ICELANDIC JOURNALICELANDIC JOURNAL

BY

ALICE SELBYEDITED BY
A. R. TAYLORVIKING SOCIETY FOR NORTHERN RESEARCH
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON
1974

Made and printed in Great Britain
by Titus Wilson and Son Ltd., Kendal
1974

Viking Society for Northern ResearchThis work is published simultaneously as Icelandic Journal by
Alice Selby, edited by A. R. Taylor (Viking Society for Northern
Research, University College London, 1974) and as Saga-Bookof the Viking Society for Northern Research XIX i (1974).

PREFACE
TO ONE who in 1933 made a similar journey and who has
always regretted the loss of his own diary from that time,it has given some pleasure to prepare the manuscript ofMiss Alice Selby's journal for publication. I have tried to
identify some of the people she met, but I am afraid a few
of the identifications remain conjectural. Unfortunately
I was unable to go to Iceland this summer and I have relied
on works of reference and on enquiries made by letter.
I wish here to record my sincere gratitude for information
received from Mr Klemenz Tryggvason of the Hagstofa inReykjavik, from Mr Bjarni VUhjalmsson of the I?j68skjalasafn, from Mr Steindor Steindorsson of Akureyri, andabove all from my -friend, Mr Eirikur Benedikz, of the
Icelandic Embassy in London. If there are mistakes
they must not be blamed: the responsibility is mine.
I have not aimed at absolute consistency in the spelling of
Icelandic place-names and personal names in the journal
itself. The only Icelandic diacritic retained is the acuteaccent and that normally only over the letter "a" and in a
few names seldom met with. In the notes and in any Icelandic word quoted in the text the appropriate Old or Modern
Icelandic spelling has been retained.
Miss Dorothea Selby, sister of the author, brought thejournal to the notice of Professor Kenneth Cameron of
Nottingham University and President of the Viking
Society, and he recommended it to the Society's Council
and Editors. Miss Dorothea Selby made publication
possible by a generous donation, and she also prevailedon Mr Hibbard to contribute his "personal recollection"of Miss Alice Selby, found at the end of the book. The
journal now appears both as an independent publication
and as a part of the Saga-Book, and I feel sure that many
readers will be delighted by Miss Selby's human andoften amusing account of her experiences.
A. R. TAYLORCONTENTS
1

REYKJAVIK AND THE LAND OF DREAMS

..

7

2

AKUREYRI AND EYJAFJORD

..

22

3

AKUREYRI AGAIN AND A JOURNEY TO THE
EAST
..
..
..
..
'..
..
..

38

4

A RIDE IN SKAGAFJORD

..

76

5

RETURN TO REYKJAVIK AND FAREWELL ..

87

ALICE SELBY. A PERSONAL RECOLLECTION
BY G. R. HIBBARD ..
..
..
..
..

94

..

..

..

..

..

Chapter One
REYKJAVIK AND THE LAND OF DREAMSLEFT Hull on the "Godafoss" on June igth, 1931.
The boat seemed small and uncomfortable. There
were twelve passengers in the first class, four English,
four German and four Icelandic.
The first few days were blank. The weather was grey
and cold, and the sea restless. Till we passed the Pentland Firth I was still more or less alive and conscious of
the bleak grey lands and the bleak grey sea. Then for
the next two days my world was bounded by a rather
unsteady cabin wall with a few dresses rocking uneasilyon the cabin pegs. It was not until the afternoon of thethird day that my horizon extended itself and I crept up
into the pale clear sunshine of the deck. It was cheering
to know that we should get our first far-off glimpse .of
Iceland in the evening, and on the strength of thatprospect I had roast pork for dinner and was even able
to feel romantic when, far off in the north, in the rose
glow of the sunset, we saw an incandescent point and weretold that it was Eyjafjallajokul. The air is so clear thatthe glacier snows can be seen for sixty miles.
At seven in the morning I came on deck to what the
picture captions used to call "a land of dreams come true".
A huge cliff fell precipitously from a green velvet head toa milky sea at the foot. The dark rocks where the seabirds congregated and left their mark were streaked withwhite. Gulls were screaming and plunging round theboat. The little town of Vestmannaeyjar lay at the footof a volcanic mountain, while away in the distance to theleft the glaciers of Iceland, Eyjafjallajokul and Hekla(which strictly speaking is not a glacier but at that time
was indistinguishable from the genuine jokuls because theI8Icelandic Journal

snows were lying on the summit), were glittering in theearly morning sunshine. I went below, dressed, and thenwent ashore in a motor-boat from which women in thepretty little Icelandic berets were climbing on board the"Godafoss".
The Vestmannaeyjar are a group of some fourteen
islands, though only one of these, Heimaey, is of any
importance. The geological composition is different
from that of Iceland, and the crags and black cliffs
that surround the harbour are more spectacular andtheatrically picturesque than anything I was to see in
Iceland. The islands have a tragic history of rapine anddisease. Lock-jaw was so prevalent at one time thatvery few of the new-born children survived. It was not
until 1847 that Dr Schleisner discovered a prophylactic,
the so-called 'navel-oil', and the scourge was removed. 1
The ravages of pirates are memorised in the little headland
Raeningjatangi, Robbers' Point, where in the seventeenth
century the 'Turks' landed from three Algerian pirate
ships, burned, killed and looted, and carried off a large
number of the inhabitants into slavery. Some of themwere released a few years later, but it was only a handful
who found their way back from distant Africa to these
northern islands. One of the refugees was the priest of
the parish who left a description of the tragic event. 2
For many years afterwards watch against the Turks' was
kept on the headland, and the houses were protected bya dike or embankment of earth.
The once unhappy little island is now a flourishing port,
and the boats call at least once a week. On shore I had
my first sight of what is one of the most characteristic
sights in the Icelandic towns, the cod-fish drying. This
1 See K. Kalund, Bidrag til en historisk-topografisk Beskrivelse af Island(1877-82), I 282 and footnote.

1 The raid took place in 1627. There were two priests in Vestmannaeyjar
at this time, (a) J6n E>orsteinsson who was killed by the raiders and(b) Olafur Egilsson who was carried off but released in the following year.
He left an account of the incident which has been printed more than once, see
Tyrkjardnid d Islandi (ed. J6n Porkelsson, Sogurit IV, 1906-9).

Land of dreamsgfish, which is exported in large quantities, mainly for
the Friday fare of the Spanish, is washed, split and gutted,
and then set in the sun to dry. Every morning the fishis packed on wooden litters, which are then carried by two
people to the drying ground. The fish is then unpacked
and spread out; it lies there in the sun till evening, when it
is again packed on the litter and carried to the tarpaulincovered stack. Women, girls and little boys carry out
this work. It is a pretty scene, with the white fish bleaching like linen in the sun, and the girls in their blue
dungarees, and the women with white kerchiefs. Later,when I reached Reykjavik, I found the arrangements
for drying fish were more elaborate and included even a
miniature railway — the only one in Iceland. I am boundto say that I was never fortunate enough to see the railway
function; but I walked along the rusty lines which ran
through a desert of dry, shining fish-scales that crackled
under the feet like sand above high-water mark, andwhich didn't smell as disagreeable as one might expect.
As it was still early morning when I stepped ashore at
Vestmannaeyjar I did not see the town in its gayest
aspect. Except for the girls carrying out the fish, and thelittle crowd of people on the quay, the inhabitants were
all asleep. The town is not impressive. There are many
one-story houses of wood and corrugated iron, most ofthem painted grey or white. Towards the edge of thetown there are larger houses, villas of concrete, eachstanding in a little patch of grass, railed off from theun-made road with wire fencing. There were several
motor lorries, a cafe, a picture-house and a barber's shopwith a collection of depressing bead necklaces.
The hooting of the steamer called me from an examination of the barber's window, and we were soon off again.
The day was bright but so cold. To starboard we had
the jokuls glittering in the sun, and after that only a longline of intimidating coast with sands and barren lava
fields. Then, far far away in the distance, the whiteio

Icelandic Journal

mass of Snaefellsjokul rose out of the sea, sixty milesaway.
We rounded Reykjanes, and the sun went in.
Reykjavik was a desolate little grey cluster as we neared
it over the grey and choppy sea. And when I landed
the feeling of greyness persisted. Grey buildings ofcorrugated iron and bigger, newer ones of concrete.
Grey streets lead to a grey lake, and a grey sun occasionallypeers through the grey clouds.
But one bit of colour caught my eye. I had hoped,
but not expected, to find gaily dressed Vikings striding
the streets of Reykjavik. So when I looked round at theclatter of hoofs and saw a romantic figure on a horse, I
felt that I was back in the Saga Age. The man was goldhelmeted and scarlet cloaked. He had a red beard, andhis blue trousers were laced with gold thongs. He had agold spear in his hand and a dog at his side. 3 It waslater that I learned how the Viking got his outfit. Thereis a movement for restoring the national costume, but
this ideal gets no more sympathy from the majority ofpeople in Reykjavik than does the Dress Reform
Movement from most Londoners. So, as a protest
against this freak ideal, some bright young people
clubbed together and bought a complete Viking outfit.
They gave this to a harmless lunatic who hangs about the
town and flaunts his finery to the surprise and delightof foreigners.
Apart from this touch of medievalism, Reykjavik is
no more romantic than any other town. There is a veryfine hotel with a ball-room and innumerable bathrooms
with hot and cold. This hotel, I was told, was built by
an ex-champion of glima (a form of wrestling which is thenational and traditional sport in Iceland). 4 This man
made a fortune in exhibiting the art at music-halls and3 Oddur Sigurgeirsson. For a photograph of this well-known figure see
W. H. Auden and Louis Macneice, Letters from Iceland (1937), 219.
4 J6hannes J6sefsson (1883-1968).

Land of dreamsncircuses all over Europe and returned to his native land toinvest the fortune in a fine hotel. There are other hotels,
comfortable if not so pretentious. There are two picture
theatres, and there is a scheme for building a proper
theatre, to be financed by the money gained in taxes fromthe more popular, if less dignified sister art, the cinema.
The shops, though they seem a little dowdy to one used
to Bond Street, are not entirely contemptible. I wasshocked when I arrived at the absence of what I should
describe as "a proper book-shop", but during my six weeks
absence in the country a very fine book-shop was opened
with national and international literature in plenty.5
I had been met at the boat by kind friends, who set
out with me on a Grand Tour of Reykjavik, not a lengthy
business, for the whole town can be surrounded in half
an hour's walk. We saw the Post Office, the Banks, theHouse of Parliament, the Museum-cum-library, the School,
the lake, and the suburbs with their rather dashing new
houses. I was shown examples of the flora of Iceland(till then I had hardly been aware that there was one),and I felt patronising at the rather wind-blown tulips
and the stunted aquilegia. When I came back to
Reykjavik I found the town a-flower with lupins,
poppies and even delphiniums. There was also a finedisplay of red currants, but when I first arrived in lateJune the flowering season had hardly started. The
rhubarb, however, was being harvested. After the allotments we worked back into the town, passing the very
modern building where the sculptor Einar Jonsson6 andhis works are housed. In the course of our walk we met
most of the passengers and staff from the "Godafoss"
and also the only Icelander I had met before starting to
Iceland, a girl whom I knew in Copenhagen. I began toperceive dimly a fact, that was later born out in full, that
5 Briem's bookshop was opened on i August 1931. Miss Selby's implied
criticism of the two already existing bookshops of Snaebjorn J6nsson and
Sigfus Eymundsson seems scarcely justified.
' Einar J6nsson (1874-1954).

