Iceland! But What Next?

: A Journey To The Interior Of The Earth

The day for our departure arrived. The day before it our kind friend

M. Thomsen brought us letters of introduction to Count Trampe, the

Governor of Iceland, M. Picturssen, the bishop's suffragan, and M.

Finsen, mayor of Rejkiavik. My uncle expressed his gratitude by

tremendous compressions of both his hands.



On the 2nd, at six in the evening, all our precious baggage being

safely on board the VALKYRIA, th
captain took us into a very

narrow cabin.



"Is the wind favourable?" my uncle asked.



"Excellent," replied Captain Bjarne; "a sou'-easter. We shall pass

down the Sound full speed, with all sails set."



In a few minutes the schooner, under her mizen, brigantine, topsail,

and topgallant sail, loosed from her moorings and made full sail

through the straits. In an hour the capital of Denmark seemed to sink

below the distant waves, and the VALKYRIA was skirting the coast by

Elsinore. In my nervous frame of mind I expected to see the ghost of

Hamlet wandering on the legendary castle terrace.



"Sublime madman!" I said, "no doubt you would approve of our

expedition. Perhaps you would keep us company to the centre of the

globe, to find the solution of your eternal doubts."



But there was no ghostly shape upon the ancient walls. Indeed, the

castle is much younger than the heroic prince of Denmark. It now

answers the purpose of a sumptuous lodge for the doorkeeper of the

straits of the Sound, before which every year there pass fifteen

thousand ships of all nations.



The castle of Kronsberg soon disappeared in the mist, as well as the

tower of Helsingborg, built on the Swedish coast, and the schooner

passed lightly on her way urged by the breezes of the Cattegat.



The VALKYRIA was a splendid sailer, but on a sailing vessel you can

place no dependence. She was taking to Rejkiavik coal, household

goods, earthenware, woollen clothing, and a cargo of wheat. The crew

consisted of five men, all Danes.



"How long will the passage take?" my uncle asked.



"Ten days," the captain replied, "if we don't meet a nor'-wester in

passing the Faroes."



"But are you not subject to considerable delays?"



"No, M. Liedenbrock, don't be uneasy, we shall get there in very good

time."



At evening the schooner doubled the Skaw at the northern point of

Denmark, in the night passed the Skager Rack, skirted Norway by Cape

Lindness, and entered the North Sea.



In two days more we sighted the coast of Scotland near Peterhead, and

the VALKYRIA turned her lead towards the Faroe Islands, passing

between the Orkneys and Shetlands.



Soon the schooner encountered the great Atlantic swell; she had to

tack against the north wind, and reached the Faroes only with some

difficulty. On the 8th the captain made out Myganness, the

southernmost of these islands, and from that moment took a straight

course for Cape Portland, the most southerly point of Iceland.



The passage was marked by nothing unusual. I bore the troubles of the

sea pretty well; my uncle, to his own intense disgust, and his

greater shame, was ill all through the voyage.



He therefore was unable to converse with the captain about Snaefell,

the way to get to it, the facilities for transport, he was obliged to

put off these inquiries until his arrival, and spent all his time at

full length in his cabin, of which the timbers creaked and shook with

every pitch she took. It must be confessed he was not undeserving of

his punishment.



On the 11th we reached Cape Portland. The clear open weather gave us

a good view of Myrdals jokul, which overhangs it. The cape is merely

a low hill with steep sides, standing lonely by the beach.



The VALKYRIA kept at some distance from the coast, taking a

westerly course amidst great shoals of whales and sharks. Soon we

came in sight of an enormous perforated rock, through which the sea

dashed furiously. The Westman islets seemed to rise out of the ocean

like a group of rocks in a liquid plain. From that time the schooner

took a wide berth and swept at a great distance round Cape

Rejkianess, which forms the western point of Iceland.



The rough sea prevented my uncle from coming on deck to admire these

shattered and surf-beaten coasts.



Forty-eight hours after, coming out of a storm which forced the

schooner to scud under bare poles, we sighted east of us the beacon

on Cape Skagen, where dangerous rocks extend far away seaward. An

Icelandic pilot came on board, and in three hours the VALKYRIA

dropped her anchor before Rejkiavik, in Faxa Bay.



The Professor at last emerged from his cabin, rather pale and

wretched-looking, but still full of enthusiasm, and with ardent

satisfaction shining in his eyes.



The population of the town, wonderfully interested in the arrival of

a vessel from which every one expected something, formed in groups

upon the quay.



My uncle left in haste his floating prison, or rather hospital. But

before quitting the deck of the schooner he dragged me forward, and

pointing with outstretched finger north of the bay at a distant

mountain terminating in a double peak, a pair of cones covered with

perpetual snow, he cried:



"Snaefell! Snaefell!"



Then recommending me, by an impressive gesture, to keep silence, he

went into the boat which awaited him. I followed, and presently we

were treading the soil of Iceland.



The first man we saw was a good-looking fellow enough, in a general's

uniform. Yet he was not a general but a magistrate, the Governor of

the island, M. le Baron Trampe himself. The Professor was soon aware

of the presence he was in. He delivered him his letters from

Copenhagen, and then followed a short conversation in the Danish

language, the purport of which I was quite ignorant of, and for a

very good reason. But the result of this first conversation was, that

Baron Trampe placed himself entirely at the service of Professor

Liedenbrock.



