Read Ebook: Pen and pencil sketches of Faröe and Iceland by Symington Andrew James Linton W J William James Illustrator Lafur P Lsson Translator

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PAGE PREFACE v LEITH TO THORSHAVN 1 WESTMANNA ISLANDS--REYKJAVIK 35 RIDE TO THE GEYSERS 69 REYKJAVIK 143 J?KUL-RANGES AND VOLCANOES ON THE SOUTH COAST 160 K?TLUGJ?'S ERUPTIONS 163 ICELANDIC STATISTICS 180 ERUPTION OF SKAPT?R J?KUL 187 VOLCANIC HISTORY OF ICELAND 193 THE EAST COAST. BREIDAMERKR--SEYDISFIORD 197 SEYDISFIORD, BY FAR?E, TO LEITH 208

INDEX 309

PAGE

PEN AND PENCIL SKETCHES

FAR?E AND ICELAND.

LEITH TO THORSHAVN.

Can Iceland--that distant island of the North Sea, that land of Eddas and Sagas, of lava-wastes, snow-j?kuls, volcanoes, and boiling geysers--be visited during a summer's holiday? This was the question which for years I had vaguely proposed to myself. Now I wished definitely to ascertain particulars, and, if at all practicable, to accomplish such a journey during the present season.

Three ways presented themselves--the chance of getting north in a private yacht--to charter a sloop from Lerwick--or to take the mail-steamer from Copenhagen. The first way seemed very doubtful; I was dissuaded from the second by the great uncertainty as to when one might get back, and the earnest entreaties of friends, who, with long faces, insinuated that these wild northern seas were not to be trifled with. However, the uncertainty as to time, and the expense, which for one person would have been considerable, weighed more with me than any idea of danger. Of the mail-steamer it was difficult to obtain any information.

The day of sailing was a fortnight earlier than I could have desired, but such an opportunity was not to be missed. Providing myself with a long waterproof overcoat, overboots of the same material--both absolutely essential for riding with any degree of comfort in Iceland, to protect from lashing rains, and when splashing through mud-puddles or deep river fordings--getting together a supply of preserved meats, soups, &c. in tin cans, a mariner's compass, thermometer, one of De La Rue's solid sketch-books, files of newspapers, a few articles for presents, and other needful things, my traps were speedily put up; and, on Wednesday the 20th of July, I found myself on board the "Arcturus" in Leith dock.

It was a Clyde-built screw-steamer, of 400 tons burden. Captain Andriessen, a Dane, received me kindly; the crew, with the exception of the engineer, a Scotchman, were all foreigners. In the first cabin were eight fellow-passengers, strangers to each other; but, as is usual at sea, acquaintanceships were soon formed; by degrees we came to know each other, and all got along very pleasantly together.

There were also several passengers in the second cabin, some of whom were students returning home from their studies in the Danish universities.

There was a large boat to be got on board, for discharging the steamer's cargo at Iceland, which took several hours to get fastened aloft on the right side of the hurricane deck--with the comfortable prospect of its top-heaviness acting like a pendulum, and adding considerably to the roll of the ship, should the weather prove rough.

Shortly after seven P.M. we got fairly clear of the dock. Strange to think, as the last hawser was being cast off, that, till our return, we should hear no postman's ring, receive no letters with either good tidings or annoyances--for we carry the mail,--and see no later newspapers than those we take with us! Friends may be well or ill. The stirring events of the Continent, too, leave us to speculate on changes that may suddenly occur in the aspect of European affairs, with the chances of peace, or declarations of war.

However, allowing such thoughts to disturb me as little as possible, and trusting that, under a kind Providence, all would be well with those dear to me, hopefully, and not without a deep feeling of inward satisfaction that a long cherished dream of boyhood was now about to be realised, I turned my face to the North.

A dense mist having settled on the Frith of Forth, the captain deemed it prudent to anchor in the roads. During the night it cleared off, and at five o'clock on Thursday morning, 21st July, our star was in the ascendant, and the "Arcturus" got fairly under way.

The morning, bright and clear, was truly splendid; the day sunny and warm; many sails in sight, and numerous sea-birds kept following the ship.