12

Icelandic Journal

it is impossible to avoid anyone in Iceland. My journeyings became an absurd picaresque where people I had met
in the North or East appeared in an apparently unmotivated way in the South or West. This caused me
surprise at first, but I had hardly realised (a) that the
inhabitants of Iceland only number 100,000 altogetherand (b) that the inhabited area of the country is surprisingly small to the mind of one who is used to thetightly packed districts of Southern and Midland
England.
The wind was cold, so we spent what was left of theevening in the pictures. When we came out at 11.30
there was no dark, but only a cold grey corpse-light. I
spent the night on the boat.
No meals are served while in port, so next morning I
crept out to find some breakfast. It was coffee andslices of sweet cake. After the first morning I benefitedby the insistence of two of my companions who
managed, though they spoke no Icelandic, to squeeze
some quite convincing bread-and-butter from the girlin the cafe.
I paid a call on a lady to whom I had an introduction,and she, coming in from the garden with her hands stained
from rhubarb-picking, received me with the courtesy andself-possession which I was to find characteristic of the
Icelander confronted by a stranger, and further a stranger
with but little knowledge of their language. I was
whisked off in a car to see the famous hot springs and hot
houses about ten miles from Reykjavik. We humped
over a rough road through bleak stretches of lava country.
A rough road, I say, but when I returned to Reykjavik
from the country, I realised that this particular road is
one of the finest in the country and is smooth as glass incomparison with many parts of the long main road thatjoins the North and South. The first enquiry of thesolicitous when one steps into a car is "Do you getbttveikur!", i.e. car-sick. It is the most ordinary thing

Land of dreams

13

in Iceland to stop the touring cars to allow a passenger
to indulge the weaknesses of the flesh. There are twoor perhaps three causes for the frequency of this
distressing ailment. One is the actual surface of theroad, and here a further discomfort may arise — that isthe danger of hitting your head on a beam in the roof ofthe car when it leaps, and the passengers with it, atsome particularly large bump in the road. The second
cause is the direction of the roads, many of which, as
far as I could make out, are simply a widening of thelittle twisting pony tracks. When these were enlarged
for cars it didn't seem to strike the engineers that the
curves might profitably have been shaved off. Thirdly,
I think that the Icelander's car-sickness is due to lack ofpractice in riding in motor-cars. It is still a novelty
to a great many of them. Indeed, many young people's
only idea of a binge is to hire a car and drive it anywhere,
preferably with a convivial party and several bottles.
The lava country is desolate with nothing but grass
and rocks. I asked if it was capable of being cultivated,and my friend replied that cultivation was possible but
the difficulty was shortage of labour. The people in
Iceland are so few. In the holidays all the young people,
men, boys and girls, try to get some sort of work — very
often road-making. It is considered the manly thing todo, so even rich boys work. This year, however,
unemployment is much commoner than it was becauseof the world depression. One of the most trying thingsin the Icelandic economic world just now is that theycannot get their dried fish sold in Spain. The herring
trade is also in rather a difficult position. But when wetalked of poverty and trade depression someone told
me that there was never in Iceland such a depth ofdegradation as one can find in an English slum. Thereis so much land to spare in Iceland that anyone can scratch
a living from it. Moreover, there is always the sea with
its plentiful supply of fish. So, though the conditions of14

Icelandic Journal

life may be hard, for no-one in Iceland is there dangerof absolute starvation.
So we chatted until we saw steam rising in the distance,
and there, in a perfectly bleak landscape, lying in thehollow of the bleak hills, was a little group of glass houses
wreathed in steam. We walked through groves oftomatoes, plantations of cucumbers, houses of rather
frail roses, and beds of melons. The warmth of thenatural spring was very grateful after the dank cold of theatmosphere outside. Then we went up to see the parentsof the proprietor. 7 They were a charming old couple —the father in working clothes and rope shoes, the old lady
almost blind but holding herself erect, her bust firmly
laced into the corset of the national dress. The little
beret, with its long tassel, was perched coquettishly on
her head, and she had beautiful ornaments of filigree on
her bodice. We drank coffee, and they discussed politics
with vigour but with perfect courtesy.
Then we went on to an open-air swimming-bath,
supplied by one of the hot springs. The water waspleasantly tepid, though the effort of undressing andgetting in under the rainy sky was considerable. We
had more coffee, this time with the proprietor of thewoollen factory which stands quite near. 8 The factory is
run from the hot springs. Further the houses in the
district use the spring water for central heating and forall ordinary purposes. It is so hot that tea can be madefrom it directly with no further boiling.
I spent a nice evening with some Icelandic friends.
We discussed the national character. I said it was apeculiar experience to come to this country knowing
nothing of the people but what I had learnt from thesagas. I had expected to find Iceland populated by
7 Probably Asgeir Bjarnason and Ragnheidur Helgad6ttir, the parents of
Bjarni Asgeirsson, the co-owner of the greenhouses at Reykir in
Mosfellssyeit.
8 Sigurj6n Petursson (1885-1955), another glima champion who ran the
Alafoss cloth factory.

Land of dreams

15

those portentous figures, Gudrun of the Laxdale Saga,
Egill Skallagrimsson, Viga-Glum. I had expected themost striking characteristics to be a sort of stiffness ofcharacter and a high degree of offendability. Instead ofthat I find the most civilized people in Europe, whose
manners combine absolute courtesy to a stranger without
any of the tiresome fussing or curiosity that often
accompanies hospitality. I had noticed, however, thatthe people in the shops were a little unencouraging at
first and seemed almost to resent your wanting to buy
anything. But when I persisted they thawed and became
eager to get me what I wanted. One of the party thoughtthat the attitude of the shop people was due to pride andthat pride is a very important quality in the Icelander.
It is that which makes them dislike cadging for money,so the Icelander is always unwilling to over-charge. I
was able to observe this phenomenon later, when I was
riding in the country. When I asked one of the farmers
how much I owed him for hire of horses and hospitality,
he sat fingering his chin and, after some consideration,
said "Twenty-five kronur". I thanked him and handed
him the money, which represented a very reasonablecharge. He took it and sat a few moments with it in his
hand. Then he took a five-kronur note and gave it tome, saying, "No, I think I've charged you too much.
Twenty kronur is enough." And this in a country wheremoney is not too easily come by. The Icelander's prideis also the basis for his courage and power of suffering
discomforts without complaints. I was told that at thecelebrations of the millenary of the Althing the beds in thetents allotted to students had got damp. That, I thought,
was in itself characteristic. I didn't find the Icelandera very practical person. The Norwegian and the Swedish
students panicked on the grounds that they would catchcold. The Icelandic students slept in the damp beds andcaught cold uncomplainingly.
Another of the party suggested that the kindness and16

Icelandic Journal

at the same time the lack of fussing had been developedby the farm life, i.e., that through the centuries the
Icelanders had had to do with animals. It is aninteresting theory that the Icelandic pony has tamed his
fierce and uncompromising master. But the ponies
themselves are tamed. I heard a funny story of thehorse-fight that was to be shown at the millenary celebrations. There were many protests against the revivalof this barbarous form of sport. But because it wastraditional and of the Saga Age, the fight was held. But
when the ponies were put to it, instead of biting withconcentrated hatred, they rolled and played like a coupleof puppies. The promoters of the fight had unfortunately
picked on two firm friends, who enjoyed a good romp
together.
Next morning I went out to Thingvellir, the plain where
the first national parliament was held a thousand years
ago. The car passed through desolate hills of monotonousand craggy outline until I wondered when we should
arrive at the rocky ridge of the Almannagja. Then wesaw a lake to the right, Thingvallavatn, and skirting theedge we arrived at the craggy ridge down which theroad runs between high cliffs. 9 We descended to theplain and made a large circuit to cross the river andarrive at the hotel.
Thingvellir is very beautiful and the formation of therocks extraordinary. Sometimes they split, forming
deep clefts filled with blue-green water. This is so clearthat the floating weeds look like jewels. Above the lava
plain is the ridge where the meetings were held. I
scrambled about looking for the logberg and the famous
booths. There is no difficulty finding these as they areconveniently marked by tablets. The view from theridge is exquisite, the river Oxara in the foreground with
9 The classic description of the approach to the parliament ground atf>ingvellir is to be found in Lord Dufferin, Letters from High Latitudes (1856),
ch. VII.

Land of dreams

17the "holm" or island on which the famous duel between
Gunnlaug Ormstunga and Hrafn was fought "for the loveof a lady", then, across that, the church and the vicarage, agrey house with a bright green roof, which proved on
closer examination to be of growing turf. Beyond
stretches the lava plain, humping itself uneasily into
little wrinkles, but covered between the rocks with grass,scrub and little birch trees. In the far distance themountains stand blue in the morning sunshine, stillwearing their winter caps of snow. It was from theshield-shaped Skjaldbreid that the red hot lava poured
in distant ages, which was to cool, and harden, and forma stage for some of the most remarkable events in
Icelandic history. 10
I walked past the waterfalls along to the edge of theridge, through the sweet-scented scrub birch. Snow wasstill lying in the shaded crannies of the ravine. Then I
struck across the heath. It was very desolate andvery lovely, with no life but the plovers, which whinedround me with a persistence that soon became irritating.
Then it began to rain, so I turned back and examined thelittle church and graveyard across Oxara. It was
settling down to rain with more conviction now, so I went
back to the hotel and drank coffee. I was smoking acigarette and gazing out rather drearily into the grey anddesolate monotony of the plain, when a car drove up to
the hotel, and another, and another, till the plain was
desolate no longer and the solitudes were filled with young
students. The girls were trying to be reckless, and theboys were most of them tipsy, carrying bottles, shouting,kissing, singing, dancing and, it seemed to me, ignoring
the young women. One young man practised his
English on me and told me that they had passed their
10 Skjaldbreio: this mountain is well known on the skyline from J>ingvellir.
During the whole of the last century it was generally assumed to be thesource of the lava which forms the floor of E>ingvellir. Regretfully we must
now accept the more modern theory that most of the lava came from fissures
to the east of Skjaldbreid. See B. Thorsteinsson and Th. Josepsson,
Thingvellir (1961), 8.

18

Icelandic Journal

matriculation into the university and were celebrating
their entrance into student life. He told me (I suspect
untruthfully) that he was going to be a clergyman andthat he would have few opportunities in the future ofenjoying himself in this particular way. He introduced
a great many of his friends, who were all very
distinguished. One was the best orator of the year,
another the best mathematician, and so on. I thought
the boys and girls were trying very hard to enjoy
themselves, but even whilst I was there I noticed that their
spirits flagged. They were to spend the night out thereat the hotel, and I wondered if it would be long before
they could return to Reykjavik and sleep off their achingheads. The weather was, of course, depressing. I
suppose things would go with more snap in the sunshine.
I went home in a car with an earnest young Germanfrom Kiel, who wanted to improve his English. I wanted
to improve my German, but he won.
The next day I spent at the Library and Museum. In
the Museum I saw clothes, woven fabrics and above all
carved wooden objects. There were carved wood
cupboards, food-bowls, spoon-boxes, cake moulds, andeven wringer handles. I suppose the long winter evenings
are so boring that the men in the country decorate every
available wooden surface with carving. I pictured
Mother restraining them from carving the rollers of thewringer.
I had tea with an unsuccessful Labour candidate at thelast election. 11 She is a large woman, intensely idealistic,
and belonging to all sorts of International Leagues of
Women, except the National Council. She sat therewith her hat askew and her stockings wrinkling to theankle.
In the evening I was to meet the same lady with agroup of others for dinner. I saw a tall, fair, stately
II Laufey Valdimarsd6ttir (1890-1945) was the daughter of Briet
Bjarnhe6insd6ttir, the most famous of Iceland's suffragettes.

Land of dreams

19

woman coming forward with dignity to meet me in the
hotel. It was the same lady in national costume. Often
during my stay in Iceland I was to see this extraordinary
metamorphosis. Some school-girl slut in a bedraggled
cotton frock would appear as a woman with poise andexperience, only because she had changed into her
national dress. The tightly laced corset forces thewearer to stand or sit erect and the long skirt gives
dignity, while the little beret and the plaited hair areworn with an attractive air of coquetry. It was a little
group of university women who composed our dinnerparty. It was a gay dinner, pretty dresses, a bottle of
Sauterne, and a great deal of chattering and laughter.
But they grow very serious when they talk of theircountry. They said that the Althing millenary was thegreatest experience of their lives, and that the Icelanders
who were present felt that not only a great past was behindthem but that a great future lay ahead. That,was their
moment, when they had faith in Iceland's future. They
said they had forgotten that faith later, especially withthe fury of the election, but they had their moment andit was worth while.
What else did we talk about ? Trifles mostly. The lady
who felt that she had once been a lamb in Svarfadardale. 12
The ponies (at the millenary celebrations) that refused tofight. I asked if the University Women in Reykjavik
gossiped and said unpleasant things about each other.
They thought not, partly because there were so few ofthem, partly because they were united by their sense ofpioneerdom. They had all been first in some field — one
the first girl to enter the High School, one the first woman
teacher in the school. One was the first government
clerk, one the first to own a chemist's shop, and so on. 13
ia ASalbjorg Sigur5ard6ttir (b. 1887), a well-known suffragette andtheosophist.
13 The first Icelandic woman to graduate from Reykjavik High School
was Laufey Valdimarsd6ttir, see note n; the first woman government clerk
was Asta Magnusd6ttir who entered government service in 1910;
J6hanna Magnusddttir was the first to own a chemist's shop, which she
started in 1928.

