Chapter XIX: Section II: Return to Valthiófstaðir and Stay There

_August_ 12-16.

There is little to say concerning these five days, which were spent in returning to Valthiófstaðir by devious ways. On August 12th the world, according to local belief, was to have been destroyed; knowledge has increased since A.D. 1000, so no one made preparation, spiritual or material, for what Hindus call the Pralaya, hourly expected by primitive Christianity. _Je m’en moque comme de l’an quarante_ (1740). At three A.M. we rode down the cold valley of the Grafarlandsá, picked up the tent, and bidding adieu to the good Stefan and the miserable Kristián, we reached the Jökulsá ferry after a total of six hours forty-five minutes. The blood-red sunset had kept its promise till clouds rolled up from the south, and I have seldom had a more thorough dusting.

At early nightfall suddenly appeared Mr Pow and his guide, Jón Pètursson, son of the old priest of Valthiófstaðir: they had been paying a visit to Mý-vatn, and now they were hastening home for a wedding. The former had been making inquiries about sheep-farming; he believed that, in that line, something might be done whilst the pony traffic was thoroughly worked out. Farms ranging from $3000 to $6000 are readily bought throughout this part of the country. As the snow begins upon the Heiðis in November, lies deep in December and January, and lasts till May, it would be necessary to allow one ton of hay per thousand head, and the import price, excluding freight, must be computed at £2,10s. rising to £4. He was sanguine enough to expect a cent. per cent. profit: I never heard that the project had any results.

Next day we started betimes in the cool east wind, which presently chopped round to the south, and gave us a taste of Sind and the Panjáb--all the sand of the Arabian desert seemed to be in the air, and it was the sharpest of its kind. We enjoyed a headlong gallop not unworthy of the Argentine Pampas, halted a few minutes at the Möðrudalr oasis, and pressed on to Vetur-hús: here we parted as I wished to examine the lake region, and to inspect the Brú of the Jökulsá.

On the next morning, which, after the stillness of dawn, also obliged me with a dust-storm, I set out at eight, rounded the swamps and black bogs, and, after crossing a marshy divide, entered the valley between the Eiríkr and Thríhyrning hills. The land is poor, but it manages to support two little Sels. At last we came upon the Thverárvatn, the southernmost of the tarns, and following the right bank of its drain, the Thverá,[172] we reached the Brú after an hour and a half’s hard riding. It still preserves the traditional name although the natural arch of rock fell in 1750: in Henderson’s day it was succeeded by a wooden bridge, and now there is only a cradle. Horses are forded about a mile up stream, where the break becomes a broad, split by holms and sand-banks. The seedy little chapel of Brú wants cross and steeple: it is built of turf, like that of Mý-vatn.

We left the river at 10.30 _A.M._, and resolved to inspect the Aðalbólsvegr, the southernmost road across the Heiði. It begins by crossing a divide, after which, rounding the Vaðbrekka, or ford-ledge hill, it ascends the dusty valley of the Hrafnkelsá. Two farmlets, Vaðbrekka and Aðalból,[173] the latter with four gables of wood and turf, and backed by Laugs of warm water, hug the left bank. After fording the stream thrice we walked up another divide, where the path was cobwebbed and all in holes--these “dead roads” are by no means pleasant travelling. The upper plateau was, like the northern line, the usual scene of standing waters and flowing waters, especially the Höllná and the Heiðará; all these soppy black beds are named, but none appear in the map. The list of this day’s birds comprised a few snippets, three ravens, and a couple of whoopers (_C. ferus_ or _C. Bewickii_?) which travellers often mistake for sheep. It was not my fate in Iceland ever to hear the sweet song of the swan, which borrows an additional charm on dark wintry nights from the popular belief that it promises a thaw; the poetical fancy of its being a death-lay seems here unknown. The descent to the Fljótsdalr occupied half-an-hour, and after seven hours forty-five minutes of rough riding from the Brú I reached Valthiófstaðir, where they did not expect me before nightfall.

There was revelling at the parsonage, and though I missed the howling of hymns and hollaing of anthems, the splendid “upholstering” of the girls, and the starry veil which takes the place of orange-flowers, I was in time for the feast. The daughter of the house, a notably good manager, was the bride; the bridegroom was a well-to-do widower of eighteen months’ standing. Hr Nikólás Jónsson had learnt joinery at Copenhagen, and found his handicraft pay well at Seyðisfjörð. Ponies, with all manner of gear, including the “handsome brass woman’s saddle” of a certain English traveller, filled the stables, or browsed about the tún, showing a goodly gathering of relatives and friends; even Seyðisfjörð sent forth its contingent. Those who had dined were chatting and “touching pipes” on the green: despite my garb being the reverse of a wedding garment, I was hospitably pressed to join the second detachment. After we had satisfied hyperborean appetites, the speeches began, prefaced by loud cries of “Silentium!” As many of the orators were priests and students training for the priesthood, few could plead “unaccustomed to public speaking,” and most of them acquitted themselves remarkably well. Mr Pow, after delivering his sentiments in English, sprang out of the window to prepare for a wild ride; I aired my Latin, concluding with an effective sentence, “Deus sit propitius his potatoribus”--of course ignoring Walter de Mapes. Having talked ourselves “dry,” we installed a “magister bibendi,” and fell to with a will; we were loud in our mirth “as the Ritur (tarrock-gull) on the rocks,” and the bottles of Cognac and rye-brandy required repeated replenishing, till the small hours sent us to bed. The newly-married couple slept at home, and next morning, after coming to breakfast, they took horse and went their ways.

