قراءة كتاب Capitals of the Northlands Tales of Ten Cities
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Mother of Parliaments Cowper once wrote, and some are making much the same remark to-day,
Where flails of oratory thresh the floor,
That yields them chaff and dust and nothing more.
But of the legislature that meets in the Lagthinghuus no man can say anything so rude. However barren of other results the deliberations of the assembly may be, the community is at least benefited by the value of the hay that grows upon the roof. It may be the sluggard that lets the grass grow under his feet, but no stigma can attach to the man who lets it grow over his head. Besides possessing this venerable local Thing, the islanders send their own representatives to the Rigsdag, or Diet, at Copenhagen, for which qualified voters must have reached their thirtieth year. The Danish dominions have not yet followed Norway and Sweden in granting votes to women, but this will shortly come to pass.
The mediæval bishop for the Faroes had his stool at Kirkebö, on the same island as Thorshavn but a few miles further south. There was a house of Benedictine monks, the ruins of which still remain. In the haven named from Thor the church[6] of the White Christ is conspicuous, though modern of date and unbeautiful of form. An ancient coffin-slab, however, is incised with an ornate and flowery cross, that shows a mediæval structure occupied the site. The tower vane bears the date 1788, pierced in the Scandinavian way. The effect within is rather quaint. On the altar two great candles stand; hanging from the roof are a large ship-model and some chandeliers of brass, one dated 1682, adorned with metal flowers; on the walls a picture of the Last Supper that was painted on wood in 1647, and several monuments in timber and stone to the dead who passed from earth two hundred years ago.
On a promontory overlooking the town and the rocks covered with shells and pink and dark green sea-weed, there frowns a picturesque old fort; more interesting to the antiquary than formidable to the soldier. What higher praise than that could any place of strength deserve? The two lines of defence are each formed of boulders and earth. Though Thorshavn in the past has known unpeace, many an empire has risen to high power or crumbled to decay since these grass-grown ramparts were stained with human gore.
The stony country round the town is partly enclosed by strange frail transparent dykes, which, though as in Scotland mortarless, display surprisingly wide openings between the stones. Hay grown on the rocky soil is much the commonest crop; ragged robin, white clover, and, in swampy parts, marsh marigolds, diversify the grass. Men capped and stockinged, women shawled, also tend the tiniest patches of oats and potatoes: here and there peat is cut. The older cottages are frequently half floored above, half open to the ridge, and most conspicuous still are the sooty rafters of which the sagas so often tell. Some faint breath from the atmosphere that filled such dwellings long ago is wafted to us by the complaint of Cetil to his son in the Vatzdaela Saga, that, when he was a boy, men yearned to do some daring deed, "But now young men have become stay-at-homes, sitting over the baking fires, and stuffing their bellies with mead and ale, and all manhood and hardihood is waning away." Gone to museums are the ancient looms weighted with stones from the beach, but old carved chests and solid furniture of wood worked in the northern way are still by no means rare.
Men of great mark, by no means few, have had the Faroe Isles for home. In this remote and quiet capital there was born in 1860 Dr. N. R. Finsen, one of the great benefactors of mankind, widely known in medical circles from his study of the laws of light-rays, and the foundation of the Medical Light Institute at Copenhagen. A monument in the streets of the Danish metropolis bears his name, and it is possible that to the next generation he may be as well known as he would have been to his own, had he only invented some potent engine of destruction, instead of mere antidotes to wasting disease.
A little like the Scottish highlands here and there, with mountain tarn and trickling stream and rock hill-side and distant sea, a little, yet not very like, for the most striking feature of this delightful group of islands is its lack of resemblance to any other part of earth. Vast mountains rising from the very sea, and never destitute of whitest clouds, fold upon fold of country devoid of trees and yet so fertile and kept so moist by shower and mist that the grass grows over house-top as well as ground, the close proximity of fjord and hay-field and fish and flowers, give a combined impression so individual that the widest wanderer will but faintly be reminded of any other part of the world.
The surpassing stateliness of much of the coast declines to be expressed in ink or paint. Even the Naerofjord of Norway, most justly famed throughout the earth, is distanced in wild and rugged grandeur by some of the lonely channels among the north isles of the group, restricted in extent though they be. The largest steamer seems like a little toy between the towering mountains that rise on either side, carved into cliffs here and there, worn into caves now and then. The mountain sides are marked by waterfalls, like little silver threads. Wherever there is grass on the steep volcanic rocks, appearing like insects, there climb about white sheep and black; such gave the archipelago its name—far, the Norse word for sheep.[7] Everywhere hang white mists, clinging to the summits of the hills or streaming away like pennons in sharpest contrast with the coal-black sea of the sagas.
CHAPTER II
REYKJAVIK
Hail, Isle! with mist and snow-storms girt around,
Where fire and earthquake rend the shattered ground,—
Here once o'er furthest ocean's icy path
The Northmen fled a tyrant monarch's wrath:
Here, cheered by song and story, dwelt they free,
And held unscathed their laws and liberty.
Robert Lowe.
A faint idea of Icelandic scenery may perhaps be gained by taking a journey on the moon by the aid of a good telescope. Nowhere else is to be found the same weird impression of vastness and of magnificent desolation!
Not infrequently, particularly in a land of hills, do the works of man seem puny beside the works of God, but as in Iceland nowhere else. Only rarely, here and there, are signs of cultivation, and that is on the tiniest scale. Wild stretches of jagged lava and volcanic rock spread into space like "the ruins of an elder world." The great rugged mountains, capped by snow, and the numerous hot springs suggest the eternal battle-ground of elements, and give to the landscape a weird, almost unearthly effect. As Gudbrand Thorlac (Bishop of Holar, quoted by Hakluyt) expresses it: "There be in this Iland mountaines lift up to the skies, whose tops being white with perpetuall snowe, their roots boile with everlasting fire." The prevailing colours, including every shade of brown and yellow, are relieved only where appears the deep blue-black of the sea; save that here and there a tiny waterfall by stunted trees and a carpet of wild flowers, such as heather or grass of Parnassus, rather faintly suggest the glories of more southern lands.