20

Icelandic Journal

My boat was to leave that night for the north, so the gay
little group saw me off in the now persistent rain.
The next day wore away. The unfriendly mountains
were hidden in the mist and the unfriendly sea bickered
round our little boat. The boat was crowded. Many ofthe passengers were being rather vocally sea-sick in theirberths. A few of us huddled in the smokeroom.
Someone was playing a gramophone, and we tried to makea tight little defence of human civilization against thevoid that lay outside.
Snow was falling on the mountains, but it turned torain as it reached the fjord. The sea was rough, and I
slept. When I woke it was calmer and we were creeping
into Isafjord. It looked a grim place, packed onto aspit of land lying across the fjord. The mountains risealmost sheer from the water, and in the winter for nearly
two months the little town is cut off from the sunlight.
Then, in January when the first rays of the sun strike
the town, the people drink coffee and eat cakes tocelebrate.
We had a few hours to wait. I picked my way throughthe puddles of the street to pay a call. The place shouldhave been romantic with the quays lined with brownsailed boats full of sea-birds' eggs; but the rain and mudwere as unromantic as they are in England. I went
along a little gully to the mainland, where a road leads
along the fjord. In a nice white house at the foot of themountains lives the clergyman. 14 He is charming,
intellectual, and was unflurried by the arrival of a visitor
who dislocated the family dinner and drank coffee at aninconvenient hour. He talked Icelandic to me with theutmost patience, articulating every syllable, as did hisson, Siggi litli. His two small, square, red girls were too
shy to talk to the English lady. He had a lot of books,
the Icelandic sagas, and a collection of English books on
14 Sigurgeir Sigur&sson (1890-1953) became Bishop of Iceland on
I January 1939. His two daughters were called Svanhildur and GuSlaug.

Land of dreams

21

Spiritualism, mainly by the Rev. Vale Owen. 15 Then I
called on the doctor whose little girls entertained mewith courtesy and self-possession. 16
That evening we were in the Arctic circle and shouldhave seen the Midnight Sun, but it rained, so I had a bathand went to bed. Next day the weather showed faintsigns of improvement. By the time we had passed
Skagafjord and Drangey, where the outlaw Grettir foundpeace, the sun was out, and we arrived at Siglufjord on a
glorious summer day.
I had heard a great deal about Siglufjord, a place ofbad aroma both literally and metaphorically. I had been
told that it was the only place in Iceland where asolitary woman is not perfectly safe. It is the centre of
the herring industry and hence famous at certain timesof the year for its bad smell. Fortunately the herringseason had not yet begun.
The place certainly looked nasty. There were squashedfish and squashed birds on the quay, a great manysinister-looking men in the streets, and a not too
obtrusive smell of fish-oil. The country round is lovely.
I climbed up a bit of one of the mountains and had amagnificent view of the fjord and the town, which is not
unpicturesque when seen from a height. Then thesteamer's whistle blew, and we were soon rounding
Siglunes and passing into Eyjafjord. The sun shone, thesea was blue and the mountain tops were white with snow.

15 George Vale Owen (1869-1931) published several books on the after-lifein the 19205.
14 Vilmundur J6nsson (1889-^1972) became Iceland's Chief Medical Officer
of Health in October 1931. His daughters were GuOrun and (3lof.

Chapter Two
AKUREYRI AND EYJAFJORD
EYJAFJORD is one of the loveliest fjords in Iceland.
The chief place is Akureyri, the largest town in Iceland
after Reykjavik. It lies almost at the top of the fjord.
To the left, just before it is reached, there is a range ofmountains of the characteristic pyramid shape, which
always reminded me of a row of ice-puddings with the
top sliced off. It is an agreeable little town, with several
comfortable hotels, two picture theatres and a very finemodern store belonging to the Co-operative Association.
This large new building is the first thing that the visitor
sees when he walks up from the quay. Behind the town
the ground rises, and after a twenty minutes' walk youreach the foot of Sulur, the mountain that stands at theback of the town. Out into the fjord there is a spit ofland where the small boats come in. Along the fjord theland is flat, and here is the fish-drying ground. Then
there is a large factory before you come to Glera, a riverwhich supplies the town with electricity. Beyond that
there is a working-class area of houses and a sort of suburb.
Up the fjord on the hill behind the town the houses are
more imposing. They are for the most part nice new villas
and often have gardens with flowers growing in them.
The other houses have all their patch of grass railed offfrom the road by wire fencing, but the owners cultivate thegrass for hay and do not attempt any horticulture. Up
the hill there is even a public garden, which stands next
to the school. It is gay with columbines and valerian.
Here also are trees, little birch bushes, none of themgrowing more than five or six feet high; but the people of
Akureyri are very proud of their wooded park. On thelower road along the fjord there is a quay with stacks ofAkureyri and Eyjafjord

23

wood and barrels; these are followed by a district of smaller
houses and a fish-drying ground. Here the men put out
their nets and I found it fascinating to watch themdragging in the nets and flinging out the poor protesting
fish with which they seemed always to be full. Anotherinterest of this road that flanked the fjord was the familiesof eider-duck which swam near the edge. The fathers, I
was told, took no further interest in their children after
the hatching was over, but escaped to the sea where they
enjoyed their bachelorhood together, leaving the mothers
to their parental responsibilities. The down with which
the nests are lined used to be a very valuable commodity
in Iceland, and a farmer who owned a nesting-groundon the flats near the fjord was a fortunate person. But
now the trade has dwindled because of the cost ofcollecting and cleaning the down.
Akureyri has an open-air swimming bath. It forms avery nice social centre, and though it is only the children
and the more intrepid males who venture into its icy
water, a great many people of both sexes sit about on thegrass banks and watch the bathers. I was amused toread the first time I went that the bath was reserved for
women at that particular time and to observe that the
only people in it were men and boys. After that I stopped
taking much notice of the printed word. Another thingthat contributes to the gaiety of Akureyri is the
Herdubreid Cafe. This was just opposite the windowof my bedroom, and as there was a dance almost every
night that I was there, I could watch the dancers arriving
and leaving, and listen from my bed to the music of the
jazz band. The place was often very gay as many boats
called at Akureyri, and their sailors patronised the
Herdubreid.
The arrival of the boats is the most exciting thing in
Akureyri, for all letters and parcels come by boat and notby road. The day that the boat is due the excitement
begins to simmer. You ask each other when "Dettifoss"

24

Icelandic Journalor "Godafoss" is due. Then you begin to argue about it,
and someone tells you that they heard from the postmasterthat she left Isafjord that morning. Then, perhaps, youhear the steamer's whistle as she comes up the fjord.
You hurry out to see her come in, to meet your friends,
to "goup" if you are to be merely an onlooker. She
draws nearer and gradually, with a good deal of shouting
and blowing of whistles, she creeps alongside the quay.
You wave at your friends or scan the faces of the visitors.
The gangway is put down and you hurry on board, come
off laughing and chattering with your friends, carrying
luggage and paper-bags or flowers from Reykjavik. The
next excitement is the post. You have a key with which
you can obtain your letters even though the post office isshut. So the street echoes to the hurrying steps, andround the post office there is a little crowd. Next
morning the parcels have been unshipped, and the pavements in front of the shops are cluttered with wooden
packing-cases. Then the windows are gay with thelatest models from Copenhagen, and the tobacconist has
a new supply of oranges. After the boat leaves the town
sinks into torpor, until the next boat is due.
The hotel I stayed in was kept by an ex-housekeeper
from the hospital. 17 She is the Mrs Beaton of Icelandand has written a cookery book which I was told was on
the way to becoming a classic. Certainly she wasan excellent cook; the food was delicious and a goodadvertisement for her book. For lunch, I remember, on
the first day we had a souffle served in coquilles, trout
with fried onions, and an exquisite cream made with tinned
fruit. The chief draw-back for those not used to pension
life in the Scandinavian countries is the ordeal of coming
into the dining room and finding one's place at the longtable, lined on either side with strangers. It is the mostharrowing experience imaginable, especially when one is" J6ninna SigurSarddttir (b. 1879). Her cookery book, first published in
1915, has gone through several editions.

Akureyri and Eyjafjord

25

aware that some sort of conventional greeting is expectedfrom a newcomer, and one is not sure what the exact
form is. It was some time before I acquired the rightformula, verdi ydur ad gddu ("may it do you good"). I
used to murmur "God bless you" and trust that it would
pass. Further problems arise when you are not sure of
the exact sequence of the meal. The supper consisted ofa hot course followed by a variety of cold objects of thenature of hors d'ceuvres. But many of the inmates used
to take a preliminary snack from these for they were
all ready on the table. If one began like this one wasimmediately embarrassed by the arrival of the maid,
who pressed hot meat and potatoes on you. Then, ofcourse, all the most agreeable of the cold objects were outof range, and one did not know their names even in English,
still less in Icelandic, and one was too shy, and too wellbrought up, to stretch or point.
This hotel was admirable in other matters. The rooms
were plainly furnished and the walls painted with lightgrey washable paint. There was running water (but,alas, only cold) in all the rooms. There was a bathroom
and central heating. The proprietress was kindly andthe maid charming. She was rather sorry for me andsuspected I was lonely. She used to come to my room inthe evenings, when I was reading or writing, and talk tome patiently in Icelandic or, sometimes when I couldn't
understand, in Danish. I remember one evening whenan Englishman, who had been on the boat with me, got
drunk and made a speech from the steps of the Herdubreid,that she came running up to my room to tell me and wepeered together through the curtains and made the sortof shocked noises with our tongues that are common to
all languages.
One evening I went to a play in Akureyri and there
found the proprietress and the maid. They insisted I
should sit by them and further, in the interval, asked me
to take coffee with them and pressed cakes on me, for26

Icelandic Journal

which they paid. I had a picture in my mind of theconventional boarding-house keeper in England.
On my first visit I stayed only one night in Akureyri as
I was being accompanied to Svarfadardale next day. The
first evening in Akureyri was notable for me, in that I
didn't quite see the Midnight Sun. We were told that
we should see it from Sulur, but I didn't climb high enoughand at 11.50 it disappeared behind a mountain. It
certainly was a remarkably beautiful sunset, and it wasa curious experience to creep home in the pink glow tofind the town sleeping, the hotel locked up, and to
wonder whether I was returning too late at night or too
early in the morning.
The next day I left for Svarfadardale by motor-boatin company with the clergyman and his family. 18 We
were to leave early in the morning, then it was to be atone, but the afternoon wore slowly away and it was six
o'clock before the overloaded little boat got under way.
The journey was not very comfortable as the small boat
held Sera Stefan and his family, the crew and the ownerand his friends, our luggage, a wooden door, hay rakes,
sacks of rye, barrels and three rolls of barbed wire.
The elder ladies wrapped shawls round their heads anddisappeared into the tiny cabin. The rest of us perchedon sacks and barrels and ate buns out of paper bags.
Sera Stefan and his daughter removed the more externalof their town clothes and struggled into oil skins andrubber boots. It was bitterly cold and spiteful little
waves splashed over the side. After about four hours
we arrived at Dalvik, the little fishing port of Svarfadardale. There is nothing but a cluster of houses, mostly
new. The quay or quays, for there are two of them,fragile wooden structures, stretch out into the fjord andhave a rusty truck-line down the middle. They are lined
18 Sera Stefan Kristinsson was priest at Vellir from 1901 to 1941. His
wife was Solveig Petursd6ttir Eggerz and his two daughters were named
Ingibjorg and Sigrfour.

Akureyri and Eyjafjord

27

with a grim array of fishes' heads, drying to be grounddown into fishmeal. It is rather like the religious housein a Melanesian village — set on piles with ranks ofgrinning skulls.
We shivered on the quay whilst the boat was unloaded.
There were a great many more things than I had beenaware of — boxes, trunks and paper bags, Ingibjorg's
clothes hanging rather insecurely on coat-hangers, acistern, a lavatory basin, some drain pipes, a large ironobject — probably a boiler, and a jam jar with a rose
cutting in it. While these were being unpacked
Ingibjorg's friends, two pretty girls in berets, were
dancing around and giggling, delighted at the re-union,
for she had been away for a year teaching gymnastics
in Reykjavik.
I was led up the quay and along the village street. A
wide valley opened up to the south with snow-tipped
mountains on each side with a range shutting in the topof the dale. A wide and rather swift-flowing river woundthrough the flat green bottom. The mountain peaks
were flushed with pink from a sun low over the fjords,
and up the gently sloping sides of the valley, below the
precipitous mountains, was a scattering of little whitefarms.
We were taken to the beret-girls' home and beside thegrateful warmth of an electric radiator were given cold
milk and cake. Nature's needs were satisfied in a bedroom
with the help of a chamber perched rather insecurely
on a feather bed.
Then a motor lorry came along. The goods from thequay had been collected and increased by the additionof a huge bunch of fish — trout and some big flat ones
which were still jumping convulsively as a protest against
their translation into another element. Mrs Stefan
climbed in the front. Sera Stefan, Ingibjorg and I sat
rather insecurely on the boxes behind, the driver got
in, and a supernumerary clung to the mudguard. Then