Breakfast, dinner, and tea follow each other in regular succession, making, with their pleasant reunions and friendly intercourse, a threefold division of the day. On shipboard the steward's bell becomes an important institution, a sort of repeating gastronomical chronometer, and is not an unpleasant sound when the fresh sea-air has sharpened one's appetite into expectancy.

Thus much of culinary matters, for, with the exception of a few surprises, which, according to all our previous ideas, confused the chronology of the dishes--making a literal mess of it--and sundry minor variations in the cycle of desserts proper, the service of one day resembled that of another.

There was only wind enough to fill the mainsail, and in it, on the lea side of the boom, as if in a hammock, sheltered from the broiling sun, I lay resting for hours. Off Peterhead, we saw innumerable fishing boats--counted 205 in one fleet. Off Inverness, far out at sea, we counted as many, ere we gave in and stopped. Their sails were mostly down, and we, passing quite near, could observe the process of the fishermen shooting their nets; the sea to the north-east all thickly dotted with boats, which appeared like black specks. A steamer was sailing among them, probably to receive and convey the fish ashore.

Perilous is the calling of the fisherman! Calm to-day, squalls may overtake him on the morrow--

"But men must work, and women must weep, Though storms be sudden, and waters deep, And the harbour bar be moaning."

As the sun went down, from the forecastle we watched a dense bank of cloud resting on the sea; its dark purple ranges here and there shewing openings, with hopeful silver linings intensely bright--glimpses, as it were, into the land of Beulah. Then the lights and shadows grandly massed themselves, gradually assuming a sombre hue; while starry thoughts of dear ones at home rose, welling up within us, as the daylight ebbed slowly away over the horizon's rim.

There was cause for thankfulness that the Orkneys had been passed in safety. Where the navigation is intricate and requires care at best, our chances of danger during the uncertainty of the night had doubtless been great. The south of the Shetland Isles also appeared to rise from the sea, dim and blue, resting on the horizon, like clouds ethereal and dreamlike.

At 11 o'clock A.M., sailing past Fair Isle, made several sketches of its varied aspects, as seen from different points. Green and fair, this lonely island lies about thirty miles south-west of the Shetland group, and in the very track of vessels going north.

It has no light-house, and is dreaded by sailors; for many are the shipwrecks which it occasions. Before now, we had heard captains, in their anxiety, wish it were at the bottom of the sea. Could not a light be placed upon it by the Admiralty, and a fearful loss of life thus be averted?

The island contains about a hundred inhabitants, who live chiefly by fishing and knitting. They are both skilful and industrious. During the winter months, the men, as well as the women, knit caps, gloves, and waistcoats; and for dyeing the wool, procure a variety of colours from native herbs and lichens.

True happiness, springing as it ever does from above and from within, may have its peaceful abode here among those lonely islanders quite apart from the noise and bustle of what is called the great world, although the stranger sailing past is apt to think such places "remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow."

Ere long we could distinguish the bold headland of Sumburgh, which is the southern extremity of Shetland; and a little to the north-west of it, by the aid of an opera-glass, Fitful Head, rendered famous by Sir Walter Scott as the dwelling place of Norna, in "The Pirate."

Last summer I visited this the most northern group of British islands, famed alike for skilful seamen, fearless fishermen, and fairy-fingered knitters; for its hardy ponies, and for that soft, warm, fleecy wool which is peculiar to its sheep.

Gazing on the blue outline of the islands, I now involuntarily recalled their many voes, wild caves, and splintered skerries, alive with sea gulls and kittiwakes. The magnificent land-locked sound of Bressay too, where her Majesty's fleet might ride in safety, and where Lerwick--the capital of the islands, and the most northerly town in the British dominions--with its quaint, foreign, gabled aspect, rises, crowning the heights, from the very water's edge, so that sillacks might be fished from the windows of those houses next the sea. Boating excursions and pony scamperings are also recalled; the Noss Head, with its mural precipice rising sheer from the sea to a height of 700 feet, vividly reminding one of Edgar's description of Dover Cliff, in "Lear," or of that which Horatio pictured to Hamlet--

"The dreadful summit of the cliff, That beetles o'er his base into the sea.... The very place puts toys of desperation, Without more motive, into every brain That looks so many fathoms to the sea, And hears it roar beneath."

