ICELAND. 27 



The present population are almost exclusively of Norwegian origin, although 

 their language is now pure Danish. Their ancestors were exiles and shipwrecked 

 seafarers, who arrived during the second half of the ninth century. Nearly all 

 the men are tall, robust, and healtliy ; many reach a great age, thanks to their 

 simple lives ; and disease or malformations are very rare. Thej^ are generally of a 

 grave, almost stern disposition, harmonizing well with their surroundings, yet are 

 very hospitable, although looking with some alarm on the arrival of strangers, 

 who have so often introduced epidemics amongst them. Travellers stopping at 

 Thorshavn, the chief seaport of the Archipelago, are always well received, and 

 hailed as messengers from the civilised world by the Danish officials banished to 

 these lands from their beloved Copenhagen. 



The group comprises six districts — Strorao, Nordero, Ostero, Vaago, Sando, 

 and Siidero. The people elect a local assembly, and are represented in the 

 Copenhagen Chambers. 



IL— ICELAND. 



Gknerai. Aspects. — Glacieus. 



This Danish island, three times larger, but far less populous than the state to 

 which it belongs, is almost uninhabited, except in the neighbourhood of the coasts. 

 Although ethnically forming part of the Scandinavian world, it seems, like the 

 Fàrôer, to belong in other respects to the British Isles. Separated from Norway by 

 waters in some places over 2,000 fathoms deep, it is connected with the Faroer and 

 Hebrides by banks and ridges nowhere 550 fathoms below the surface. But, owing 

 to its central position in the North Atlantic, Iceland is completely isolated from 

 the rest of Europe. It lies nearer to the New World, of which it might almost 

 seem to be a dependency, though still decidedly European in its fauna and flora, 

 the plateau on which it rests, and the history of its inhabitants. Originally called 

 Snjoland (" Snowland"), it received its present appellation from the Norse navigator 

 Floki, owing to the masses of floating ice often surrounding it. 



The interior has not yet been entirely explored. Covered with ice and 

 snow-fields, pierced with active craters, enveloped in rugged streams of lava, 

 guarded by rapid torrents and shifting sands, the central uplands are extremely 

 inaccessible, and it was only so recently as 1874 that the Vatna-Jokull plateau, on 

 the east side, was for the first time explored, and its highest ridge ascended. 

 These hitherto unknown regions were for the natives lands of mystery and fable, 

 and here might be placed the city of Asgard, mentioned in the cosmogony of the 

 Edda. Even amongst the educated classes the tradition still lingers of a 

 delightful retreat, a " garden of the Ases," hidden away in some remote valley in 

 the centre of the island. 



Iceland is, on the whole, a somewhat elevated land, the interior being occupied 

 with plateaux, while volcanic mountains occur beyond the limits of the uplands in 

 the peninsulas. One of the loftiest summits is the Snaefells-JokuU (4,702 hot), a 