28

Icelandic Journal

we jolted off, swinging along what was a comparatively
good road. After a mile or so we turned over the
narrowest possible bridge and followed a cart track over
the river flats, then another bridge, followed by morecart track. The river here is in four or five branches
and at the last we had to transfer into a boat. Acrossthe river there was a black fluffy dog called Snati, which
was barking a hysterical welcome to the family. A boy
was waiting with a long two-wheeled cart and a pony.
We climbed up the side of the valley for half a mile or soand reached Vellir.
It is a white house of corrugated iron, lined with wood;
rather like a double-fronted villa, with a flight of steps
to the front door. It is the parsonage and close by there
is a tiny white, green-roofed church. Round this there
is an old graveyard, raised from the ground by a slightmound; but busy feet do not respect its sanctity for it
makes a short cut from the house to the river. Thereis also a new graveyard, which is fenced in and has arow of mountain ashes and one of these braveattempts at a garden — a row of lupins and poppies, allrather bleached by the cruel wind.
I haven't yet described the clergyman and his wife.
He is bearded like an apostle and has a brown, weatherbeaten face with surprising light grey eyes. He was afisherman in his youth and has the slightly slouchingshoulders that are often a sign of great strength. He
spits a great deal. He is evidently a wag, though I
couldn't understand his jokes. On the boat he had
struggled into a pair of light blue dungarees, put on someleather leggings and a yellow oilskin coat, and when hehad finished he seemed a much more convincing country
prestur than the respectable, brown-suited gentleman
that I had met on the "Godafoss". Clergymen in
Iceland wear no uniform in ordinary life. When they
conduct the services they wear black cassocks and thesweetest frills or ruffs round their necks. Mrs StefanAkureyri and Eyjafjord

29

is fat and has a nice homely face. In Akureyri she was
wearing the national dress, black and close-fitting, witha coloured silk apron and a huge white satin bow on her
bosom. Her hair was plaited in several plaits and looped
up under the little beret with its dangling tassel. Over
this costume she wore an ordinary raincoat. In the house
she wears a cotton frock that has no distinctive national
qualities, and she wears her grey plaits down her back.
The daughter, Ingibjorg, is a modern — a little athleticthing who whistles, strides like a boy, and despises thenational costume.
When we reached the door of the house my hostessturned to me with a kindly "Welcome to Vellir". We
went into the front room, where the table was laid for ameal — horn-handled knives, black and white bread, alarge block of butter, and a large jug of milk. I enjoyed
the meal, for it was now one in the morning and, except fora bun or two on the boat and the milk at Dalvik, I had
had nothing since lunch. We had veal stew with potatoes
and boiled eggs and then porridge and milk. After supper
I waited out in the sunset-dawn till my bag was broughtup from the river. There was a smell of dew, and a smellof peat smoke. It was cold and peaceful except for acurlew which was whining with its mate down in thegrass near the river.
The parlour upstairs had been turned into my bedroom
with pillows, sheets and duvet on the couch. There wasa bowl of cold water and a piece of soap on the polishedtable for my toilet.
About ten the next morning there was a knock at thedoor, and the younger daughter, a pretty dark girl with
two long plaits of hair, came in carrying a large copper
kettle of coffee, a jug of cream, and a trayful of cakes.
This was my first experience of the little breakfast that
was always brought to me in bed in Iceland. At first it
is a shade disconcerting to meet the fancy biscuits andcakes with layers of jam at such an early meal.

30

Icelandic Journal

Sometimes the fragile and delicious pancakes that aresuch a feature of coffee parties were brought. But I
came to enjoy my morning snack, and the coffee wasalways strong, hot and freshly made, and the creamdelicious. I was often so ashamed at the gaps that I
had made in the inevitable tray of cakes that I used to
re-arrange them on the tray and trust that my hostessdid not check the numbers.
Too soon for one to be really hungry again, we sat down
to lunch — yesterday's stew and some of the fish that
had ridden with us in the lorry the night before. My
hostess told me about their life. The salary of a clergyman is negligible, so they live by farming. At Vellir
they have nine cows and three calves, hence thedelicious milk, cream, butter, cheese and skyr. Thisis the national dish, sour milk, which has been strained
and beaten till it is like whipped cream. It is eaten withsugar and cream. It is supposed to be essential to healthand to supply the deficiencies that would otherwise show
in the Icelandic diet because of the lack of fresh fruit andvegetables.
The housewife at Vellir is out at seven every morning
to see to the dairy work. Then there are the sheep —not very many because the grazing is not good and thetun small. They have some meadows down near theriver for the hay. But they spin the wool from the sheep
and make it into stockings for the children, and theywear home-spun and knitted things in the winter. In
summer they have shop-made clothes.
Meals at Vellir are continuous. When I was there,
there were twenty mouths to feed, including the ten men
and women who work on the estate and an additionalgroup of workmen who were building a house for theeldest son. The bread is home-made, the meat is homegrown and home-killed, and the smoked fish and meat
are home-cured. Except for the coffee, sugar, flour andcondiments, everything can be produced on the estate.

Akureyri and Eyjafjord

31

During the week I was at Vellir I walked and rode up anddown Svarfadardale, which is about twenty miles long,and Skidadale, which is a tributary dale about the samelength. I wanted to see the places mentioned in the sagaof the men of Svarfadardale.
It is better to ride in the dale than to walk. The
streams are sometimes too deep and too swift to crosssafely on foot, even when you are wearing rubber boots.
But the ponies pick their way through the torrent withcareful security, turning the heads upstream so that they
will not be carried out of their course by the current.
My first experience of riding was unalarming. The
younger daughter from Vellir was my guide, a lovely
girl, grave, reserved and kindly. She led the way at a
gentle walk, increased later to a trot and finally a mild
canter. The ponies are surer-footed on the steep slopesof the river bank than I should have been myself. In
an emergency I clung to the mane. Once I foundmyself clinging round the neck, but that was before I
had mastered the elementary rule of safety that going
uphill the rider should lean forward, and going downhill
the weight should be put back. After this fact waslearned I was never even near to falling off.
During my week in Svarfadardale the weather grewsteadily worse. At first it was bright but cold. Then it
grew cloudy, and then the rain began. After that it grew
still colder, the rain turned to snow and sleet, and thebitterest wind blew unceasingly. My first impression of
the Icelandic countryside was one of complete gloom.
The north wind whistled round the house. The grass
was green, but in rather a subdued way. In the little
churchyard at Vellir there were a few Iceland poppies,
and I used to go out and warm my eyes with the red andyellow flowers. Everything else seemed bleak and cold.
The river was a cold blue, the mountains colourless, except
their tips, which were outlined in hard snow. The
mountain sides take their colour from the sky; in dull

32

Icelandic Journal

weather they are a neutral shade, greenish with huge
stretches of yellowish sand, greyish rock and scree. It
is only in the sunlight they become lovely, an indescribable blue, and the shadows from the little clouds chaseacross their slopes.
As I walked alone in the dale I used to contemplate
Nature with a certain fear. Iceland seemed to me likea great animal, brooding and but half tamed. She isalways hitching herself uneasily into wrinkles, andunless these are regularly smoothed by the hard-working
farmer the surface of the fields became covered with little
grassy humps. Sometimes there are bigger disturbances— volcanic eruptions or avalanches — so that in a few
hours the whole face of the countryside is changed.
I think that my fear of the country was due to the factthat a vulgarian like myself should have been introduced
to this undiluted Nature rather more gradually. Neverbefore have I been brought into such close contact withsuch extensive stretches of Nature. In most of thecountries I had travelled in I had seen the wilds incompany or from the security of a steamer, a railway
train or a motor car. Again, I was always hungry, andI was too shy to go to the farms and ask for coffee. I
thought with longing of a walking tour in the Tyrol
where one was as likely as not to find a nice little cafe
round the next corner with check table-cloths and cream
cakes. And I knew that round the next corner in thesedales I should see only the grass slopes and theuncomprehending mountain sides. Even the animals
seemed unfriendly, and no wonder in this land fretted bya bitter wind, with the June snow lying unmelted in thehollows. I was knocked down by a bull calf, snapped
at by farm dogs, menaced by the sea swallows when I
went too near their breeding grounds. Even the sheep
were hostile and shook their horns at me until I was
driven to creep round the other way.
I remember that on the Friday I was there I walked out

Akureyri and Eyjafjord

33

along the dale to the fjord; quite suddenly I came on a
new road on which about a dozen men and boys were
working. I felt cheered by the proximity of so muchhumanity and lingered there as long as I could. The
road was rather casually constructed with a bed of turfs
and a top surface of stones and boulders. Already thewaters of the fjord were beating against its side,and I wondered how long it would be before the greedy
waves had licked away this new link with civilization.
On my way home that evening I walked with a man inblue dungarees, and we chatted with some difficulty.
When we drew near the farm where he lived, he led me outof the way to a sheltered hollow and showed me a little
village of toy houses made by children from the farm.
The tiny mud houses were roofed with turf and fenced
with sheep's horns. There were flowers, daisies and little
pink arenaria planted in the gardens, and there was evena cemetery with crosses made from match sticks. I felt
unaccountably cheered.
That night the wind howled round the house and thesleet beat on the tiny windows of my bedroom. I had
been given a little bedroom to myself, at the expense ofpoor Ingibjorg, who would normally have slept there.
The mystery of how the family, servants and guests werehoused in a house no larger than a villa was only
incompletely solved for me during the whole of my stayin Iceland. The badstofa houses most of the servants;
but where the family pack themselves away was a thing
I never understood. My bedroom conformed to what
was a common type. It was a little, wood-lined room andits ceiling sloped down almost to the floor so that in my
bed under the eaves I was in danger of hitting my headon the roof. The walls and floor were painted, the bedstead was a white wooden one with boards underneath, astraw underlay, a feather mattress and on top a feather
duvet which was always slipping off. I slept in twojerseys. There was a tiny washstand, a chair, a quantity

34

Icelandic Journalof photographs, Christmas cards, picture post-cards, andsome small china objects.
Icelandic interiors are seldom distinguished. The
furniture is uninteresting, and there is nothing characteristic except a litter of photographs, the Nottingham
lace curtains and a row of plants on the window-sill. But
the kitchens of the smaller old turf and timber houses
often have beautiful wooden furniture — chests andboxes in white wood or gaily painted. The lack of
distinction in the newer furnishing dates from the time
when the farmers built their new houses but had not
yet emerged far in taste beyond the kitchen or badstofa.
So when they had new rooms, parlours and bedrooms tofurnish, they bought the first furniture they saw in the
town store. Further they were, and still are, circumscribed in their choice and have to depend on the
shopkeepers, who have neither the taste nor the capitalto stock a large variety of furniture.
It rained or sleeted all that day. I spent it in thepleasant warmth of the best room, where the stove had
been lighted. It was laugardagur — Saturday whichmeans washing-day — when everything is being cleaned
in readiness for Sunday. Floors were being washed,clean curtains put up and the family washing and ironing
was being done. As it was so wet the women were infrom the fields and all busy about the house. We sat
in the dining-room and drank coffee. The husfreyja
comes in with a fresh pot of coffee, we fill our cups andthe conversation grows animated. They are talking oflife after death, and in the warm little room, with thewind howling and the snow falling on the misty mountains,
they discuss whether they would be afraid to see theirdead friends. The husfreyja, her broad face flushed fromthe kitchen, sips her coffee and thinks that there is nothing
to be frightened of. Ingibjorg, modern and disrespectful,says something in her incisive way, and they all laugh.
The Pastor, his spectacles pushed up on his forehead, isAkureyri and Eyjafjord

35

ranging up and down the room as if he was on the deck ofa boat, and now and then he pauses to tap the barometeror to peer through the steamy window panes. The
workwomen, glad enough to sit passive, stir the dregs
in their cups. A boy comes in with a message, his faceglowing from the cold and an airman's helmet pulled
down over his flaxen hair.
The htisfreyja shows me the house. We pass throughthe kitchen or eldhtis, where a woman is frying some sortof crumpet or fritter over the peat stove. Then we passalong a turf passage, roofed with wood, into the badstofa.
This is new, but has been built on the site of the old one
and on the old model. It is a three-roomed compartment.
In the left-hand room sit the girls and in the right-hand
one the men. In the middle room live an old couple,
pensioners, who chaperon and keep the young people
in order. The beds are old wooden ones, smoothed andpolished with generations of handling. On the beds arebrown blankets spun and woven from the wool of the
Vellir sheep. When they are not more actively employed
the girls sit on their beds and spin and weave, though now
the price of labour is so high that it is cheaper to buymaterials and clothes ready-made from Scotland andSweden. I saw the spinning wheels and wool winders.
The old couple, almost blind with age, were sitting on
their beds in the middle room. The old lady was plaiting
wool and crooning to herself. The old man had a whitebeard and was wearing a blue jersey.
Then I was taken to the fjos to see where the cows andhorses lived. The fjos is made of turfs and has double
doors; it seems warm and comfortable with the sweet
smell of the cows. Each of the cows has a name —Brynja, Flora, and so on.
That wet day I had no cause to complain of hunger.
I had coffee in bed, lunch at ten-thirty, and coffee andcakes at one. Then in the afternoon about five an
unexpected and supererogatory meal appeared, excused,