The curious and singularly-perfect ancient Pictish or Scandinavian Burgh, in the Island of Moosa, rises again before me; Scalloway Bay, with its old Castle in ruins, its fishermen's cots, and fish-drying sheds. A high, long, out-jutting rocky promontory too, on which I had stood watching the "yeasty waves" far below, as they rolled thundering into an irregular cave, which, in the course of ages, they had scooped out among the basaltic crags, and, leaping up, scattered drenching showers of diamond spray. Every succeeding dash of the billows produced a loud report like the discharge of artillery, the reverberations echoing along the shore. In the black creek below, the brine seething like a caldron was literally churned into white foam-flakes, which, rising into the air on sudden gusts of wind, sailed away inland, high overhead, like a flock of sea-birds. These flakes were of all sizes, large masses of froth at times floating down, and alighting at our very feet, from so great a height that they had merely shewed as black specks against the bright sunlight. In lulls one could actually lift them bodily from the ground, upwards of two cubic feet in size; but when the wind rose, such masses of whipped sea-cream were again seized upon, swept aloft, divided into smaller portions, and carried away across the island. These and other pleasing memories presented themselves as we now gazed on the distant, dim-blue Shetland Isles.

Saw a large vessel disabled and being towed southwards from Shetland, where she appears to have come to grief. Topmasts gone, sides battered and patched with boards. She is high out of the water, so that the cargo must have been discharged. All our opera-glasses and telescopes are in requisition.

Sat on the boom for hours, the vessel rolling heavily over the great smooth Atlantic billows. In the afternoon passed the island of Foola, which has been called the St. Kilda of Shetland. It lies about sixteen miles west of Mainland, and is high and precipitous. The cliffs are tenanted by innumerable sea-fowls, which are caught in thousands by the cragsmen, and afford a considerable source of revenue to the inhabitants.

Blue and cloudlike the detached and isolated heights of Mainland, Yell, and Unst--the promontory of Hermanness, on the latter, being the most northerly point of the British islands--are fast sinking beneath the horizon. Ere long Foola, left astern, follows the others. No land in sight, not a sail on the horizon; all round is now one smooth heaving circular plain of blue water--the ever changing level producing a most singular optical effect.

At mid-day came in sight of the Far?e Islands rising above the horizon; fixed the first glimpse of them, and continued sketching their outline from time to time, as on nearing them it developed itself--watching with great interest the seeming clouds slowly becoming crags. Little Dimon, a lofty rock-island, somewhat resembling Ailsa, and purple in the distance, was, from the first, the most prominent and singular object on the horizon line.

The waves rolling so heavily that not only the hull, but the mast of a sloop, not very far off, is quite hid by each long swell. The Professor, Dr. Livingston, and Mr. Murray all agree in saying that they never had such heavy seas in crossing the Atlantic.

They lie 185 miles north-west of the Shetland Isles, 400 west of Norway, and 320 south-east of Iceland; population upwards of 3000, and subject to Denmark.

We are now approaching Suderoe, the most southerly of the islands. On our left lie several curious detached rocks, near one of which, called the Monk, is a whirlpool, dangerous in some states of the tide; although its perils, like those of Corrivreckan between Jura and Scarba in the Hebrides, have been greatly exaggerated. On one occasion I sailed over the latter unharmed by Sirens, Mermaids, or Kelpies; only observing an irregular fresh on the water, where the tide-ways met, and hearing nothing save a dripping, plashing noise in the cross-cut ripple, as if many fish were leaping around the boat.

In storms, however, such places had better receive a wide berth.

The approach to the Far?e group is very fine, presenting to our view a magnificent panorama of fantastically-shaped islands--peaked sharp angular bare precipitous rocks, rising sheer from the sea; the larger-sized islands being regularly terraced in two or more successive grades of columnar trap-rock. Some of these singular hill-islets are sharp along the top, like the ridge of a house, and slope down on either side to the sea, at an angle of fifty degrees. Others of them are isolated stacks.

The hard trap-rock, nearly everywhere alternating with soft tufa, or claystone, sufficiently accounts for the regular, stair-like terraces which form a striking and characteristic feature of these picturesque islands. The whole have evidently, in remote epochs, been subjected to violent physical abrasion, probably glacial, during the period of the ice-drift; and, subsequently, to the disintegrating crumbling influences of moisture, and of the atmosphere itself. Frost converts each particle of moisture into a crystal expanding wedge of ice, which does its work silently but surely and to an extent which few people would imagine.

