To Iceland on the Copeland — William Morris — Njal Saga — Golden Falls — Bergthorsknoll — Salmon and trout fishing — Copeland again — Cargo of ponies — Gale — Off Thurso — Fog — Wrecked in Pentland Firth — Escaped to Stroma Island — Subsequently to Wick.
On June 14, 1888, in the company of a friend, Mr. A. G. Ross, I sailed from Leith on my long contemplated visit to Iceland. The steamer was called the Copeland, a trading vessel of about 1000 tons. What she carried on our outward voyages I do not know, but her return cargoes consisted alternately of emigrants to America, of whom, if I remember right, four or five hundred were packed in her hold, and of Iceland ponies. On her last voyage she had brought emigrants, so this time it was to be the turn of the ponies. Poor Copeland! As I shall tell in due course, she was doomed never to see Leith again.
Before I started for Iceland I called upon the late Mr. William Morris, some of whose poetry I admire as much as any that has been written in our time. Also I find his archaic and other-world kind of romances very pleasant and restful to read. It was the only time that I ever saw Morris, and the visit made an impression on me. My recollection is of a fair-haired man with a large head and very pleasant manners. As will be remembered, he was a great Socialist and lived up to it — to a certain extent. Thus there was no cloth on the tea-table, but that table itself was one of the most beautiful bits of old oak furniture that I ever saw. The cups, I think, had no saucers to them, but certainly they were very fine china. No servant came into the room, but then ladies, most artistically arrayed, handed the bread and butter. The walls were severely plain, but on them hung priceless tapestries and pictures by Rosetti and others. I remember that when I departed I rather wished that Fate had made me a Socialist also.
Mr. Morris, who had visited Iceland many years before, kindly gave me some letters of introduction, and as a result of one of these we engaged a certain Thorgrimmer Gudmunson as a guide. In winter time Mr. Gudmunson was a schoolmaster, but in summer he escorted travellers about the island, and did so very satisfactorily. Two days later Gudmunson appeared with a cortege of thin, shaggy ponies, which were to carry us and our belongings. Here I will quote a home letter, written in pencil, from Thingvellir.
We rode about ten hours to get here, over such a country, desolate, dreary, set round with mountains flecked with snow. At last, about ten o’clock at night, we came to Thingvellir Lake, and then passed down All Man’s Drift to this most historic spot. I only wish you were familiar with the Njal Saga, for then you would understand the interest, the more than interest, with which I look upon it. Every sod, every rock, every square foot of Axe River, is eloquent of the deeds and deaths of great men. Where are they all now? The raven croaks over where they were, the whimbrel’s wild note echoes against the mountains, and that is the only answer given.
We have slept in a couple of rooms attached to the Parsonage. Our bedroom window opens on to the Three Man’s Graveyard. They still bury in it. To-night we are going to sleep in a church, and beastly cold it will be I expect. This is an interesting but God-forgotten country. How the dickens its inhabitants keep life and soul together is a mystery to me, for there is scarcely anything to eat in it and their houses are the merest wooden shanties, ill-fitted to keep out the cold, which even now is intense at night. We hope to get back to Rejkjavik in about eleven days, having visited Hecla, the Geysers, Njal’s country, etc. Then we are going to a farm where we have taken some salmon fishing for three weeks. We hope to return by the boat leaving the 3rd of August, so if all goes well I count to be home about the 10th.
Here is a brief description from my diary of the Golden Falls, which served me as a model for those down which Eric comes in my saga.
