74 SEA-BIRDS 



a big one in 1813, when, during the war between Britain and Denmark, 

 the armed schooner Faeroe landed a party which killed all garefowls 

 that came within their reach, and arrived later in Reykjavik with 

 twenty-four on board, besides numbers that had been salted down; 

 fifty or sixty were taken back to the Faeroes. On i July 1821 Friedrich 

 Faber and H. C. Raben visited Geirfuglasker, and Raben actually 

 climbed Geirfugladrangur. They saw no garefowls at all: it is possible 

 that the auks might have already gone to sea (especially if their eggs 

 had already been taken that season). In 1828 at least one adult was 

 taken, for a skin for the Copenhagen Museum. This is the last visit 

 to Geirfuglasker that we hear of; in early March 1830 a series of 

 earthquakes took place in which the skerry sank beneath the sea. The 

 great auks moved at once to Eldey, ten miles nearer the coast, and 

 attempted to breed there in the same season. 



Eldey is a remarkable block of volcanic tuff with sheer sides and 

 a flattish top that is distinguished by being the site of the second 

 largest gannetry in the world (p. 83). It is about 250 feet high, at 

 its highest point. On the east side of its north end, below the cliff, 

 is a broadish ledge which slopes and slants into the sea (PL Ila, p. 53), 

 and, as one of us (Fisher) who visited it in 1949 saw for himself, was a 

 suitable landing place and, under the sheer cliff, also a suitable 

 nesting-place for the garefowls. Eldey is made of a particularly 

 resistant type of volcanic tuff; normally such a formation weathers 

 and erodes easily, but Eldey has not significantly changed in a century,* 

 and the Icelanders, who are sensitive to tradition and history, and whose 

 fowlers work with their fathers and sons, are positive that the garefowl 

 ledge is still as it was. It was certainly easy, in 1949, to imagine the 

 great razorbills bobbing buoyantly in the fuss of spray and breakers 

 round the landing-places, clawing a foothold and waddling and 

 struggling clumsily ashore. But they only did this at Eldey for fifteen 

 years. In the first year, the year of the earthquake 1830, two boats 

 took twenty or twenty-one skins for dealers; in 1831 twenty-four 

 were taken; in 1834 at least nine skins and several eggs; in 1840 at 

 least one tgg\ in 1841 three skins and one tgg (the tgg was probably 

 laid by a female which laid an tgg taken in 1840, judging by their 

 remarkable similarity). On a day between the second and fifth 

 (most probably the fourth) day of June 1844 a boat of fourteen men, 

 under the leadership of Vilhjalmur Hakonarsson, sailed the fourteen 



*Just after this was written, in April 1951, a large piece of Eldey's top did sWde off; 

 the garefowl ledge was unaffected. 