The Great Pyramid and the Chinese Wall themselves would be lost, St. Peter's would appear a mere pebble, amid those gigantic stretches of lonely mountain. And during the very darkest days of early mediæval times a small handful of men in these remote solitudes were to play a part in history that is perfectly unique, to endow humanity with something it could ill afford to put away.
Here, on the dark winter nights of a region only just without the Arctic Circle, were written and enjoyed those sagas that are true history and very human, while nothing but dry chronicles were being composed in all Europe besides. Far less we should know of the early story of the British Isles and of North America had the Icelanders been dumb. Worthily appears the name of their Republic among those of other famous Commonwealths of earth in the hub of the universe, the State House at Boston, Massachusetts!
Interest in Iceland and her sagas has been greatly revived of recent years. In these days it seems strange to read what P. H. Mallet (p. 152) wrote about 1755: "Such was the constitution of a republic, which is at present quite forgotten in the North, and utterly unknown through the rest of Europe even to men of much reading, notwithstanding the great number of poets and historians which that republic produced."
The stories of the early settlers, as related in the sagas, slightly recall the conditions that even to-day exist in such places as Rhodesia and newly-opened districts of the Western States. The details are as different as they could well be, but there is something of the same overflowing youthful vitality, the same grim sort of humour and vigorous enjoyment of life. This tale, for instance, from the Liosvetninga Saga, shows a rather indirect and possibly somewhat modern method of leading up to an extremely simple point: "When the table was set there Ufey put his fist on the board, and spake, 'How big dost think that fist is, Gudmund?' He spake, 'Very big!' Ufey spake, 'Thou wouldst think that there would be strength in it.' Gudmund spake, 'Indeed I would.' Ufey answers, 'A heavy blow thou wouldst think it would give?' Gudmund spake, 'Mighty heavy.' Ufey spake, 'What harm wouldst think it would do?' Gudmund spake, 'Breaking of bones or death.' Ufey spake, 'How wouldst like that way of death?' Gudmund spake, 'Very ill, and I should not wish it to happen to me.' Ufey spake, 'Then do not thou sit in my seat.'"
The settlement of Iceland was part of the happy movement that first carried Norsemen to the Faroe Islands and far beyond. There was a man named Gard-here, a Swede, and he journeyed to Sodor, or the Southern Islands[8] on the very common quest of getting in the inheritance of his wife's father, who had died. A gale broke his moorings. He was driven westward into the sea, and the eventual result was that he reached the island with which we are concerned. He praised the land much, and desired that it should be called by his own name.
But he did not discover the island. That glory belongs to dreamy mystics of the ancient Irish Church in the days when her rays lit up the whole of Western Europe, and her missionaries went out into all lands.[9] Where he heard no other sound than the thud of the storm waves on the lonely rocks, and the shrill cry of the sea-gulls, quite alone with his God, there the Celtic monk could best say his prayers. And the Libellus Islandorum expressly says of the first days of settlement: "There were then here Christian men, whom the Northmen call 'papa.' But soon they went away because they could not dwell with pagan hordes, and they left behind them Irish books and bells and crooks." A little cross of theirs is in the Museum at Reykjavik to-day.
Again there were certain men who needed to journey out of Norway to the Faroes, some say that Naddodh was of their number, and they also were driven to the same country, which they named Snowland. They walked up a high mountain in the East-friths, and looked far and wide to see if they could discover any smoke or other token of the presence of mankind, but they saw none. They went back to the Faroes at harvest-time and they praised the new country very much.
The third party of Norsemen that reached Iceland had decorously made a great sacrifice before setting forth, and three ravens had been hallowed. In the Faroe Islands, Floki, their leader, got his daughter very satisfactorily married, and then he sailed out into the sea and let loose the three ravens. The first feebly flew to the bows of the vessel; the second with little more adventure soared into the air and then came back to the ship; but the third flew forth from the bows and led the way to the island. And when they sailed past Reek-ness, or Smoky Cape, and entered the great mountain-walled fjord, Faxe said, "This must be a big country which we have found; here are great rivers." And, though his surmise as to the rivers was mistaken, the inlet received his name; as Faxefjoth men know it to this day. The whole frith was full of fish, including seals and whales, and the party became so absorbed in catching them that they imprudently took no heed to make hay—with the result that they lost all their stock in the winter. As to the climate there were many different views, but Thorwolf said that butter dripped out of every blade of grass in the country that they had found. Wherefore he was called Thorwolf Butter.
It was nevertheless so cold that the party originated the unfortunate designation of Iceland, a name that has probably done more than anything else to spread through the world undoubtedly exaggerated notions as to the coldness of the island. Sometimes for weeks together Reykjavik has been warmer than London. The famous Icelandic explorer, Eric the Red, seems to have realised that a mistake had been made, and with much discretion he gave another land "a name, and called it Greenland, and said that men would be ready to go thither if the land had a good name."[10]
The Icelanders are as sensitive as the Canadians about the climate of their country, and as early as the sixteenth century we find the Bishop of Holar, already mentioned (p. 29), whose observations are quoted by Hakluyt, growling thus about one whose strictures on the island did not however stop with criticisms of the climate. "There came to light about the yeare of Christ 1561, a very deformed impe, begotten by a certain Pedlar of Germany; namely, a booke of German rimes, of al that ever were read the most filthy and most slanderous against the nation of Island. Neither did it suffice the base printer once to send abroad that base brat, but he must publish it also thrise or foure times over;
