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
hell-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 noble, - 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.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 19 of 151
Words from 9494 to 10010
of 79667