My uncle was just as courteously received by the mayor, M. Finsen,

whose appearance was as military, and disposition and office as

pacific, as the Governor's.



As for the bishop's suffragan, M. Picturssen, he was at that moment

engaged on an episcopal visitation in the north. For the time we must

be resigned to wait for the honour of being presented to him. But M.

Fridrikssen, professor of natural sciences at the school of

Rejkiavik, was a delightful man, and his friendship became very

precious to me. This modest philosopher spoke only Danish and Latin.

He came to proffer me his good offices in the language of Horace, and

I felt that we were made to understand each other. In fact he was the

only person in Iceland with whom I could converse at all.



This good-natured gentleman made over to us two of the three rooms

which his house contained, and we were soon installed in it with all

our luggage, the abundance of which rather astonished the good people

of Rejkiavik.



"Well, Axel," said my uncle, "we are getting on, and now the worst is

over."



"The worst!" I said, astonished.



"To be sure, now we have nothing to do but go down."



"Oh, if that is all, you are quite right; but after all, when we have

gone down, we shall have to get up again, I suppose?"



"Oh I don't trouble myself about that. Come, there's no time to lose;

I am going to the library. Perhaps there is some manuscript of

Saknussemm's there, and I should be glad to consult it."



"Well, while you are there I will go into the town. Won't you?"



"Oh, that is very uninteresting to me. It is not what is upon this

island, but what is underneath, that interests me."



I went out, and wandered wherever chance took me.



It would not be easy to lose your way in Rejkiavik. I was therefore

under no necessity to inquire the road, which exposes one to mistakes

when the only medium of intercourse is gesture.



The town extends along a low and marshy level, between two hills. An

immense bed of lava bounds it on one side, and falls gently towards

the sea. On the other extends the vast bay of Faxa, shut in at the

north by the enormous glacier of the Snaefell, and of which the

VALKYRIA was for the time the only occupant. Usually the English

and French conservators of fisheries moor in this bay, but just then

they were cruising about the western coasts of the island.



The longest of the only two streets that Rejkiavik possesses was

parallel with the beach. Here live the merchants and traders, in

wooden cabins made of red planks set horizontally; the other street,

running west, ends at the little lake between the house of the bishop

and other non-commercial people.



I had soon explored these melancholy ways; here and there I got a

glimpse of faded turf, looking like a worn-out bit of carpet, or some

appearance of a kitchen garden, the sparse vegetables of which

(potatoes, cabbages, and lettuces), would have figured appropriately

upon a Lilliputian table. A few sickly wallflowers were trying to

enjoy the air and sunshine.



About the middle of the tin-commercial street I found the public

cemetery, inclosed with a mud wall, and where there seemed plenty of

room.



Then a few steps brought me to the Governor's house, a but compared

with the town hall of Hamburg, a palace in comparison with the cabins

of the Icelandic population.



Between the little lake and the town the church is built in the

Protestant style, of calcined stones extracted out of the volcanoes

by their own labour and at their own expense; in high westerly winds

it was manifest that the red tiles of the roof would be scattered in

the air, to the great danger of the faithful worshippers.



On a neighbouring hill I perceived the national school, where, as I

was informed later by our host, were taught Hebrew, English, French,

and Danish, four languages of which, with shame I confess it, I don't



know a single word; after an examination I should have had to stand

last of the forty scholars educated at this little college, and I

should have been held unworthy to sleep along with them in one of

those little double closets, where more delicate youths would have

died of suffocation the very first night.



In three hours I had seen not only the town but its environs. The

general aspect was wonderfully dull. No trees, and scarcely any

vegetation. Everywhere bare rocks, signs of volcanic action. The

Icelandic buts are made of earth and turf, and the walls slope

inward; they rather resemble roofs placed on the ground. But then

these roofs are meadows of comparative fertility. Thanks to the

internal heat, the grass grows on them to some degree of perfection.

It is carefully mown in the hay season; if it were not, the horses

would come to pasture on these green abodes.



In my excursion I met but few people. On returning to the main street

I found the greater part of the population busied in drying, salting,

and putting on board codfish, their chief export. The men looked like

robust but heavy, blond Germans with pensive eyes, conscious of being

far removed from their fellow creatures, poor exiles relegated to

this land of ice, poor creatures who should have been Esquimaux,

since nature had condemned them to live only just outside the arctic

circle! In vain did I try to detect a smile upon their lips;

sometimes by a spasmodic and involuntary contraction of the muscles

they seemed to laugh, but they never smiled.



Their costume consisted of a coarse jacket of black woollen cloth

called in Scandinavian lands a 'vadmel,' a hat with a very broad

brim, trousers with a narrow edge of red, and a bit of leather rolled

round the foot for shoes.



The women looked as sad and as resigned as the men; their faces were

agreeable but expressionless, and they wore gowns and petticoats of

dark 'vadmel'; as maidens, they wore over their braided hair a little

knitted brown cap; when married, they put around their heads a

coloured handkerchief, crowned with a peak of white linen.



After a good walk I returned to M. Fridrikssen's house, where I found

my uncle already in his host's company.



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