ICELAND 



2905 



ICELAND 



and a breadth of almost 200 miles; in form it 

 is roughly oval. In the northwest, however, 

 a peninsula, as craggy and as much indented by 

 fiords as the coast of Norway, juts out into the 

 sea. 



The People. The Norwegians settled Ice- 

 land, and their descendants, the Icelanders of 

 to-day have many of the qualities of the Norse- 

 men, being sturdy, thrifty and intelligent. 

 They have developed sturdiness in combating 

 the none too favorable climate, but this sturdi- 

 ness alone has not enabled them to keep their 

 death rate down, and until recently a distress- 

 ingly large percentage of the babies died. Bet- 

 ter sanitary conditions, however, and more 

 doctors have improved conditions, and the 

 population is increasing steadily. Thrift, too, 

 is a natural outgrowth of living conditions in a 

 land where hard work is necessary if life is to 

 be sustained. The intelligence of the Iceland- 

 ers is proved by the value they place on edu- 

 cation and by their fondness for reading. Per- 

 haps they remember that long ago, when 

 countries which are to-day among the foremost 

 in Europe had scarce begun to produce a lit- 

 erature, Iceland had its poets who wrote epics 

 which to-day the world is glad to study. At 

 any rate, the children in Iceland must be taught 

 to read and write and figure, and teachers 

 travel about from farm to farm. Schools are 

 few, but this is because so few of the people 

 live in towns. The Lutheran Church, to which 

 the people almost without exception belong, 

 has a large part in the educational scheme; and 

 many of the teachers are also the preachers. 



The traveler in Iceland sees many odd-look- 

 ing little iron houses, for wood is scarce, and 

 many islanders send to Birmingham, England, 

 for their "portable" dwellings. Another thing 

 which cannot fail to attract attention is the en- 

 tire absence of public houses or barrooms, for 

 Iceland has been since 1908 a prohibition 

 country. 



What the People Do. The inhabitants live 

 mostly in the lowlands along the south and 

 southwest coast, where the climate is not so 

 harsh; but even here there is not enough 

 warmth for the raising of many crops, for the 

 average summer temperature of 48 is but six- 

 teen degrees above the average winter tem- 

 perature. But although wheat will not grow, 

 grass is fairly abundant, and the raising of cat- 

 tle, sheep and horses is the chief industry. 

 Agricultural schools have been founded, and 

 certain quick-growing vegetables do well in 

 sheltered locations. 



There can be no lumbering, for the only 

 trees, the birch and the mountain oak, do not 

 grow large enough to be of any use, and there 

 are no manufactures. There are no minerals, 

 except sulphur, of any particular value. But 

 there are fish of all kinds, and the hardy Ice- 

 landic fisherman puts to sea in his little open 

 boat in all sorts of weather. The man who 

 could write truly the lives of these fisherfolk 

 beside their stormy seas would have tales of 

 daring and of heroism unsurpassed anywhere. 

 The fish are sent, after drying, to Denmark and 

 to Scotland, along with sheep and horses, wool 

 and hides; for steamers call at the island every 

 three weeks. It is an interesting fact that, with 

 the outbreak of the War of the Nations in 1914, 

 Iceland had to seek elsewhere for the supplies 

 obtained in normal times from Scotland and 

 Denmark, and that in October of that year 

 there sailed from the United States the first 

 freight-boat that ever went from that country 

 direct to Iceland. 



The Land. Interesting as the people are, 

 the country is no less so. "The land of ice 

 and fire," it has been called, in reference to its 

 ice caps and its volcanoes, its glaciers and its 

 geysers. The whole island has been built up by 

 the outpourings of volcanoes, and the central 

 plateau is still a wilderness of lava beds and 

 deserts, with almost innumerable craters rising 

 above the surface. At least a hundred volca- 

 noes still show signs of life, and as is usual in 

 volcanic lands, hot springs, bubbling mud lakes 

 and spouting geysers abound. Not far from 

 Hekla, the most famous of the volcanoes, is the 

 Great Geyser, which hurls its immense col- 

 umns of almost boiling water to a height of 

 over 150 feet. In this land where snow falls 

 the year round there is found, also, the hottest 

 spring in the world a spring whose waters 

 below the surface are fifty degrees above the 

 boiling point. And here, there and everywhere 

 are the ice fields "dead" glaciers which no 

 longer have a true glacier flow. Thus this re- 

 gion, in part so inhospitable that it will not 

 support life, is a land of magnificent scenery, 

 which can offer in addition to its beauties a 

 summer climate delightfully cool, and days 

 which almost literally have no night. 



Government and History. Iceland belonged 

 to Denmark until 1918, and until then had home 

 rule and a liberal constitution. There is a legis- 

 lative body, known as the althing, of forty mem- 

 bers, all of them being elected by popular vote ; 

 all the officers of the island are natives, and they 

 act independently of Denmark in all respects. 



