404 



ICELAND. 



handkerchief, that is tied several times around it, and completely hides the hair. This has 

 for ages been the national dress. 



10. Language. This is the Icelandic, an original language, or the Scandinavian, the stock 

 of several languages in the north of Europe. 



11. Manner of Building. The houses in Iceland are all constructed in the same man- 

 ner. The walls are thick, and con)posed of alternate layers of earth and of stone. The 

 rafters are a few beams of drift-wood, or of whalebones interlaced with twigs, and covered 

 with turf. This kind of roof always bears good grass, which is cut with the scythe. There 

 is generally a dark alley running through the middle of the house, and on either side of this are 

 the entrances to the various apartments, as the kitchen, the stranger's room, the sleeping room, 

 &c. The stranger's room is always the best in the house. The light is admitted from 

 the roof through windows of glass, or of the membranes of sheep. There is no chim- 

 ney in the kitchen, and the smoke escapes through a hole in the roof. The Icelanders never 

 have fire even in winter, but for cooking. The beds are arranged on each side the sleeping 

 room. They are very narrow, yet the people sleep by couples, lying head to foot. The floor 

 is commonly the damp earth. This manner of life causes pulmonary diseases, which carry 

 off many people, and few attain to old age. 



12. Food. The ordinary diet is of the simplest kind. The breakfast is of sour curds, 

 mixed sometimes with sweet milk and flavored with berries. The dinner is of dried fish and 

 butter. The latter, when rancid, is most esteemed, and bears double the price of fresh and 

 new. The supper is like the breakfast, or it is sometimes a kind of porridge ; and this is to a 

 foreigner the most palatable of all the Icelandic diet. On great occasions, the people have 

 boiled mutton and rye porridge. Beef is seldom eaten, and there is no bread except a little of 

 the sour, Danish biscuit. The usual beverage is whey mixed with water. 



13. Diseases. The most common maladies are obstinate coughs, or consumptions ; and the 

 want of personal neatness engenders cutaneous diseases. Many children die before the 10th 

 year, and about a twenty-fifth of the deaths are from accidents, generally drowning. 



14. Mode of Traveling. No other civilized country offers so many obstacles to the trav- 

 eler as Iceland. There are no coasting vessels to take him from one place to another along the 

 shore, and there are no vehicles, and scarcely any roads in the interior. The only way of 

 traveling is on horseback, and in general the horse is purchased, not hired. There is, however, 

 a truly hospitable custom and feeling, that leads the inhabitants to exchange with the traveler, 

 without a shilling for boot, a good and fresh horse, for one lean and jaded with a long journey. 

 The horses are seldom housed or fed, even in winter, but subsist chiefly on the sea-weeds 

 thrown up by the tide They are of a stout race, and are broken to an amble, an easy gait for 

 an equestrian. As there are no inns, and little desirable shelter in the small and crowded 

 dwellings, the traveler usually carries a tent, and the nature of the road imposes an equal neces- 

 sity for a guide ; while the fogs or storms of snow, make it necessary, that he should also be 

 provided with a compass. He must ford rivers if the ice be too weak to bear him, and if not 

 provided with shelter, he must sometimes seek it in caverns, or build a house of snow. In 

 winter it is impossible to travel at all, and even in summer, when there is no obstruction from 

 ice and snow, there is enough of difficulty and danger, in crossing rivers, climbing mountains, 

 passing morasses, and picking a way over the burning and smoking ground, rent by earthquakes 

 into chasms. 



Towards the end of June, the Icelanders make a journey to the coast, to sell their produc- 

 tions to the factories, and bring back other commodities in exchange, for the traffic is carried 

 on rather by exchange, than money, — though the absence of money has produced a sort of 

 substitute in fish and wadmal (a coarse cloth). Of fi?Ji, there were in the time of Von Troil, 

 48 to the rix dollar. This transportation of goods to the coast and back, leads the people, for 

 mutual assistance, to travel in caravans, and sometimes 70 horses are seen together, going down 

 to the coast, and often at the factories there are 300 horses and half as many tents. 



15. Manners and Customs. It is only on the confines of the polar circle, that we must look 

 for society in a state of primitive simplicity, and with a difibsion of a great degree of knowl- 

 edge, though without the answering grade of refinement. The remote insular situation of Ice- 

 land, and its poverty, which one of its pastors called the "bulwark of its happiness," is a for- 

 tunate barrier to the visits of foreigners, who might, indeed, introduce to those secluded re- 

 gions more knowledge of the world, coupled with a greater familiarity with its vices. The 

 early settlers of Iceland, like those of New England, were a race well fitted to leave a high 



