第12章 LETTER VI(3)

Though still retaining in their ceremonies a few vestiges of the old religion,though altars,candles,pictures,and crucifixes yet remain in many of their churches,the Icelanders are staunch Protestants,and,by all accounts,the most devout,innocent pure-hearted people in the world.Crime,theft,debauchery,cruelty,are unknown amongst them;they have neither prison,gallows,soldiers,nor police;and in the manner of the lives they lead among their secluded valleys,there is something of a patriarchal simplicity,that reminds one of the Old World princes,of whom it has been said,that they were "upright and perfect,eschewing evil,and in their hearts no guile."The law with regard to marriage,however,is sufficiently peculiar.When,from some unhappy incompatibility of temper,a married couple live so miserably together as to render life insupportable,it is competent for them to apply to the Danish Governor of the island for a divorce.If,after the lapse of three years from the date of the application,both are still of the same mind,and equally eager to be free,the divorce is granted,and each is at liberty to marry again.

The next day it had been arranged that we were to take an experimental trip on our new ponies,under the guidance of the learned and jovial Rector of the College.

Unfortunately the weather was dull and rainy,but we were determined to enioy ourselves in spite of everything,and a pleasanter ride I have seldom had.The steed Sigurdr had purchased for me was a long-tailed,hog-maned,shaggy,cow-houghed creature,thirteen hands high,of a bright yellow colour,with admirable action,and sure-footed enough to walk downstairs backwards.The Doctor was not less well mounted;in fact,the Icelandic pony is quite a peculiar race,much stronger,faster,and better bred than the Highland shelty,and descended probably from pure-blooded sires that scoured the steppes of Asia,long before Odin and his paladins had peopled the valleys of Scandinavia.

The first few miles of our ride lay across an undulating plain of dolorite,to a farm situated at the head of an inlet of the sea.At a distance,the farm-steading looked like a little oasis of green,amid the grey stony slopes that surrounded it,and on a nearer approach not unlike the vestiges of a Celtic earthwork,with the tumulus of a hero or two in the centre,but the mounds turned out to be nothing more than the grass roofs of the house and offices,and the banks and dykes but circumvallations round the plot of most carefully cleaned meadow,called the "tun,"which always surrounds every Icelandic farm.

This word "tun"is evidently identical with our own Irish "TOWN-LAND,"the Cornish "TOWN,"and the Scotch "TOON,"--terms which,in their local signification,do not mean a congregation of streets and buildings,but the yard,and spaces of grass immediately adjoining a single house,just as in German we have "tzaun,"and in the Dutch "tuyn,"a garden.

Turning to the right,round the head of a little bay,we passed within forty yards of an enormous eagle,seated on a crag;but we had no rifle,and all he did was to rise heavily into the air,flap his wings like a barn-door fowl,and plump lazily down twenty yards farther off.

Soon after,the district we traversed became more igneous,wrinkled,cracked,and ropy than anything we had yet seen,and another two hours'scamper over such a track as till then I would not have believed horses could have traversed,even at a foot's pace,brought us to the solitary farm-house of Bessestad.Fresh from the neat homesteads of England that we had left sparkling in the bright spring weather,and sheltered by immemorial elms,--the scene before us looked inexpressibly desolate.

In front rose a cluster of weather-beaten wooden buildings,and huts like ice-houses,surrounded by a scanty plot of grass,reclaimed from the craggy plain of broken lava that stretched--the home of ravens and foxes--on either side to the horizon.Beyond,lay a low black breadth of moorland,intersected by patches of what was neither land nor water,and last,the sullen sea;while above our heads a wind,saturated with the damps of the Atlantic,went moaning over the landscape.Yet this was Bessestad,the ancient home of Snorro Sturleson!

On dismounting from our horses and entering the house things began to look more cheery;a dear old lady,to whom we were successively presented by the Rector,received us,with the air of a princess,ushered us into her best room,made us sit down on the sofa--the place of honour--and assisted by her niece,a pale lily-like maiden,named after Jarl Hakon's Thora,proceeded to serve us with hot coffee,rusks,and sweetmeats.At first it used to give me a very disagreeable feeling to be waited upon by the woman-kind of the household,and I was always starting up,and attempting to take the dishes out of their hands,to their infinite surprise;but now I have succeeded in learning to accept their ministrations with the same unembarrassed dignity as my neighbours.In the end,indeed,I have rather got to like it,especially when they are as pretty as Miss Thora.To add,moreover,to our content,it appeared that that young lady spoke a little French;so that we had no longer any need to pay our court by proxy,which many persons besides ourselves have found to be unsatisfactory.Our hostess lives quite alone.Her son,whom I have the pleasure of knowing,is far away,pursuing a career of honour and usefulness at Copenhagen,and it seems quite enough for his mother to know that he is holding his head high among the princes of literature,and the statesmen of Europe,provided only news of his success and advancing reputation shall occasionally reach her across the ocean.