Reached Golden Falls at 12:30. A most splendid sight. The yellow river, after tumbling down a cliff, bends a little to the right and leaps in two mighty waterfalls, across which a rainbow streams, into a chasm a hundred feet deep, leaving a bare space of cliff between. From the deep of this chasm the spray boils up like steam, a glorious thing to see . . . . Passed Three Corner Ridge where Gunnar was attacked, and suddenly came on a very fine view of the Njal country, a flat and fertile expanse of land stretching away as far as the eye can reach. Nothing to eat since breakfast. Spent comfortable night at the priest’s house. Had arctic tern’s eggs and “skier” for breakfast. Then sent pack ponies to Bergthors Knoll and rode to Lithend. I am writing this on the site of Gunnar’s hall, which I can distinctly trace. The hall looked out over the great Markallflajot plain, now nothing but a waste eaten up of the waters. To the north is a large glacier-mountain — the hall was built on the side of a hill — and to the left of the house is the fissure into which the dog Sam was decoyed and killed. The lark now sings over where Gunnar fought and fell, betrayed by Hallgerda.
7 P.M.: Bergthorsknoll. Arrived here after a long ride over a desolate grassy flat. The site of Njal’s hall is now for the most part covered with hovels. It faces sou’west, partly on to the plain and partly on to a river. To the left of the house is the hollow where the burners tied up their horses as described in the saga. In front appears the fierce outline of the Westman Islands.
29th: Dug last night and found various relics of the burning. The floor of the hall seems to have been sprinkled with black sand (see the saga), but we had not the luck of the American who, when he dug, discovered a gold ring.
On the whole we enjoyed our fishing very much, and I killed a good number of salmon, though, because of the drought, not so many as I ought to have done. Also there were multitudes of trout. The trout stream ran out of a gloomy lake surrounded by high mountains. The Icelanders vowed that there were no trout in this lake. However we procured an old boat so leaky that we could only row a little way from land and back again before she filled. Ross, who had been an oar at College, rowed, while I managed the two trolling rods. Before we had gone a few yards they were both of them bent almost double. Never before or since did I have such fishing. To what size the trout ran in that lake I had no idea, for the biggest ones invariably tore the hooks off the Phantoms and brass “devils,” or smashed the tackle, but we caught many up to about four pounds in weight. Indeed, the sport was so easy that one grew weary of it. Very charming it was also to stand alone in the blue light at midnight by the banks, or in the water of the wide and brawling salmon river, casting for and sometimes hooking the king of fish. Never shall I forget the impression it produced upon me. The mighty black mountains, the solitude, the song of the river, and the whistling flight of the wild duck — by which the silence alone was broken — and, over all, that low unearthly light just strong enough to show my fly upon the water and the boiling rises of the salmon. It is an experience which I am glad to have known.
At Rejkjavik, for some reason that I have forgotten, we caught not the Danish mail steamer as we had expected, but our old friend the Copeland, now laden with hundreds of ponies, among them that named Hecla, which I had bought near the volcano, and I think another which I had also bought. We went aboard the night of the 19th with General Bevan–Edwards and some other passengers, and I recall observing with some anxiety the ship’s agent as he rowed round the bows of the vessel, apparently inspecting her draught — also with some anxiety.
I imagine that she had too many ponies in her holds. However, off we steamed, and soon the coast of Iceland vanished behind us. It is a country to which I was very sorry to bid farewell, though I think one only to be appreciated (if we leave fishermen out of the question) by those who have made a study of the sagas. I know not what may now be the case, but at that time these were few indeed. I believe that the enterprising American who found, or was said to have found, a gold ring amid the ashes of Njal’s hall, was the only foreigner who had journeyed to that spot for some years before my visit. I wonder how many have been there since that time, and whether proper precautions are taken today in order to preserve these most interesting historical relics of an unique and bygone age.
This is not the place to enter into the subject, so I will only say that outside of the Bible and Homer there exists, perhaps, no literature more truly interesting than that of the Icelandic sagas. Also they have this merit: in the main they are records of actual facts. Holding them in hand I have examined the places that they describe, and therefore to this I can testify. Those men and women lived; they did the things that are recorded, or most of them, and for the reasons that remain to us. Of course certain circumstances have been added, namely those which deal with the supernatural.
The entries in my diary for the first five days of that disastrous voyage are brief and emphatic.
20th: At sea. Bad weather. 21st: Gale. 22nd: Worse gale. 23rd: Worse gale sti............