Our Last Stage From Thingvalla Back To Reykjavik Was Got
Over Very Quickly, And Seemed An Infinitely Shorter
Distance Than When We First Performed It.
We met a number
of farmers returning to their homes from a kind of fair
that is annually held
In the little metropolis; and as
I watched the long caravan-like line of pack-horses and
horsemen, wearily plodding over the stony waste in single
file, I found it less difficult to believe that these
remote islanders should be descended from Oriental
forefathers. In fact, one is constantly reminded of the
East in Iceland. From the earliest ages the Icelanders
have been a people dwelling in tents. In the time of
the ancient Parliament, the legislators, during the entire
session, lay encamped in movable booths around the place
of meeting. Their domestic polity is naturally patriarchal,
and the flight of their ancestors from Norway was a
protest against the antagonistic principle of feudalism.
No Arab could be prouder of his courser than they are of
their little ponies, or reverence more deeply the sacred
rights of hospitality; while the solemn salutation
exchanged between two companies of travellers, passing
each other in the DESERT - as they invariably call the
uninhabited part of the country - would not have misbecome
the stately courtesy of the most ancient worshippers of
the sun.
Anything more multifarious than the landing of these
caravans we met returning to the inland districts - cannot
well be conceived; deal boards, rope, kegs of brandy,
sacks of rye or wheaten flour, salt, soap, sugar, snuff,
tobacco, coffee; everything, in fact, which was necessary
to their domestic consumption during the ensuing winter.
In exchange for these commodities, which of course they
are obliged to get from Europe, the Icelanders export
raw wool, knitted stockings, mittens, cured cod, and fish
oil, whale blubber, fox skins, eider-down, feathers, and
Icelandic moss.
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