NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
15 
- FASTINATIONS OF ICELAND. 
Former Manchester Teacher Writes of Visit to 
“Land of Heroic Scenery" the last Summer. 
BY W. S. C. RUSSELL. 
I 
The Faroe Islands are the stepping- 
stones to Iceland. Born of mighty vol- 
canic convulsions, they have been cradled 
for centuries on the heaving breast of the 
north Atlantic. “Towering cones and 
precipitous cliffs arising abruptly from the 
sea, their valleys deep intersecting fiords 
through which the currents surge with 
the force of the Maelstrom,—these are 
the characteristic features. The higher 
altitudes are barren, storm-rifted and 
forbidding; the lower slopes are covered 
with luxuriant, nutritious grass which sus- 
tains large flocks of sheep,—the staple 
wealth of the 11,000 Faroese. ‘These 
cliffs are the nesting places of countless 
sea-fowl. Many of the Islanders are 
employed in bird-catching, which task 
they accomplish with a net at the end of 
along pole. By means of a rope they 
are lowered over the cliff where the 
fowler swings fearlessly to and fro like a 
huge pendulum amidst the shrieking, 
screaming birds. Here he gathers in 
the net puffin, skua, gull, tern and others. 
The birds are used for food and their 
feathers are an important item of export. 
The’sea swarms with the best of fish and 
the near-by waters are favorite haunts of 
whale. 
The islands cover an area of 850 
square miles. [he temperature is sel- 
dom below 14 degrees Fahrenheit dur- 
ing winter and snow never lingers in the 
valleys over a week. The mean tem- 
perature is 45 degrees of the three warm- 
est months and of the three coldest it is 
36 degrees.. Fierce storms beat in upon 
these islands from the north and rush 
with destructive velocity through its nar- 
row fiords so that communication is of- 
ten suspended for weeks at atime. Alone 
in the north Atlantic they are exposed 
to the full fury of the elements. 
The cliffs are all basaltic with a free 
mingling of porphyry. “Thousands of 
pentagonal columns surpass the well- 
known structure of Giant’s Causeway in 
geologic grandeur. One of these col- 
umns 60 feet in length has fallen and 
forms a natural bridge over a deep chasm. 
The Rinkesteen is a basaltic column 24 
feet long, 18 feet in diameter and pro- 
jects 12 feet above the water. So ac- 
curately is it balanced in its jointed socket 
that it sways to and fro with the gentle 
wash of the waves. 
Thorshaven is the capital. Here the 
products of the sea, the wool and the 
feathers are prepared for export. It is 
an ancient hamlet with turf-covered 
houses scattered at random over the un- 
even ground with no regard for streets. 
The postofiice, the government building 
and the diminutive dwellings, — all scrup- 
ulously clean,—comprise the settlement. 
It bears the seal or lethargy and rouses 
from its slumber only on the arrival of 
an occasional vessel which sweeps into 
its haven like a harbinger from another 
world. 
The Faroese are descendants from the 
self-expelled Jarls of Scandinavia of the 8th 
and 9th centuries. Through intermar- 
riage and isolation they have developed 
peculiar traits. Their language is a dia- 
lect, somewhat resembling the Icelandic 
but difficult of comprehension even by 
the Danes and Icelanders. Shy and re- 
served they greet the stranger with an 
embarrassing timidity, but when their 
confidence is won they are genial and 
hospitable. Contrary to the dogma of 
the medical fraternity this long period of 
inbreeding has left no marks of degener- 
ation or degradation. Sound in health, 
robust in physique, pure in morals, —they 
present a new problem to the ethno- 
logist. 
Saga Land, 
The lands are there sun-gilded at the hour 
When other lands are silvered by the moon 
The midnight hour, when down the sun doth 
our 
Abuse of light as elsewhere at the noon. 
I was with the mate on the bridge one 
morning at five as anxious as Ingolfr was 
11 centuries before to discover what 
secrets these northern waters held,— 
when the dim outline of land- was seen 
through the shifting fog. I quote from 
my journal: ‘* An enthusiastic Dane 
started a Danish song to the tune of 
‘America’ and I mingled the good old 
English words of Dr. Smith with the 
explosive gutturals of the Scandinavian. 
