98 



THE POLAR WORLD. 



REYKJAVIK, THE CAPITAL OF ICELAND. 



CHAPTER yil. 



THE ICELANDERS. 



Skalholt.— "Reykjavik.— The Fair. — The Peasant 

 and the Merchant.— A Clergyman in his Cups. 

 —Hay-making.— The Icelander's Hut.— Church- 

 es.— IPoverty of the Clergy.— Jon Thorlaksen. 

 —The Seminary of Reykjavik.— Beneficial Influ- 

 ence of the Clergy.— Home Education.— The Ice- 

 lander's Winter's Evening.— Taste for Literature. 

 —The Language.— The Public Library at Reyk- 

 javik.— The Icelandic Literary Society.— Icelanflic Newspapers.— Longevity.— Leprosy.— Travelling 

 in Iceland.— Fording the Rivers.— Crossing of the Skeidara by Mr. Holland.— A Night's Bivouac. 



NEXT to Thingvalla, there is no place in Iceland so replete with historical 

 interest as Skalholt, its ancient capital. Here in the eleventh century was 

 founded the first school in the island ; here was the seat of its first bishops ; 

 here flourished a succession of great orators, historians, and poets ; Isleif, the 

 oldest chronicler of the North ; Gissur, who in the beginning of the twelfth 

 century had visited all the countries of Europe and spoke all their languages ; 

 the philologian Thorlak, and Finnur Johnson, the learned author of the " Ec- 

 clesiastical History of Iceland." The Cathedral of Skalholt was renowned far 

 and wide for its size, and in the year 1100, Latin, poetry, music, and rhetoric, 

 the four liberal arts, were taught in its school, more than they were at that time 