36

Icelandic Journal

I suppose, because of the cold weather. It was chocolate
and lummur, the little thick pancakes that I'd seen being
fried in the kitchen. I had three distinct varieties ofpancakes or doughnuts in Iceland: (a) ponnukokur, little
thin pancakes which are rolled and eaten with sugar, jamand sometimes whipped cream, (b) kleinur, little twisted
pieces of dough fried in deep fat and dusted with sugar,and (c) lummur, or thick fritters. It was these we atethat afternoon. They had been made as a treat for themen who were working at the building in the rain, but we
insiders also benefited. At seven I had little appetite
for the dinner of fish and hangikjot, or smoked mutton,
which is not very nice, because the rank taste of the decaying meat is distinguishable through the flavour of smoke.
There was also hardfiskur, the dried cod which is considereda dainty. You smear it with butter and poke a shred inyour mouth, then chew, and chew, and chew. Aftersome hard work there is a quite perceptible flavour on
your palate, but the experience did not seem to me altogether to justify the labour involved. It is used a lot
as a snack, on picnics or on riding tours, and also serves
as hors d'oeuvres or a titbit to amuse yourself with while
waiting for the next course.
After dinner I helped to take things down from theparlour to the kitchen. In the downstairs dining-room
there was an animated scene. The work people were atdinner. Sera Stefan was sitting at the head of the table,
his face curiously refined in contrast with the windflushed faces of the workers, who were sitting three on
either side. They were all in dungarees and coarse
home-spun shirts. Elbows on the table, they were intent
on shovelling porridge into their mouths. The table waslittered with large bones, which were picked so clean that
I suspect that it was not only knives and forks that had
been used. At the foot of the table was a small boy, an
adopted son of the house. Round the room were one or
two other men, puffing at their pipes so that the air wasAkureyri and Eyjafjord

37

blue with smoke. The old man and woman from thebadstofa were there, she with her wrinkled face, glazed
blind eyes and two plaits of ungreyed hair. The
gramophone was being worked by a tousle-headed young
man and was grinding out alternately comic songs andreligious music. Then the flaxen-haired boy came incarrying a plate, knife and fork, and a dish of meat andpotatoes. He started in solidly, shovelling the butter
onto his plate from the common dish. Another boy camein and elbowed his way to a place at the table.
After dinner an entertainment was promised us. The
table was pushed back and a space cleared in the middleof the room. Round the walls sat or leant the red-faced
men in blue, their hair ruffled and their pipes bubbling.
The women from the kitchen, their hair in plaits and red
handkerchiefs over their heads, crowded in the doorway.
The htisfreyja sat proud and placid, and the little children
played under the table. Then Ingibjorg came in wearing
a blue bathing dress and gave a gymnastic display,contorting her lithe body as a spectacle for twenty pairsof eyes. In such a way would such an audience havewatched the saga heroes at their wrestling, and all thetime the gramophone played "Nearer my God to Thee".
Then we had another coffee party to celebrate the wet
Saturday and the general feeling of festivity. We all sat
round the table, Sera Stefan, his wife, the girls, theworking-men, the women from the kitchen, and the old
couple from the badstofa. The coffee was served from anelegant brass pot, which was too small and dripped; on to
the table cloth. These Icelanders have a sweet tooth.
After the cakes and biscuits they fancy a lump of sugar
dipped in coffee, and that evening I saw many surreptitious
and rather dirty hands stretch out towards the sugarbowl.

Chapter Three
AKUREYRI AGAIN AND A JOURNEY
TO THE EAST
THE next morning I left Svarfadardale, paying an
absurdly small amount for the hospitality. I had a longand rather tiring walk to Fagriskogur where I was to bepicked up by a car and taken to Akureyri. It rained agreat deal, and I had two heavy rucksacks to carry. I
had a rest from my burdens when a boy on a horse stopped
and offered to carry them as far as he was going. He madeconversation so nicely to me. After Staerriarskogur the
track grew wilder and less clearly denned, and wanderedamong bleak hills, whose sides were covered withscree. The mists came lower so that the tips of even thelowest hills were shrouded. Horned sheep threatened mefrom across bogs and I thought that I was on the wrong
road. There was no one to ask. I wished for Sigurd's
gift of tongues so that I could ask the way of a curlew.
Then the old track vanished altogether, and I was indespair. But it was not for long, for I soon saw in the
distance a row of stakes that indicated a new road.
After that it was more cheerful. I balanced precariously
on a plank over a ravine and soon arrived at a fine newhouse where I was to meet the car. It was the home ofone of Iceland's famous poets, 19 but I did not meet anyof the family as they were all out on some Sunday jaunt.
A maid received me kindly, helped me off with my muddy
boots, and I was grateful to sit in a little room, sipping
coffee and to hear the wind blowing outside and to see
the new fallen snow on the top of the mountain just
10 Davi9 Stefansson fra Fagrask6gi (1895-1964), poet, playwright andnovelist.

A journey to the East39

outside the window. I smoked my last cigarette and felt
at peace.
All the clocks in Iceland are wrong. The maid told methat the car would arrive at ten, by their clock, which was
two and a half hours fast. I learnt later that there were
two times — "telephone time" which is the right one,and "country time" which is settled by the individual
farmer. It's a sort of daylight saving and often a deviceof the farmers to get more work out of his people. I
heard that at one farm the clock had been so far advanced
that the sun did not rise till afternoon.
Iceland is full of the most delightful contrasts. WhileI sat waiting for the car, I brooded over the grimness of
this country and its boundless solitudes, and the rain
and hail fell, mingled with snow. Then the car came andit was full of the most beautiful young men, the driver, inparticular, had exquisite eyelashes. The young men(three Icelanders and a Faroese) were all slightly tipsy
and in the highest spirits, sipping whisky out of a little
bottle, offering me cigarettes and talking what theycalled English. They insisted on my getting out of the
car in the pouring rain and taking a photograph of themas they leant in carefully negligent attitudes against theside. They sang what they assured me were native
melodies though one of them was curiously like
"Ramona", and we bumped and skidded across the damp
plain while the mountains frowned on us with disapproval.
Then I was back at the Hotel Godafoss with runningwater and electric light and a prospect of a hot bath in
the morning.
The next fortnight I idled in Akureyri. The hotel
was so comfortable, the streets and shops seemed so gay
after the bleak hill-sides. Summer came, and in a nightthe country took on a new aspect. The fine grass, which
is so sweet to taste that I was always nibbling it like asheep, seemed to spring as you watched it. Vadlaheidi,
across the fjord, had a new patch of green each day, where40

Icelandic Journal

the grass and moss were clothing the bare rock. The
streaks of white, hanging on its terraced side like threadsof cotton seemed to thicken, as the snow melted andswelled the little waterfalls. The birches in the publicgardens scented the genial air. I used to walk along thehill behind the town every evening till I came suddenly
to a view of the fjord. There it lay, gently rippling in thebreeze, while at the head the snow mountains reflected
the sunset pinks. Here, up on the hillside, is the little
cemetery of Akureyri, a desolate place of uncut grass,where the dead sleep in peace among the wistfulwild-flowers.
They began to cut the hay and the hillsides were dottedwith little patches of vivid green, which marked the day's
work and the new mown field. Girls, their heads boundin coloured handkerchiefs, raked the new cut hay, moving
with the rhythm and precision of a country dance. The
scent of the hay drowned the fragrance of the birches. In
the gardens along Hafnarstaeti, the flowers bloomed.
There were so many things to watch — the boys leadingin the hay, which was slung in two huge bundles, one oneach side of a pony's back, the eider duck swimming with
their young families in the fjord and seemingly confusing
the babies so that one mother went home with the other'schildren, the fishermen pulling in the nets, while a group ofdelighted children pretended to help and actually hinderedby throwing all the big fish back into the fjord and saving
the tinies that should have been put back to grow up.
One day I stumbled on the fjdnjett (sheepfold), used
when the sheep are driven down from the mountains forthe shearing. There is a communal pen in a hollow
about a mile from the town near the river Glera. I was
sitting there one morning in the sun, when I realised that
there was a great deal of activity in this usually quiet
place. People were gathering from all directions, fromthe hillside farms, but mostly from Akureyri. They
were coming by foot, on horseback, on bicycles, by car,

A journey to the East

41

by taxi. Then some of the horsemen rode off up themountain-side. In half an hour or so a thin trail of sheep
appeared. Soon the mountain-side was alive with sheep
and the air full of their distressed bleatings. After agreat deal of shouting and of barking from the dogs, thesheep were safely driven down and penned in the big
central pen. Here the owners were walking up and down,
peering at the sheep, which kept up a constant hum ofprotest at having been wrenched from the sweet mountaingrass. I was reminded of one of those awful drawingroom games where you have to find someone with alabel corresponding to your own, so you walk round peering blindly, intent on labels. When the owner recognised
one of his own sheep, he carried it under his arm, if it wasa lamb, or put it between his legs if it was a ewe or a youngram. Then he forced it into one of the smaller private
pens which radiate off from the central one. Here theshearing took place. He, or she (for quite young girls
were doing it) inserted the shears (usually rusty old
scissors) and made a little cut at the top. Then the wool
was gently persuaded or peeled off, falling in an entire
mat, rather like the skin from a banana, while the clean
naked sheep emerged, like the freshly peeled fruit. The
belly was then carefully clipped and, if necessary, thewool cut from the legs. Everyone was enjoying it, except
the sheep. The children played around and ate cake fromthe paper bags of the Co-operative. Dogs barked andwere tiresomely officious. A group of ponies grazed
nearby.
Among the spectators from Akureyri was a Salvation
Army official whom I had met before in the boat. The
Army till a year or two ago was recruited and organisedfrom Denmark. But the Danes are not popular in Iceland,and now the officers are from England or Scotland. I
met several of these exiles. They have a thankless pieceof work before them if they hope to convert the Icelanders
to the emotionalism of the Army. The girl I met watching42

Icelandic Journal

the sheep was a Scot and had been for some time in the
Faroe Islands. She preferred the Faroese, finding themwarmer-hearted than the Icelanders. She admitted thatthe manners of the Icelander were charming, but thoughtthat beneath he was cold and critical. Incidentally she
was engaged to one, so had every opportunity of knowing.
But I suspect that as an official with the Salvation Army
she would find the critical side of the Icelanders rather
prominent, for all those I talked to considered the Armyrather absurd. And so it seems in a country where
there is little vice and little real destitution.
Quite innocently I made a gaffe with the Captain.
She talked of a Chinese priest who had just come to
Akureyri, who could speak Norwegian and Icelandic andwho had been a missionary in five countries. So, pleased
with the bizarrity, I said: "How interesting. He's cometo convert the Icelanders to Confucianism." Then I
realized he was an official in the Salvation Army. 20
There are two picture theatres in Akureyri, but only
one was open that summer. I saw some nice oldfashioned silent films, German and American, and wasglad there were no talkies.
I went to a play one night. The company, who had
produced the play in Reykjavik and had, I suppose, anamateur standing, were staying at the Godafoss, and it
was interesting to watch the leading ladies charming the
local shop-owners with their airs and graces. The play,"Hallsteinn and Dora", is by Einar Kvaran, one of themost distinguished prose writers alive in Iceland. 21
He has written charming stories but his later work has
been rather spoilt by his habit of preaching Spiritualism.
This play deals with that subject and is written mainlywith the last act • in view, an after-death scene.
Hallstein, the hero, is an unpleasant character, selfish
20 The "Chinese" priest could only have been the Icelander (3lafur dlafsson
who was a missionary in China for 14 years.
21 Einar Kvaran (1859-1938).

