BESSESTEDR. 
289 
additional stipend should be paid for each boy; 
and the allowance was accordingly raised to forty, 
and afterwards to sixty, rix-dollars; but even this 
is far from being found sufficient. The food is 
almost as ordinary as that of the poorer peasantry, 
consisting principally of dried fish, sour butter, 
and now and then mutton. We are not, how¬ 
ever, to judge of the state of literature and learn¬ 
ing in the island, from the small number of boys 
who receive a classical education at the school of 
Bessestedr. Many obtain a very considerable share 
of knowledge in the Latin and Greek languages, 
and become good scholars who have never entered 
its walls. An attachment to reading and study, 
if not a necessary consequence of the long win¬ 
ters, which for many months immure the natives 
almost entirely in their houses, is certainly ma¬ 
terially increased by that circumstance; it being 
impossible to find the comforts of society in so 
scanty a population, and the enjoyment derived 
from literary pursuits being the only resource 
left them against the tediousness of such a con¬ 
finement. The Sagas , or traditional histories of 
the country, are well known to the lower ranks of 
people, and the comparatively few who are not able 
to read, commit them to memory; the delight of a 
winter’s evening in Iceland being for the old to re¬ 
peat them to their infant posterity, by which means 
u 