Norse and Yankee are well met in this 
Icelandic sea and I doff my cap to the. 
descendants of those sturdy mariners who 
discovered Iceland, Greenland and 
America, who anglicised Celt and Briton . 
and eventually made possible my own 
dear New England. What a glorious 
sea is this! It rolls in all the wild free- 
dom of the north, rich in livid colors of 
blue and green in the nearer circle of 
vision and on the far horizon a sparkling 
amethyst beneath the deeper azure of the 
bending sky. To the north the circle is 
broken by the abrupt basaltic cliffs of. 
Ingolfshofdi. Beyond these rise the red 
and brown fragments of extinct craters 
and yet beyond and towering far above 
the loom the glaciated Jokuls, down 
whose sides rush mighty torrents of glac- 
ial water to dash in uncounted waterfalls 
into the impatient sea. 
point in 870 that Ingolfr landed after be- 
ing separated from his sacred household. 
pillars,’’ 
We followed the. shore for hours. | 
We came close in under the black, bare 
walls and gazed up to Skogafoss tumbling 
180 feet of solid waterfall into the break- 
ers. We arrived at the Westman isles, 
which like the fingers of the Norns had 
It was at this. 
been beckoning to us all the morning. A 
solitary cone and red crater stands in the 
center. North and south in a line rise 
several isoloted cliffs abruptly from the 
sea. We went ashore and made the 
ascent of the crater, Mount Helgafell. 
A small fishing hamlet, Heimaey, clings 
to its lower slope apparently ready to 
loose its grip and slip into the sea. This 
place is noted as the retreat of the Irish 
slaves who fled hither in 879. Twice 
it has been visited by pirates and both 
times devastated. First in 1614 by the 
English and second in 1627 when the 
Algerine freebooters carried away as 
slaves the entire population of 400 to 
Barbary. Of those wrested from their 
homes only 13 ever returned. 
The bird cliffs of Heimaey are the 
most wonderful in the world. They 
rise from 1500 to 2000 feet abruptly 
from the water and are covered with ir- 
regularities upon which the birds fight 
for a resting place. At the base is an 
ocean cave so spacious that we entered 
it in a 30-foot launch and turned about 
within. The deep azure of the waters, 
the light brown trachyte dome, the pur- 
ple cone of Helgafell partly hidden by 
the thousands of puffins, skua and gulls 
shrieking about the entrance made an 
impression never to be effaced. 
Reykjavik, so named because of the 
hot springs on the border of the town, 
was the place where the holy pillars of 
Ingolfr drifted ashore and where the first 
permanent settlement was made. Here 
we landed in a mist in the early morning 
and made our way toa tidy little hotel 
kept by an English-speaking German 
matron. ‘This is the capital of Iceland, 
the seat of learning, of judicial and mer- 
cantile affairs. The city has a popula- 
tion of 8000. Inthe last 10 years it has 
been rapidly Europeanized by the laying 
of sidewalks, sewers, running water, by 
the addition of telegraph and telephone 
and the introduction of modern stores 
where theless expensive wares of Eu- 
rope and even of Amrrica are on sale. 
Most sales are in the nature of barter, in 
which the merchant receives the pro- 
duce of Iceland in exchange for his com- 
modities. [he city contains several ex- 
cellent stone buildings,—among them 
two banks, the Thing house, the gover- 
nor’s residence and the new library. 
This structure contains upward of 60,000 
volumes of the best literature and stand- 
ard reference works in Icelandic, Danish, 
German, French and English. The 
building also houses the museum of Ice- 
landic antiquities and an excellent natur- 
al history collection. 
(From the Springfield Republican. ) 
To be continued next week. 
_[We reprint the article by Mr. Russell on 
his rscent trip to Iceland, because we think 
many of Mr. Russell’s former friends will be 
interested to read an account of his trip. He 
was formerly the principal of the Story High 
school. He is now professor of Physics inthe 
Springfield High school.—Ed. ] 
