108 



THE POLAR WORLD. 



ton had yielded him many a pleasant hour, and often given him occasion to 

 think of England." 



This visit was followed by agreeable consequences for the venerable bard. 

 The Literary Fund soon afterwards sent him a present of £30, a modest sum 

 according to our ideas, but a mine of wealth in the eyes of the poor Icelandic 

 priest. His life, however, was now near its close, as it is stated in a short 

 view " Of the Origin, Progress, and Operations of the Society," dated March 

 3d, 1821, that "the poet of Iceland is now in his grave ; but it is satisfactory 

 to know that the attention, in this instance, of a foreign and remote society to 

 his gains and his fortunes was highly gratifying to his feelings, and contrib- 

 uted not immaterially to the comfort of his concluding days." 



He wrote a letter in very elegant Latin, expressing his heartfelt gratitude 

 for the kindness and generosity of the Society, so accordant ^ith the character 

 of the British nation, and accompanied it with a MS. copy of his translation. 

 The latter was first printed in Iceland in 1828, but his own original poems did 

 not appear before 1842. 



The school where most of the Icelandic clergymen, so poor and yet gener- 

 ally so respectable in their poverty, are educated, is that of Reykjavik, as few 

 only enjoy stipends which enable them to study at Copenhagen. There they 

 live several years under a milder sky, they become acquainted with the splen- 

 dor of a large capital, and thus it might be supposed that the idea of returning 

 to the dreary wastes of their own land must be intolerable. Yet this is their 

 ardent desire, and, like banished exiles, they long for their beloved Iceland, 

 where privation and penury await them. 



In no Christian country, perhaps with the sole exception of Lapland, are the 

 clergy so poor as in Iceland, but in none do they exert a more beneficial in- 

 fluence. 



Though the island has but the one public school at Reykjavik, j^et perhaps 

 in no country is elementary education more generally diffused. Every mother 

 teaches her children to read and write, and a peasant, after providing for the 

 wants of his family by the labor of his hands, loses no opportunity, in his lei- 

 sure hours, of inculcating a sound morality. In these praiseworthy efforts the 

 parents are supported by the pastor. 



He who, judging from the sordid condition of an Icelandic hut, might imag- 

 ine its inhabitants to be no better than savages, would soon change his ojDin- 

 ion were he introduced on a winter evening into the low, ill-ventilated room 

 where the family of a peasant or a small landholder is assembled. Vainly 

 would he seek a single idler in the whole company. The women and girls 

 spin or knit ; the men and boys are all busy mending their agricultural imple- 

 ments and household utensils, or else chiselling or cutting with admirable skill 

 ornaments or snuff-boxes in silver, ivory, or wood. By the dubious light of a 

 tallow lamp, just making obscurity visible, sits one of the family, who reads 

 with a loud voice an old " saga " or chronicle, or maybe the newest number of 

 the " North urfari," an Iceland literary almanac, published during the last few 

 years by Mr. Gisle Brinjulfsson. Sometimes poems or whole sagas are repeat- 

 ed from memory, and there are even itinerant story-tellers, who, like the trouba- 