We now pass that singular rock-island, Little Dimon, which supports a few wild sheep; and Store Dimon, on which only one family resides. The cliffs here, as also on others of the islands, are so steep that boats are lowered with ropes into the sea; and people landing are either pulled up by ropes, or are obliged to clamber up by fixing their toes and fingers in holes cut on the face of the rock. Sea-fowls and eggs are every year collected in thousands from these islets by the bold cragsmen. These men climb from below; or, like the samphire-gatherer--"dreadful trade"--are let down to the nests by means of a rope, and there they pursue their perilous calling while hanging in "midway air" over the sea. They also sometimes approach the cliffs at night, in boats, carrying lighted torches, which lure and dazzle the birds that come flying around them, so that they are easily knocked down with sticks, and the boat is thus speedily filled. As many as five thousand birds have been taken in one year from Store Dimon alone, and in former times they were much more numerous.

We watch clouds like white fleecy wool rolling past, and apparently being raked by the violet-coloured peaks; whilst others lower down are pierced and rest peacefully among them.

Having passed Sandoe, through the Skaapen Fiord, we see Hestoe, Kolter, Vaagoe, and other distant blue island heights in the direction of Myggenaes, the most western island of the group. We now sail between Stromoe on the west, and Naals?e on the east. Stromoe is the central and largest island of the group, being twenty-seven miles long and seven broad. It contains Thorshavn, the capital of Far?e. Naals?e, the needle island, is so called from a curious cave at the south end which penetrates the island from side to side like the eye of a needle--larger, by a long way, than Cleopatra's. Daylight shews through it, and, in calm weather, boats can sail from the one side to the other. We observe a succession of sea-caves in the rocks as we sail along, the action of the waves having evidently scooped out the softer strata, and left the columnar trap-rock hanging like a pent-house over each entrance. These caves are tenanted by innumerable sea-birds. On the brink of the water stand restless glossy cormorants; along the horizontal rock-ledges above them, sit skua-gulls, kittiwakes, auks, guillemots, and puffins, in rows; and generally ranged in the order we have indicated, beginning with the cormorant on the lower stones or rocks next the sea, and ending with the puffin, which takes the highest station in this bird congress.

If disturbed, they raise a harsh, confused, deafening noise; screaming and fluttering about in myriads. Their numbers are so frequently thinned, and in such a variety of ways, that old birds may, on these occasions, be excused for exhibiting signs of alarm.

The Far?ese eat every kind of sea-fowl, with the exception of gulls, skuas, and cormorants; but are partial to auks, guillemots, and puffins. They use them either fresh, salted or dried. The rancid fishy taste of sea-birds resides, for the most part, in the skin only--that removed, the rest is generally palatable. In the month of May the inhabitants of many of the islands subsist chiefly on eggs. Feathers form an important article of export.

We watched several gulls confidingly following the steamer; one in particular, now flying over the deck as far as the funnel, now falling astern to pick up bits of biscuit that were thrown overboard to it. Long I stood admiring its beautiful soft downy plumage, its easy graceful motions, the great distance to which a few strokes of its powerful pinions urged it forward, or, spread bow-like and motionless, allowed it simply to float and at times remain poised in the air right over the deck, now peering down with its keen yet mild eyes, and leaving us to surmise what embryo ideas of wonder might now be passing through its little bird-brain.

The Danish officer raised, levelled his piece, and fired; the poor thing screamed like a child, threw up its wings, turned round, and fell upon the sea like a stone; its companions came flying confusedly in crowds to see what was wrong with it, and received another shower of lead for their pains.

Those who love sport for its own sake may be divided into three classes--the majority of sportsmen it is to be hoped belonging to the first of these divisions;--viz., the thoughtless, who have never considered the subject at all, or looked at any of its bearings; those whose blunted feelings are, in one direction, estranged from the beauty and joy of existence; and the third and last class, where civilization makes so near an approach to the depravity of savage natures, that a tiger-like eagerness to destroy life takes possession of a man and becomes a passion. He then only reckons the number of braces bagged, and considers not desolate nests, broken-winged pining birds, and the many dire tragedies wrought on the moor by his murderous gun.

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