The Land of Fire 



743 



Iceland has another and greater claim 

 to one's interest. It is, as William Mor- 

 ris 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 toda3^ Every hill and headland 

 and valley in the island is full of their 

 presence. The Icelander of today knows 

 them by heart. It is as if every English- 

 man, from pauper to king, knew Shake- 

 speare's historical plays and could retell 

 them more or less in his or her own 

 words. It has kept the national times 

 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 cul- 

 tured mind, possessing an intimate knowl- 

 edge not only of the history of his own 

 country, but of Greece and Rome; a 

 poet fond of throwing off satires, in- 

 tellectually 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 hun- 

 dreds 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 in books, he has univer- 

 sal education up to the degree to which 

 it is useful for a man. 



There are no schools in Iceland, 3'et 

 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 of only 76,000, scattered in 

 many hamlets, has 12 printing presses, 



the earliest being established as far back 

 as 1530; about 100 books annually, 14 

 newspapers, and 8 periodicals are pro- 

 duced to satisfy the literary needs of this 

 little nation. 



Yet this literary people still live in a 

 pastoral and Homeric civilization, 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 Rous- 

 seau 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 and happy on £30 

 ($150) a year, the average stipend in the 

 Icelandic church. 



The sheep yield food and clothing. 

 Their wool is pulled off in spring, carded, 

 spun, woven in hand looms, and worn 

 undyed. You make shoes of their skin 

 and spoons of the horns. Every oppor- 

 tunity is seized for the telling of stories 

 and reciting of poems. Only the milk 

 ewes are kept at home in the summer to 

 be milked ; the rest of the sheep are gath- 

 ered in from the mountains in autumn, 

 notice being given at church from the 

 pulpit. 



The autumn gatherings, with people 

 sitting on the walls of the stone inclosure 

 telling stories, are quite Homeric. The 

 winter evenings are spent with each mem- 

 ber of the family busy at work in the 

 same room ; the men on their knees shav- 

 ing the wool off sheepskins, making ropes 

 and nets of hair ; the women using spin- 

 dle and distaff, embroidering, etc., afford 

 a still better opportunity for stories and 

 puns. 



There are even wandering minstrels 

 who gain their livelihood by reciting 

 prose or poetry, which they know by 

 heart, at various farm-houses, till they 

 exhaust their stock. 



To conclude with a few statistics : The 

 annual trade of Iceland is worth close 

 on i 1, 000,000 ($5,000,000), export and 

 import together. The principal articles 

 of export are salted codfish, wool, mut- 

 ton, and eider down. A large increasing 



