to rise heavily into the air, flap his wings like a barn-door fowl, and plump lazily down twenty yards farther off.

Soon after, the district we traversed became more igneous, wrinkled, cracked, and ropy than anything we had yet seen, and another two hours' scamper over such a track as till then I would not have believed horses could have traversed, even at a foot's pace, brought us to the solitary farm-house of Bessestad. Fresh from the neat homesteads of England that we had left sparkling in the bright spring weather, and sheltered by immemorial elms,--the scene before us looked inexpressibly desolate.

In front rose a cl.u.s.ter of weather-beaten wooden buildings, and huts like ice-houses, surrounded by a scanty plot of gra.s.s, reclaimed from the craggy plain of broken lava that stretched--the home of ravens and foxes--on either side to the horizon. Beyond, lay a low black breadth of moorland, intersected by patches of what was neither land nor water, and last, the sullen sea; while above our heads a wind, saturated with the damps of the Atlantic, went moaning over the landscape. Yet this was Bessestad, the ancient home of Snorro Sturleson!

On dismounting from our horses and entering the house things began to look more cheery; a dear old lady, to whom we were successively presented by the Rector, received us, with the air of a princess, ushered us into her best room, made us sit down on the sofa--the place of honour--and a.s.sisted by her niece, a pale lily-like maiden, named after Jarl Hakon's Thora, proceeded to serve us with hot coffee, rusks, and sweetmeats. At first it used to give me a very disagreeable feeling to be waited upon by the woman-kind of the household, and I was always starting up, and attempting to take the dishes out of their hands, to their infinite surprise; but now I have succeeded in learning to accept their ministrations with the same unembarra.s.sed dignity as my neighbours. In the end, indeed, I have rather got to like it, especially when they are as pretty as Miss Thora. To add, moreover, to our content, it appeared that that young lady spoke a little French; so that we had no longer any need to pay our court by proxy, which many persons besides ourselves have found to be unsatisfactory. Our hostess lives quite alone. Her son, whom I have the pleasure of knowing, is far away, pursuing a career of honour and usefulness at Copenhagen, and it seems quite enough for his mother to know that he is holding his head high among the princes of literature, and the statesmen of Europe, provided only news of his success and advancing reputation shall occasionally reach her across the ocean.

Of the rooms and the interior arrangement of the house, I do not know that I have anything particular to tell you; they seemed to me like those of a good old-fas.h.i.+oned farmhouse, the walls wainscoted with deal, and the doors and staircase of the same material. A few prints, a photograph, some book-shelves, one or two little pictures, decorated the parlour, and a neat iron stove, and ma.s.sive chests of drawers, served to furnish it very completely.

But you must not, I fear, take the drawing-room of Bessestad as an average specimen of the comfort of an Icelandic interieur. The greater proportion of the inhabitants of the island live much more rudely. The walls of only the more substantial farmsteads are wainscoted with deal, or even partially screened with drift-wood.

In most houses the bare blocks of lava, pointed with moss, are left in all their natural ruggedness. Instead of wood, the rafters are made of the ribs of whales. The same room but too often serves as the dining, sitting, and sleeping place for the whole family; a hole in the roof is the only chimney, and a horse's skull the most luxurious fauteuil into which it is possible for them to induct a stranger. The parquet is that originally laid down by Nature,--the beds are merely boxes filled with feathers or sea-weed,--and by all accounts the nightly packing is pretty close, and very indiscriminate.

After drinking several cups of coffee, and consuming at least a barrel of rusks, we rose to go, in spite of Miss Thora's intimation that a fresh jorum of coffee was being brewed. The horses were resaddled; and with an eloquent exchange of bows, curtseys, and kindly smiles, we took leave of our courteous entertainers, and sallied forth into the wind and rain. It was a regular race home, single file, the Rector leading; but as we sped along in silence, amid the unchangeable features of this strange land, I could not help thinking of him whose shrewd observing eye must have rested, six hundred and fifty years ago, on the selfsame crags, and tarns, and distant mountain-tops; perhaps on the very day he rode out in the pride of his wealth, talent, and political influence, to meet his murderers at Reikholt. And mingling with his memory would rise the pale face of Thora,--not the little lady of the coffee and buscuits we had just left, but that other Thora, so tender and true, who turned back King Olaf's h.e.l.l-hounds from the hiding-place of the great Jarl of Lade.

In order that you may understand why the forlorn barrack we had just left, and its solitary inmates, should have set me thinking of the men and women ”of a thousand summers back,” it is necessary I should tell you a little about this same Snorro Sturleson, whose memory so haunted me.

Colonized as Iceland had been,--not, as is generally the case, when a new land is brought into occupation, by the poverty-stricken dregs of a redundant population, nor by a gang of outcasts and ruffians, expelled from the bosom of a society which they contaminated,--but by men who in their own land had been both rich and n.o.ble,--with possessions to be taxed, and a spirit too haughty to endure taxation,--already acquainted with whatever of refinement and learning the age they lived in was capable of supplying, it is not surprising that we should find its inhabitants, even from the first infancy of the republic, endowed with an amount of intellectual energy hardly to be expected in so secluded a community.