A journey to the East

43

and miserly. In the first act he and Dora get engaged.
In the second they have a baby, which she produces in
an incredibly short time while she is absent from the stage
and he is discussing a new marriage with a rich widow.
Then he insists on carrying his wife, in her childbed, out
into the badstofa, where she can be observed by theaudience as she dies. In the third act he is about to hit
the child, who is now a boy, but Dora appears in a whitenightdress and the shock is so great that he dies. In thelast act they are in Ewigkeit, which he mistakes forThingvellir. He is in his ordinary suit, she in the whitenightdress. They talk a good deal, and he becomes
convinced that he is dead when a little curtain slides up
at the back to show the hosts of the dead, all in whitenightdresses, looking like a meeting of Romans in togas
or an over-crowded Turkish bath. Finally she shows
him that her love can outlast death, and the little curtain
at the back slides up to reveal pink mountains with somepalm trees, and they go off "to her mountain".
Outside the setting sun was painting a fantastic scene,much more unreal than that of the play.
I hired a bicycle or "wheel-horse" and tried to ride up
and down the fjord. It was hard work and I should notrecommend the bicycle as a means of transport. The
roads are made of shingle roughly shovelled on to a bedof peat and rocks. Often the surface is less refined thanshingle and shows large boulders. The surface is notrolled. That is left to the wheels of the passing cars sothat the bicyclist is forced to keep in one or other of thewheel tracks of the cars. My hired bicycle was rather
low so that the pedals were constantly catching in thesides of the ruts. I must have presented a pleasing
picture to the Akureyrians as I laboured along in breecheswith a large rucksack on my back containing books, apump, and buns from the Co-op.
Still I got to the home of Gudmund the Powerful at
Modruvellir, where he kept a thousand cows and a

44

Icelandic Journal

thousand sheep on what appeared to me insufficientgrazing ground. 22 There also, up the valley, I reachedthe little church of Saurbser, 23 one of the few turf andtimber churches left in Iceland. These old churches havebeen replaced by gay structures of wood or corrugatediron like the fine building at Grund which I passed on
my way up the dale. I went also to the other
Modruvellir down the fjord, where there was once anAugustinian monastery. 24
After some days in Akureyri I began to feel that I
could bear the great open spaces again, so I made plans
for a tour to the east coast. My plans got as far as
asking the price of a guide and horses, and finding it
beyond my resources. The guide and the minimum
possible of five horses would have cost about two pounds
a day. So I decided to go by car as far as I could, i.e.
to Myvatn, and then to hire a horse and guide from farm
to farm, trusting as I neared the east coast to strike a
motor road and then to walk or get lifts in cars. I also
realised that it would be much cheaper to take a boat backfrom the east coast to Akureyri.
So on the twentieth of July I started in a car for Myvatn.
There were the usual Icelandic false alarms about starting. Never during my stay did I find an expedition thatstarted at the scheduled hour. This time it was to be at
6 a.m., so I packed in a panic. Then a message came tothe hotel that it was to be seven. Then the time wasaltered to eight. So when we actually did start at 9.30
I had been up and waiting a good time. I had reduced
my luggage to as little as possible and had only arucksack and a hnakktaska or neat little canvas
saddle-bag. I wore breeches and rubber boots, which I
found essential, though uncomfortable, as we often had to
22 Syria pdttr is more modest in its claims for GuSmundr, to whom it
assigns "hundrad hj6na ok hundrad kiia".
23 Saurbaer: this church was built by Sera Einar Thorlacius in 1858.
24 The Augustinian monastery at Mboruvellir in Horgardalur was foundedin 1296.

A journey to the East

45

ride through rivers which came half way up my legs.
Occasionally the water came higher and then I had theuncomfortable experience of riding with my boots fullof water. I remember once emptying a quart out to theastonishment and amusement of my guide. I had nooilskins as I decided that they were too heavy to carryround and I trusted to an old Burberry for protection
against the rain. The party in the car was a gay one andin holiday mood. It consisted of a young photographer
who was combining business with pleasure. He had avery pretty and a very new wife with him. There wasalso a charming young man from the bicycle shop, whom
I knew already as he had mended several punctures on
my wheel-horse. Then there was his brother who
owned and drove the car. They were off for a fishingexpedition in the river Laxa and so also combining
business with pleasure.
The journey was taken in holiday spirit. We madelittle detours to look at the view, to take photographs
and to call on friends, as we did at Laugar in
Ljosavatnsskard, where there is a fine school with anice hot swimming bath. We ate sweets, smoked andhad to unpack ourselves and the luggage while the car
went through Ljosavatn, which had washed away theroad so that cars are up to the axle in the lake. The
ride was lovely, beginning with a long steep climb along
the side of Eyjafjord from where we had a bird's eye viewof Akureyri. Then we descended to Hals, which stands
at the crossing of Ljosavatnsskard and Fnjoskadale.
Here the steep banks of the ravine are covered with birch
trees. Then we went along to Ljosavatn where, as I
said before, we had to wait while the car swam the lake.
Then a few miles on we reached the famous waterfall,
Godafoss, had a lunch of milk, skyr, and cold meats, andwalked along to admire the fall. It is a nice one, notnearly as terrifying as some I have seen. It doesn't
fall from a great height but is very broad.

46

Icelandic Journal

Then the road got worse and we crawled along carttracks, more rut than track, through the bleakest anddreariest country — lava with faint-hearted grass andflowers, and occasionally portentous rocks, looking likelarge solitary women brooding over their sorrows.
We jolted along what was less than a track and at last
saw an expanse of grey-blue water with islands andfantastic black rocks. It was Myvatn. We lost it again,crossed Laxa where a colony of telephone workers were
living in white tents, and arrived at Skutustadir at thehead of the lake.
Myvatn, which means Mosquito Water, is one of thefamous beauty spots in Iceland. It is certainly remarkable, lying as it does in a desert of lava. In the sunlightthe colours must be marvellous, and even when I was
there and the clouds were louring there was a sort of inky
intensity about the land and water that was mostimpressive. The detail of this sinister landscape issurprisingly pretty. Here, as at Thingvellir, you findclefts in the lava full of exquisite flowers and grasses.
My heart sank a little as I stood there and looked down
the lake. A bitter wind was blowing, which in one way
was a blessing because it kept the mosquitoes away.
A kind lady in Akureyri had lent me a green mosquito
veil, but I didn't need to wear it more than once, and then
only momentarily as we waited for the car to cross
Ljosavatn. That was when I saw the sun for the lasttime for several days.
The farmhouse of Skutustadir was one of the old wooden
ones and a curious old man with long hair was standing
in the doorway. There was a church and the priest's
house, which was a new and over-respectable structure.
I stood and hesitated while the luggage was being
unpacked from the car. I paid the driver, the car crawled
off, and I felt that my last link with the west was gone.
Then the photographer and his wife asked for coffee atthe farm and I joined them. The hot drink gave meA journey to the East

47

courage and, in spite of the photographer who pressed a
wretched motor-boat on me, I said firmly to the lady ofthe house that I wanted a horse. 25 I added that it must
be a very "quiet" one. I felt that the critical moment
had come and if I did not mount a horse that evening
I should never get my tour done. The lady of the houseseemed to think that it was quite natural to want a horse,
and with a good deal of miming (we both straddled on thechairs to show what sort of saddle I wanted, for at thetime I was uncertain of the difference between sodull
and hnakkur) we settled the matter between us. 26 Then
she took me to see the church, which is gaily painted andhas a chancel arch which simulates a rainbow — a pretty
idea, I thought, in a country where the continuous rainmight well drive one to despair.
Then my horse came, a "quiet" one, and mounting
rather timidly I was off with the old man, whose hairstreamed behind him like a comet's tail.
I enjoyed that reckless ride in the cold grey evening.
The rocks were fantastic, the lava forming all sortsof ridiculous shapes. The distant mountains stood
grimly by, the lake lay steely-grey to our left, andoccasionally from the glassy surface a strange island
reared itself, the crater of some small extinct volcano on
the lake-bed. To our left was one mountain of black stuff
that made me feel I was at home among the slagheaps of
the Midland coal-fields. There were a great many
funny little volcanic craters, like toy volcanoes.
The ends of the lake, Skutustadir and Reykjahlid,
where I was to spend the night, were less grim. The lava
is not so evident, and the hills and fields slope gently
down to the water, as to any self-respecting lake.
At Reykjahlid I paid the old man the eight kronurthat he asked. He said he had contemplated asking ten,
25 There were two farms at SkiitustaSir at this time. The lady of the housereferred to was probably Arnina Soffia J6nsd6ttir, the wife of the farmer
Kristjan Helgason.
M SBSull is a lady's side-saddle.

48

Icelandic Journal

but that we had come so quickly that he would let me
off the extra two. I thought that the estimate of fourhours that they had suggested for the ride was a little
excessive, as we had taken only two.
At Reykjahlid the farm-house is positively manorial. 27
They have thirty people working and living there.
There are a father and mother and seven children, theirwives, husbands and offspring and the hired people.
The place is a regular halt on the west-east route andthey seem to put up any number of guests at any time ofthe day or night. When I arrived without warning at
ten o'clock on that summer evening I was given adelicious supper of flat bread, which is nice, brown andsoft and cooked on a griddle, trout from the lake withmelted butter, milk, rhubarb, porridge and cream. It was
all very welcome after my cold ride. The food and generalarrangements of the house are admirable.
Next morning I wandered about and looked at the
church, which stands on a little island in the lava. Whenthe red-hot lava swept down and devastated the region,
the stream forked as it approached the church and left
it untouched though the rest of the district was
submerged. 28 While I poked around, the people of thehouse made arrangements for me and rang up my next
stopping place, Grimsstadir. I was to be met at theriver Jokulsa, ferried across and was to take anotherhorse on the far side. I was accompanied by afylgdarkona, a woman guide, a grave, spectacled daughterof the house who was to accompany me on the five-hourride through one of the most desolate districts in Iceland,a lava waste, where we were to see no sign of life for thewhole five hours, unless the sheep from Grimsstadir could
be counted as such.
27 There were no less than four farmers in Reykjahli&, so that it is
impossible to say for certain to whom Miss Selby applied for lodging.
28 This eruption, known as Myvatnseldar (1724-29), destroyed the farmat ReykjahliS but spared the church. An account of the eruption was
written by the priest J6n Ssmundsson and printed in Copenhagen in 1726.

A journey to the East

49

This part of Iceland borders the great desert of
Odadahraun ("the lava of ill-deeds"). It stretches inland
to the mountains Herdubreid and Askja and to thegreat glacier, Vatnajokul, which comes down almost
sheer to the south coast. It is a place of ill associationfor outlaws used to take refuge there. Here also thetrolls and creatures of ill-omen were supposed to live
and breed. And here are volcanoes which are not yet
extinct and craters with the potentialities of ruin. It
is indeed a grim land.
I mounted my horse with care for I was suffering fromthe reckless riding of the night before, and we set out
towards the peculiar red hills I had seen in the east andwhich I had thought were flooded with sunshine, while
all the rest of the countryside was clouded. But as wedrew near I found that it was their natural colour; they
were the Namafjall (the mountain of the mines), so called
because they are potential sulphur and brimstone mines.
Smoke curls constantly from the red and yellow ground.
We soon passed the mines and came into a belt ofvegetation — low scrub, bilberries and the like. Thenfollowed devastating stretches of lava and black soil,
with only rare patches of coarse green grass. It seemed
as if it would never end; the telegraph posts marched on,a slender army of civilization, and our horses' hoofs
continued to beat up the black dust. The way wasmarked by cairns, one every hundred yards or so. I was
glad of them, for when we had been riding for a few hours
my guide cheerfully told me that she had never been to
Jokulsa before, and I did not like the picture of two
horse-women lost in the wastes of the great desert. The
last hour seemed a long one and the distant mountains
drew no nearer. I noticed one peculiarity, that the soil
was always damp, through an inch or two of black dust.
I believe that this is due to the melting snow from the
distant mountains. Then, quite suddenly, we saw awhite hut and came to the bank of the river which washes

50

Icelandic Journal

its swift way through low sides of black soil. It is adesolate place with the stones bleaching on its dark banks
like the skulls of famine-stricken sheep.
The bdndi from Grimsstadir was waiting with the ferryboat and on the other side of the river two horses weregrazing. I said good-bye to my guide and gave her apiece of chocolate to cheer her on her solitary ride home.
We rowed across the swift river and pulled the boat up
above the high-water mark. I climbed painfully onto agrey, and it dashed away as if it was Tom Mix's horse
Tony. I clung on desperately for the four kilometresfrom the river and prayed that I should not fall off.
Miraculously I didn't, despite the rucksack swaying
dangerously behind me.
Then came one of the most acceptable coffees of mylife in the nice upstairs front room of Grimsstadir. The
family were very friendly and gathered in the parlour
to talk to me. 29 There were two nice boys, a large kindmother and a lovely little blonde girl from Akureyri who
was spending her holidays there. She was a brilliant
teacher of her own language and I was glad to practise
my Icelandic. I found everywhere in Iceland that I
could learn better from children than grown-ups; theytalked so distinctly and were so sympathetic and amused.
I had a pot of very strong tea with my supper — a kindthought on the part of the bdndi''s wife who knew that the
English drank tea. After supper I went on a walk acrossthe blank country, which is growing with grass and two
kinds of willow scrub, one green and one silvery leaved.
I was guided on my walk by a black and white dog andthe smallest black and white goat that I had ever seen;
it was two weeks old and accompanied me with thesame fidelity as the dog. It was nice to feel that in thesewastes there were two creatures that could understandme when I spoke. Goats, by the way, are common in*' There were three farmers at this time at Grimsstabir. Probably thefamily referred to was that of Ing61fur Kristjansson and Katrin Magmisd6ttir.

