284 ICELAND : ITS HISTORY AND INHABITANTS.^ 



in diameter. No lava was ejected. The fame of this volcano is derived 

 from its crater of boiling clay, now a round lake with green cold 

 water. Close to the crater are sulphur and mud springs.^ 



Iceland has another and greater claim to your interest. It is, as 

 William Morris said, the Greece of the North. It produced in the 

 twelfth and thirteenth centuries a literature unparalleled after Rome 

 before the golden age of England and France, in character drawing, 

 in passionate dramatic power, in severe, noble simplicity, in grim 

 humor. All the characters of the Sagas live and move to-da3^ Every 

 hill and headland and valley in the island is full of their presence. 

 The Icelander of to-day knows them by heart. It is as if every Eng- 

 lishman, from jDauper to king, knew Shakespeare's historical plays 

 and could retell them more or less in his or her own words. It has 

 kept the national pride alive through evil times. It has preserved 

 the language almost untouched by time and foreign intercourse. 



Nowhere is the contrast between man and his surroundings so 

 glaring as in Iceland. Buried in snow and darkness, deprived of 

 every comfort, living on rancid butter and dried fish, drinking sour 

 whey and milk, dressed like his servants, seeking in a little boat his 

 food, yet a cultured mind, possessing an intimate knowledge, not only 

 of the history of his own country but of Greece and Rome, a poet 

 fond of throwing off satires, intellectually and morally the equal of 

 his European guest, considering himself your equal and refusing 

 to be ordered about by a rich Englishman, owner of several square 

 miles of land and hundreds of sheep, with a pedigree going farther 

 back than that of his visitor, a jack-of-all-trades, a blacksmith in 

 his smithy, boat builder and carpenter, an artist in filigree work, a 

 carver in wood, an eager reader of books. He has universal educa- 

 tion up to the degree to which it is useful for a man. There are no 

 schools in Iceland, yet every child at 12 can read, according to the 

 parish statistics. In no country in Europe are so many books printed 

 and sold, in proportion to the population. A population equal to 

 that of Hampstead, 70,000, has 1"2 printing presses, the earliest being 

 established as far back as 1530. About 100 books annually, II news- 

 papers, and 8 periodicals are produced to satisfy the literary needs of 

 this little nation. 



Yet this literary people still live in a pastoral and Homeric civiliza- 

 tion which is a modern lesson of the healthfulness of human life 

 lived in close contact with the free, wild life of nature, such as would 

 have delighted the heart of Rousseau or Thoreau. As a proof that 

 this life is healthy I give the example of a clergyman who died four 

 years ago, 113 years old, having managed to live all his days healthy 



o Mr. Stefanson gives in bis article a tabulated statement, bere omitted, of 

 eruptions of tbe volcanoes of Iceland from about tbe year 900 to 1728. 