Perhaps it was this very seclusion which stimulated into almost miraculous exuberance the mental powers already innate in the people. Undistracted during several successive centuries by the b.l.o.o.d.y wars, and still more b.l.o.o.d.y political convulsions, which for too long a period rendered the sword of the warrior so much more important to European society than the pen of the scholar, the Icelandic settlers, devoting the long leisure of their winter nights to intellectual occupations, became the first of any European nation to create for themselves a native literature. Indeed, so much more accustomed did they get to use their heads than their hands, than if an Icelander were injured he often avenged himself, not by cutting the throat of his antagonist, but by ridiculing him in some pasquinade,--sometimes, indeed, he did both; and when the King of Denmark maltreats the crew of an Icelandic vessel s.h.i.+pwrecked on his coast, their indignant countrymen send the barbarous monarch word, that by way of reprisal, they intend making as many lampoons on him as there are promontories in his dominions. Almost all the ancient Scandinavian ma.n.u.scripts are Icelandic; the negotiations between the Courts of the North were conducted by Icelandic diplomatists; the earliest topographical survey with which we are acquainted was Icelandic; the cosmogony of the Odin religion was formulated, and its doctrinal traditions and ritual reduced to a system, by Icelandic archaeologists; and the first historical composition ever written by any European in the vernacular, was the product of Icelandic genius. The t.i.tle of this important work is ”The Heimskringla,” or world-circle, [Footnote: So called because Heimskringla (world-circle) is the first word in the opening sentence of the ma.n.u.script which catches the eye.] and its author was--Snorro Sturleson! It consists of an account of the reigns of the Norwegian kings from mythic times down to about A.D. 1150, that is to say, a few years before the death of our own Henry II.; but detailed by the old Sagaman with so much art and cleverness as almost to combine the dramatic power of Macaulay with Clarendon's delicate delineation of character, and the charming loquacity of Mr. Pepys. His stirring sea-fights, his tender love-stories, and delightful bits of domestic gossip, are really inimitable;--you actually live with the people he brings upon the stage, as intimately as you do with Falstaff, Percy, or Prince Hal; and there is something in the bearing of those old heroic figures who form his dramatis person, so grand and n.o.ble, that it is impossible to read the story of their earnest stirring lives without a feeling of almost pa.s.sionate interest--an effect which no tale frozen up in the monkish Latin of the Saxon annalists has ever produced upon me.

As for Snorro's own life, it was eventful and tragic enough. Unscrupulous, turbulent, greedy of money, he married two heiresses--the one, however, becoming the COLLEAGUE, not the successor of the other. This arrangement naturally led to embarra.s.sment. His wealth created envy, his excessive haughtiness disgusted his st.u.r.dy fellow-countrymen. He was suspected of desiring to make the republic an appanage of the Norwegian crown, in the hope of himself becoming viceroy; and at last, on a dark September night, of the year 1241, he was murdered in his house at Reikholt by his three sons-in-law.

The same century which produced the Herodotean work of Sturleson also gave birth to a whole body of miscellaneous Icelandic literature,--though in Britain and elsewhere bookmaking was entirely confined to the monks, and merely consisted in the compilation of a series of bald annals locked up in bad Latin. It is true, Thomas of Ercildoune was a contemporary of Snorro's; but he is known to us more as a magician than as a man of letters; whereas histories, memoirs, romances, biographies, poetry, statistics, novels, calendars, specimens of almost every kind of composition, are to be found even among the meagre relics which have survived the literary decadence that supervened on the extinction of the republic.

It is to these same spirited chroniclers that we are indebted for the preservation of two of the most remarkable facts in the history of the world: the colonization of Greenland by Europeans in the 10th century, and the discovery of America by the Icelanders at the commencement of the 11th.

The story is rather curious.

Shortly after the arrival of the first settlers in Iceland, a mariner of the name of Eric the Red discovers a country away to the west, which, in consequence of its fruitful appearance, he calls Greenland. In the course of a few years the new land has become so thickly inhabited that it is necessary to erect the district into an episcopal see; and at last, in 1448, we have a brief of Pope Nicolas ”granting to his beloved children of Greenland, in consideration of their having erected many sacred buildings and a splendid cathedral,”--a new bishop and a fresh supply of priests. At the commencement, however, of the next century, this colony of Greenland, with its bishops, priests and people, its one hundred and ninety towns.h.i.+ps, its cathedral, its churches, its monasteries, suddenly fades into oblivion, like the fabric of a dream. The memory of its existence perishes, and the allusions made to it in the old Scandinavian Sagas gradually come to be considered poetical inventions or pious frauds. At last, after a lapse of four hundred years, some Danish missionaries set out to convert the Esquimaux; and there, far within Davis' Straits, are discovered vestiges of the ancient settlement,--remains of houses, paths, walls, churches, tombstones, and inscriptions. [Footnote: On one tombstone there was written in Runic, ”Vigdis M. D.