At Valthiófstaðir I was fortunate enough to meet Prófastr Sigurður Gunnarson of Hallormstaðir, whose name has already been mentioned. A portly, good-looking man of sixty, hardly showing fifty, he is a good Latinist, and his genial manners make him a general favourite. He first accompanied Professor Gunnlaugsson in 1832 to the Vatnajökullsvegr, and since that time he has made three trips to the northern edge. He gave me the position of the volcano (N. lat. 64° 20´, and W. long. G. 30° 20´), which appears upon the map. When told that Herðubreið was a mass of Palagonite, he declared that he had seen Mó-berg at Lomagnúpr and other hills of Sera and Floskeldar; moreover, that he suspected it to be the constituent of the Kistufell and the Kverk, which he had passed in the dark. He assured me that he had found the Western Jökulsá easily fordable after its fork, where it is called Kreppa, or the Squeezer.[174] Among other places which

M^c.Farlane & Erskine Lithrs. Edin^r.

William P. Nimmo, London & Edinburgh]

are shown by the map, he mentioned the Lindákeilir (fountain-pyramid) with its two springs, the northern cold, the southern hot; the Hvannalindir, rich, as the name shows, in Angelica; and the Kringilsá, or encircling water.

The morning after the feast was spent in breakfasting, in chess-playing, and at cards, with coffee-beans for counters: on this occasion the men ate first, and after them the women, somewhat after the fashion of the Druses: the parson’s wife also waited, like an “Oriental,” upon her younger brothers. The friends mounted their stout nags, and disappeared after the normal salutations: amongst them was the Prófastr, with coarse woollen stockings sensibly drawn over his shoes. The kith and kin waited till two P.M. on the next day, and, when the heartiest and smackingest of busses had been duly planted upon projecting lips, all rode off, escorting the bride and bridegroom, and escorted by the family _honoris causâ_ as far as the next farm. Mr Pow had agreed to join me in attempting the Vatnajökull; but, whilst I remained to collect provaunt and to avoid the heavy weather which threatened, he resolved upon a preliminary trip, with the prime object of shooting a reindeer. He hired for $2 an old round-ball Enfield from the farmer-ferryman of Bessastaðir, who, apparently convinced of the Enskimaður’s insanity, snatched it three times out of his hands, till he received a watch in pledge. The solitary march was hardly to be recommended. About the Vatnajökull fog or snow may cover the world at any moment, even in July, the best month; and dozens of sheep are often killed by a single violent storm. Mr Pow set out early on the 15th, missed the road, and returned at eleven A.M. on the next day, thoroughly dazed, and apparently unable to give any account of his march--Jón Pètursson’s eyes filled with tears at the sight. That trial proved sufficient for my intended companion, who, as soon as his two nags could move, set out for Seyðisfjörð.

The weather, which had been surly and wrathy for some time, could no longer restrain its rage: the afternoon (August 16) was bad, and the evening was very bad. The day sped wearily watching the cloud-battalions as they scaled the seaward hills: here this easter and deflected norther brings heavy rains and thick raw mists; the souther and the south-wester are little better, and men rely only upon the western wind, which comes from the arid lavas and sands of the Ódáða. The night was one long howl of storm; “drip-drip” resounded from the church floor, and the wind flung itself against the building, threatening to bear away the frail steeple into space. Huge black nimbi, parted by pale and sickly gleams, ever greeted my sight as I gazed in sorrow from the casement of my ecclesiastical lodging. But joy came in the morning: first a glimpse of blue sky between the flirts of rain, then a sign of the sun. The river was reported to be rapidly filling--never mind, unlucky Friday has passed by, and we may look for better things on Saturday.

The provisions, bread, meat, and cheese ($3), with the unfinished keg of schnapps, were awaiting our departure. But Stefán Pètursson, who was to accompany me, had fallen ill, the malady being probably that popularly called in India a “squiffy quotidian:” so I engaged as guide the student Thorsteinn, who had led us to Thorskagerði, paying for him and his nag $3, 3m. Osk. per diem. Gísli, the “coal-biter,” when drawn badger-like from the kitchen, again tried to shirk, pleading the weakness of the ponies, but a threat to withhold wages reduced all opposition to a slackness of the knees, a settled melancholy, and a hurt-feeling expression of countenance. This time he was never left alone with the horses after they had been shod: he presently revenged himself by displaying an amount of appetite which threatened the party with starvation, if it lingered in the wilderness a day longer than he liked.