A journey to the East

51

this part of Iceland though they are not generally seenelsewhere.
I discovered that Grimsstadir is not as isolated as I
thought. It has a motor road leading to Axarfjord,
where there is a trading station. The road is imperceptible, and the telegraph lines stretch grimly on to the east,
pointing the way I had to go.
Next morning I sat looking out of my window andwaiting to start. The sky was still dull, and under thelouring clouds lay a featureless landscape, flat for miles,
with the distant mountains an inky blue. The mostobvious vegetation is the cotton grass which brightens thedull green with its white tufts. I was waiting for a man
who was going to Modrudale, and taking what I understood, with my imperfect Icelandic, to be a parcel. I
found that I was getting used to being handed on fromfarm to farm and felt quite passive, as if I was a parcel
myself.
The "parcel" arrived about one and proved to be a
train of a dozen pack-ponies and two riding ponies, oneof which was to be mine. The pack-ponies were carrying
unwieldy loads — two sacks of flour, with a few supernumerary bags, three large wooden boxes, some scythehandles and hay rakes, and an agricultural machine ofsome sort. My own luggage was tied on top of one of
the burdens and only fell off once, when I unpicked mycamera from it and trusted that my toothbrush wouldn't
drop out. We started soon after one, and I was rather
dashed, after a few hours riding, when a young man told
me that we shouldn't be at Modrudale till ten thatevening. However, it turned out that he was speaking
in terms of "country time", which was two or three hours
ahead of the "telephone time".
It was very cold and the sand was blowing thickly insome places. The poor ponies carrying the heaviest
loads lay down every few minutes and tried to rub thewooden boxes off their backs. The string with which the

52

Icelandic Journal

various objects were tied on came undone, and the ponies
had to be calmed from their fright. The young man
treated them with patience and consideration and did
not allow himself to be annoyed, even when his own horse
galloped off while he was attending to one of the packanimals and he had to chase after it on foot and coax
it back.
We made our way across the desert, yellow sand andblack sand, patches of bent grass and dried-out riverbeds, sometimes full of snow-water. The farther
mountains were shrouded, the nearer ones black, purple
and sometimes red, but always ominous. The monotony
seemed intolerable. Then we climbed a little col andcame down to another expanse of desert with the blue
mountains still far off. There was a flicker of sunshine
and the black flats shimmered. Then more desert, andthen the green began, mrfri or swamp grass, and a beer inthe valley — Vididale. 30 We stopped and my young
man untied some of the bundles and retied them. Somechildren came out with wool, and a sad-faced young
woman came quietly out and talked in an unenthusiastic
way. We were soon off again through the quickly
diminishing green into the desert. We climbed anothercol, with some jagged rocks this time to break themonotony, and came down a curious little pass to a riverand the plain. More desert, -more m^ri, then in the
distance an object which proved to be Modrudale. We
had ridden thirty-five kilometres and taken seven hours.
There I found a party of two English ladies and two
Americans, who were riding with twenty horses and four
guides. The English ladies, characteristically enough,had gone to bed, the Americans, equally characteristically, were sitting up to inspect the English woman,
whose coming had been flashed ahead over the telephone
wires. Our ways crossed for that night only, as they
30 Vi&idalur was then farmed by E>orsteinn Johannes Sigur8sson and
GuSriin Sigurbjornsd6ttir.

A journey to the East

53

were returning to Akureyri and I was going east. But
later we happened on each other a good deal, in several
unexpected places. I was very grateful for their
existence, partly because in many of the farms where I
stayed the caravan provided a topic of conversation andpartly because the contrast in our way of travelling
impressed the farmers with the others' riches as opposed
to my poverty, and as a result they were moderate in theircharges to me.
The next day was uncompromisingly wet, not withmere poka or mist of which I had already seen so much,
but with a real downpour. The Anglo-American caravanstarted at ten, the ladies all rather green and dispirited,
the guides worried because three of their ponies were
missing and one had lamed itself on some barbed wire.
The bondi suggested I should wait until next day, and as
I was incompletely equipped for heavy rain, I was gladto accept his invitation. So we watched the ladies off
and turned back into the house to a sort of ghost coffeeparty — ten cups, saucers, plates, a large coffee-pot andtwo huge cream cakes, all laid for the departed ladies
and their guides. The bondi and I sat and nibbled thefringes of this banquet.
Rain all day. The missing ponies are not found. A
guide has been left behind to look for them, and he drops
into the best room and drinks an occasional cup of coffee.
The married daughter sits and talks to me, and I am
quickly improving my Icelandic. It's a self-containedgroup at Modrudale, father, mother, three sons, twodaughters, the husband of one of them, and the ensuingchildren. 31 There are no workmen or workwomen, andthey live in this isolation with their eight cows, forty
horses and three or four hundred sheep. I suppose they
are quite wealthy; they make a little money from thevisitors who stop the night, but it cannot be much as theycharge so little.
31 According to the 1930 census the farmer at MoSrudalur was J6n ASalsteinn
Stefansson and his wife E>6runn Vilhjalmsd6ttir.

54

Icelandic Journal

It is a long day on that lonely farm, and I sit and readthe hymn book and learn by heart the Icelandic versionof "Onward, Christian soldiers". The rain drips steadilyon the zinc roof. The windows of the stofa aresteamed over. Then I moved to the frammistofa, mybedroom. It's cold and the door doesn't shut properly.
They've been washing the floors and there is no carpet.
A bowl of cold water on the table awaits my toilet.
Outside the brown-green of the tiin stretches down to alittle river. Beyond that is the lava plain, ringed roundby those sinister mountains. I have read the hymn book.
I have read my Icelandic grammar, and now I go to
bed to learn the adjective by heart and hope I sleep.
The lost horses have not been found.
The next day was even wetter, and the poka thicker.
I decided to stay. The day drifted by. I read a novel
by Hulda, 32 whose characters always die. I re-read thehymn-book, and my grammar. I ate, went for a walk in
the rain, ate again, read, and was thinking of going tobed, when I saw a little boy driving the cows home. So I
went and practised my Icelandic grammar on him in the
cowshed, which was by far the dryest and warmest
place, as my bedroom roof had now begun to leak. ThenI walked down with my nice Johanna, the marrieddaughter, and a small girl to milk the goats. In the tiin
they were cutting the grass. Whilst we were busy withthe goats, the little girl, who was standing on the roofof the fjos, called out that horses were coming, and wesaw an army galloping towards us. We saw two men
riding up and decided it was guests. We all got
excited and carried the milk back to the farm, where thesons of the house, with admirable self-control, were continuing their mowing. But they too were tempted tocome, and there was great excitement when the army ofponies rode up and were safely corralled in the rett.
" Hulda was the pseudonym of Unnur Benediktsddttir Bjarklind(1881-1946).

A journey to the East

55

Then the two drovers got off their horses and with theutmost politeness said good-evening to everyone, shaking
hands all round and murmuring their names. Then
there was a conversation about the ultimate destinationof the ponies, which were being driven east over
Jokulsa to be sold. After that we had coffee in the bestroom, my host, the two men and I, and we talked
personalities mostly — the Anglo-American caravan,me, and other visitors. The men, like most Icelandic
men, have low, husky voices. Some of the women havesoft voices too, but some have peculiarly strident ones.
But it's a lesson in good manners to hear these country
folk say "GeriS svo vel" as they hand you the sugar andto see the quiet way in which they rise at the end of themeal and shake hands with the host, saying "Thankyou for the meal".
Next day was less wet, though one could hardly countit fine. Still we decided it was good enough to start in;so we set off at one. With me was a daughter of thehouse and a tiny girl who is some sort of adoptee, a packpony, and the two horse-drovers and their thirty or
forty untamed animals. We were making for Eiriksstadir, a farm on the river Jokulsa. The girls intended
to combine the business of guiding me with the pleasureof staying there a few days, as the bondi at Eiriksstadir
was an uncle or related in some way to the Modrudalers.
It was a nice ride, diversified by wild-west incidents when
the ponies strayed from the track. The desert wasslightly more varied, at least there were ups and downs
and the sun occasionally shone. We climbed a pass andcame down to a green dale with a lake and swans flying
over it. At the end of the lake there was a farm where
we had coffee. 33 I was glad to see it as it was the firstof the tiny turf houses I had been inside. It was likegoing into a fortress through the elaborate turf passages.
88 This farm must have been Samautasel, a small farm which was abandonedin 1942. The farmer was GuSmundur Gu8mundsson and the housekeeper
Halld6ra Eiriksd6ttir.

56

Icelandic Journal

Then we came into the kitchen which had been
beautifully scrubbed for Saturday — it was laugardagur.
There was a stove with peat and tad, a table, a quantityof chests and boxes of white wood, from which cakes
and biscuits were produced. There was also a pretty
painted chest of drawers, a bride's chest I assumed. A
ladder staircase led to the bedroom and there was one
window which looked out at the level of the ground,because the house is built below ground level. We sat
in the neat sparse kitchen while the Modrudale daughter
fiddled with a pan of water at the stove, rather vaguely
making coffee. The Msjreyja got out the best cups,
dusted them, and wiped them with a drop of water fromthe coffee pan. The biscuits and sponge-cakes were
produced and we ate and drank, at first shyly, and talked
in subdued whispers. But as the coffee got into oursystems, we became gayer, and the hostess and her guests
were soon laughing and chattering quite nicely. I've
noticed that the people on the isolated farms don't knowwhat to do in the first minutes of meeting a visitor. They
are ill at ease; it's almost as though they resent theviolation of their solitude, but quite soon — andespecially if they sit at coffee — they become pleased at
the human contact and seem sorry to be left alone.
This woman lived alone with her husband and herchildren. The eldest child was a boy of about fifteen.
Her husband was away, taking his wool to the nearest
Co-operative store, a two-day's journey off in Vopnafjord. She was with child. When her time came themidwife would ride to tend her, and perhaps one of thewomen from Modrudale or Eiriksstadir would cross thetwenty kilometres of desert that separates the farms andstay for a few days to look after the children. Whenanyone in these isolated farms is very ill, they are taken
into hospital on a sort of bier which is fastened between
two horses, and so for perhaps two days they are jolted
over the mountains and across the rivers.

A journey to the East

57

We rode away in the chill of the evening. Dark clouds
came up and we lost the track. We passed another tiny
farm, 34 lying at the side of a little lake in a little green dale.
We asked the way, found the track, lost it again. Thenwe scrambled round the side of Eiriksstadir Hnefill, alittle knobbly mountain, and on and on, till we came out
suddenly on a steep, green hillside, with a green hill
opposite, which — though I was not aware of it at first —was on the other side of Jokulsa. The track turned down
and far below us we saw the tiny church of Eiriksstadir.
The herd of horses hurried down the steep track,
scrambling, slipping, biting each other in the excitementof realising that they were getting near their night's
rest. We followed more sedately on our tired horses
and waited outside the tun, while warning was given of
our arrival. There was a faint drizzle, and as I stoodlooking round everything seemed bright green after thedreary lava wastes — the cut hay on the tun, the turf
walls, the turf roof of the out-houses, and the hillside
across the river.
We arrived about ten, but it was after one when we
got to bed, having eaten two meals — the inevitablecoffee which is served as a sort of cocktail and then asupper of cold meats and skyr. It was the first darkevening of the summer; the hill across the river keeps
the light away and there was a grey sky. We ate ourmeals in the twilight dusk of the front room, so that it
was by faith that one speared a piece of smoked meat or
made advances to the butter, and one's conversation wasaddressed to a grey, faceless shadow across the table.
The bondi at Eiriksstadir was charming, spectacled
and grey-haired. He plays the organ. Most of thefarms in Iceland have an American organ. This
instrument has ousted the old-time fiddle or zither. He
was like Tom Pinch, vague, sweet-natured and musical,
and had the sprouting hair that one sees in Cruikshank's
34 Veturhiis which was abandoned in 1941.

58

Icelandic Journalinterpretation of that character. 35 I had a charming
picture of him in the morning, sitting in a sort of storeroom
where the harmonium was housed with tools and sheeps'
fleeces littering the bare boards. He was playing theorgan and surrounded by a group of flaxen-haired children,
his own little short-sighted son at his side peering at themusic. They were singing national melodies in the shrill
tuneless way that is common to the children of allnations.
Next day was Sunday and my host pressed me to stayand rest. I was not very keen to do this because I saw
that I would have to hurry if, as I intended, I was tocross the river to Hrafnkelsdale, and then get to Seydisfjord in time to catch the boat back to Akureyri. But
partly because I realised that none of them wanted toturn out on Sunday to guide me down the dale, partly
because they were so nice that I was glad to spend a daywith them, I accepted the invitation. Mother was away,
she had taken one of the little girls to Seydisfjord to get
spectacles, and the house was being run by two nieces,aged fourteen and sixteen. They were not very competent about the house, so coffee did not come to my bedside till eleven o'clock. Then I dressed and went out,
and found a very Sunday group of men lazing out in thesun before the house. There was no service in the little
church that day. The country pastors have often fouror five churches in their care, so that each church gets aservice only once a month or so.
I had hoped to cross Jokulsa at Eiriksstadir and soreach Hrafnkelsdale, which lies a little further up on theother side. I found that the "bridge" there was merelya suspended basket running on wires across the swift,
deep river. I wished to cross in this but my host said
that it was quite impossible and very dangerous for a
3i There were two farmers at Eiriksstaflir. The one referred to here was
J6n Gunnlaugsson Snsedal and his wife was Stefanfa Katrin Karlsd6ttir. I
have been unable to find a Cruikshank drawing of Tom Pinch. Perhaps theillustration of Martin Chuzzlewit by Phiz was meant.

