I
never saw any one without good warm shoes and stockings.
The better classes, such as merchants, officials, &c. are dressed in
the French style, and rather fashionably. There is no lack of silk
and other costly stuffs. Some of these are brought from England,
but the greater part come from Denmark.
On the king's birthday, which is kept every year at the house of the
Stiftsamtmann, the festivities are said to be very grand; on this
occasion the matrons appear arrayed in silk, and the maidens in
white jaconet; the rooms are lighted with wax tapers.
Some speculative genius or other has also established a sort of club
in Reikjavik. He has, namely, hired a couple of rooms, where the
townspeople meet of an evening to discuss "tea-water," bread and
butter, and sometimes even a bottle of wine or a bowl of punch. In
winter the proprietor gives balls in these apartments, charging 20
kr. for each ticket of admission. Here the town grandees and the
handicraftsmen, in fact all who choose to come, assemble; and the
ball is said to be conducted in a very republican spirit. The
shoemaker leads forth the wife of the Stiftsamtmann to the dance,
while that official himself has perhaps chosen the wife or daughter
of the shoemaker or baker for his partner.