A journey to the East

59

woman, and the basket was only for inanimate objects
and the most level-headed men. As he refused to operate
it and as it was impossible to work it by myself, I wasforced to give up the idea of seeing Hrafnkelsdale. So
after lunch I took a walk up the dale to see, like Mosesfrom Pisgah, my promised dale afar off. It was very hot
near the river and the flies were troublesome, so I climbed
the mountain and had a bird's eye view of my dale. I
got back to Eiriksstadir about seven. The farm wasdeserted, the horses and their drovers had gone, and withthem most of the family. The children and the girls
were busy at the back of the house. I sat on the front
step and felt as if it was a Sunday evening of my childhood,when the family had all gone to church and left me behind
to take care of the house. It was very quiet in the dale.
About nine the first of the wanderers returned, and at ten
we sat down to supper.
Monday was wet. All night the rain had been beatingon the roof, and there was a rhythmical tapping in thecorner of my room, where the rain was steadily dropping
into my wash basin. The roofs of all these farms wereleaking just now, because they had just had a dry spelland the wood had shrunk. With continued rain the wood
would swell, and the leaking season pass. I was glad tothink so, for the sake of those poor people in the winterrains and snows.
The family was disorganised. Mother and a crowd ofchildren had come back late at night while I was asleep,and still later a man arrived with parcels from the east.
So morning coffee came at twelve, and it was after two
when we sat down to lunch. It was decided that I
should go on to a farm down the dale, where there was aproper bridge and spend the night there. 36
I was accompanied by the Modrudale girls and a bright" Before the construction of the bridge at Fossvellir which was capable oftaMng a motor car, there was a rather frail bridge at Hakonarsta6ir where theold bridle-path crossed Jokulsa.

60

Icelandic Journal
Vlittle boy who had been staying at Eiriksstadir and was
returning, as far as I could understand, to Seydisfjord.
He was very small and looked about eight. He had a genius
both for understanding my imperfect Icelandic and making
me understand his, so the adults in the house used to turnto him to interpret their conversation. It was partly
that he spoke slowly and distinctly, and partly that hehad a great gift for synonyms and definitions. He wasalso as kind as he was clever and insisted on lending me
his lovely little horse, Baldur, which was one of thesmoothest moving horses I rode. Our little party started
about four and he guided us very competently down thedale, though the mist was so thick that we could hardly
see the track. We stopped once for coffee, as the little
boy insisted on calling on some friends. It was almost
ten when we reached Hakonarstadir, 37 and there thechildren drank more coffee, though I could see that theeldest girl was worrying at the lateness of the hour andthe fact that they all had a long way to go. But myboy-friend insisted in a lordly way on the coffee and on
inspecting the cattle-sheds. Then they rode off throughthe mist, this party of children hardly out of the nursery,
and I was left alone at Hakonarstadir.
It was a grim place, the only really unpleasant housethat I stayed in when I was in Iceland. To begin with,
I was rather shaken by meeting a bull, which was straying
loose round the house, and as I had been unnerved by aprevious encounter with a bull calf, I didn't feel too
friendly towards it. But an old man with a pitchfork
drove it in. Then the housewife was discontented,
grumbling to me about the desolation of the district andhow she missed the gaiety of Vopnafjord. The husband
was sinister, the old farm-hand an unprepossessing figure
with a week-old beard and bleary eyes. There were
three pasty little boys who played rude games outside my
37 According to the 1930 census, HakonarstaSir was farmed by Sigvaldi
Jonsson and his wife J6nfna Rustikusd6ttir.

A journey to the East

61

window. The house was dirty, the floor black, the wallsof my room painted with age-old yellow paint, which was
peeling with leprous patches. Then it thundered andlightened and the rain came down in torrents.
Next day the aspect was hardly less sinister, and there
was trouble about the horses which couldn't be found.
I sat for three hours in the unclean parlour looking out atthe dark hill which seemed too near and which shut out
the light from the valley. Indeed, this particular bit of
Jokuldale is shut in on all sides by high green hills, andthere is no distant prospect of the mountains as in somany Icelandic valleys. As I sat there and looked out
through the dirty Nottingham lace curtains, I felt as if
I were in a trap and should never get out of Jokuldale,and still less to Hallormsstad, Seydisfjord, Akureyri,
Reykjavik, Leith and London.
The horses were found at last and we were ready toleave. Then the postman came on his fortnightly call —he leaves the letters as he goes up the dale, and calls forthe replies as he comes back. That meant another hour
was spent in conversation.
My guide was rather disconcerting as he had one armin a sling, but he proved to be a charming young man,friendly, gay and talkative. We crossed the river andclimbed the steep side of the Fljotsdale Herad. Thenwe went across the top, a bleak expanse of land with alittle grass and bilberry scrub, a great many rocks, muchwater and unmelted snow. We splashed and trotted
over the heath, and chattered. My guide had been in
hospital in Seydisfjord with five English sailors and"understood" English. How much, I didn't investigate.
But he recited the names of the five sailors, asked me if I
knew them and said that he had found them gaman (fun).
After two hours riding we came into poka and stayed
in it for the rest of the day, so that our spirits and ourclothes were equally damped. At first it was impressiveon that mountain top to see the brooks gleaming bleakly

62

Icelandic Journal

through the mist, and still more to see the sheen of what
were apparently uphill-sloping lakes, only to find, as one
drew close, that they were large banks of snow. We came
down eventually into the mists of Fljotsdale. We passed
a farm called Bessastadir to reach the ferry which was
to carry me over Lagarfljot, a large lake that cuts the west
off from the east coast. We galloped over some wet
meadows, through a river, and across some even wettermeadows, to come out on the banks of a large white
expanse in which the water and the mist were hardly to
be distinguished. We could just see a green strip opposite
with a house. The young man took a deep breath,hollowed his hand, and called "fe-e-e-erja". There
was a silence and then a faint echo of "fe-e-e-erja" mocked
us from the hills and rolled round the lake. This
happened several times, and in the silence between thecalls and the echo we could hear nothing but the horses
as they cropped the grass of the meadow. Then a thinchildish voice called across the lake that the ferry was not
at home, but would be back in two hours. I felt as if
I should never see England again, but was doomed tospend my life suspended between west and east. So wegalloped back to Bessastadir, and while I waited in therain, my spirits at their lowest, the young man fetched
the mistress of the house. 38 She was a tiny, straightbacked, rosy-cheeked old lady with two plaits of hair, aclean blue cotton frock, no teeth, but the pinkest little
mouth and tongue. I waited in the parlour among acollection of books, English, Danish, German, Icelandic
and in about half an hour the old lady came back withcoffee. I was still feeling rather depressed, but was
cheered by the hot coffee and the lace-like pancakes
spread with jam. I congratulated her on them, and she
giggled at my bad Icelandic. Then I made a remark
about my gloves which were wet, but with my confused
vocabulary I called them kettlingur (kitten) instead of
38 Probably Anna J6hannsd6ttir.

A journey to the East

63

vettlingar (gloves). The old lady became helpless withlaughter, I giggled too, and we became the fastest offriends. She took me out in the rain into her garden,
taught me the names of flowers, and picked me alittle bunch of poppies, Baldur's Brow, crane's bill and apungent herb that might be tansy. Then the young man
came out to say that the two hours had elapsed. We said
goodbye, and she asked me to write my name on a pieceof paper, "because I was so nice that she wanted toremember my name". I gave her a visiting card and she
was delighted. I had found that this was a simple way ofgiving pleasure to my hosts and hostesses in the country,
and judging by the objects that already littered theirbest rooms I believe that my visiting cards would betreasured for years, and that future travellers will seethem getting dustier and dustier among the miscellaneous
objects on the what-not in remote country farms.
I felt much brighter as we galloped for the third timeover the water-meadows, and I reflected how I had foundso often in Iceland that the inhospitable landscape of thisbleak country was cheered by some warm human contact.
But even as I sniffed my fragrant nosegay on the banks of
Lagarnjot I was to receive another rebuff. Again thecry of "fe-e-e-erja" rolled across the lake and again theechoes mocked us from the hills. I felt that Lagarnjot
was another Jordan, and across it lay the promised landor at least the key to all the amenities of civilization, andthat I was fated never to arrive. We stood for perhaps
half an hour in the mist. The young man wasconcerned and determined in a spectacular sort of way,saying that he would get me across to Hrafnkelsstadir,come what might. But when we discussed alternatives
to the ferry he had none to offer. It was too difficult toswim the horses across and there was no other ferry.
So he showed his sympathy by turning to me very often
and saying "Ekki kalt?" ("Not cold, are you?"). At
last there was some sign of activity on the bank opposite,

64

Icelandic Journal

or at least the young man alleged that he could see theboat. I could see nothing through the mist, but soon the
creak of oars came to my ears and the boat arrived. It
was manned by two boys in blue dungarees. They had
reddish hair and pink faces out of which the bluest eyesstared solemnly. And indeed they might well stare, for
I must have been a curious figure looming out of the mist,in breeches and rubber boots with my rucksack on myback and a bunch of flowers in my hand.
We rowed slowly across the lake. Then came whatmight well have been the final catastrophe. Abouthalf way across the boat slowed even more, and the boys
announced we had run aground. Now I could not help
laughing, for the idea of spending the rest of my life
actually on Lagarfljot, not merely ranging up and down
Jokulsdale, seemed so funny. The boys laughed too
and the catastrophe was not as serious as it had seemed.
One of them climbed out of the boat and simply towed
it ashore.
I had a nice night there at Hrafnkelsstadir. The newhouse is of concrete and seemed warm and dry. The
roof didn't leak though the rain beat on it all night long.
The walls were painted a nice bright blue. I had
company in the upstairs room, a schoolmaster who wasstaying in the house and who came up with one of theblue-eyed boys, both of them obviously shaved anddressed in neat dark suits, collars and ties for the
benefit of the English lady. They talked a great deal,
asked questions about England, looked up places on amap; the schoolmaster corrected my pronunciation andgenders and was patient and delightful. They seemedvery gay after the rather grim household of Hakonarstadir.
Next day started well. One of the boys guided me toHallormsstad. We had a pleasant ride and made adetour to look at the tallest tree in the wood there, abirch tree that was quite ten feet high. This corner of
Lagarfljot is prettily covered with birch woods, whichA journey to the East65

run down to the lake edge. We were making for
Hallormsstad where there is a school of Domestic Economy
for girls. I had heard about this school and that thebuilding was a new one, and I intended to spend the night
there, as I hoped to find at last the conveniences I had
failed to find anywhere else on my tour. But because of
my own ineptitude I was destined to spend the night inanother damp bed and old-fashioned farmhouse. The
mist had come down again, so that when we arrived ata house and were taken into the sitting-room I assumed
that I was at the new school, though I must admit that
I was disappointed as the house seemed no different fromany other good-sized Icelandic farm. The host came in,welcomed me, we drank coffee, and I asked if I could
stay the night. Then I found that I had planted myself
on a timid embarrassed widower, 39 who was too hospitableto say "Why don't you stay at the school?", which was
indeed not a hundred yards away though hidden by themists. He was kind enough to make me welcome andnext day to invite me, as it was still raining, to stay forthe night and to inspect the school.
His sister is the schoolmistress. 40 She is fat, wears
horn-rimmed spectacles and is of the universal type,which would be as convincing in a high-necked shirt
blouse as the headmistress of an English High School
as she was in national dress presiding over twenty
Icelandic young ladies. I spent an interesting day withher. She speaks English well and has an assorted library,
ranging from the Old Norse Sagas to Dean Inge and"Companionate Marriages". She is intensely nationalistic,
and on winter evenings the girls gather round her with
their spinning wheels and she reads the Old Icelandic
poetry aloud to them, just as a cultured British schoolmistress might read Yeats to her pupils. We talked a" Guttormur Palsson. It is interesting to note that this shy, embarrassed
widower married his second wife only a month after Miss Selby's visit.
40 Sigriin Palsd6ttir Blondal.

66

Icelandic Journal

great deal about national integrity. Her girls worry
her by wanting to wear silk underclothes and playing thegramophone; she thinks the Icelanders are becoming
effete and have no pride in their history because they
don't spin and weave their stockings from the wool of
their own sheep. She disapproves of the Danish influences
on food and the introduction of cakes and coffee, though
she approves of the native pancake.
The building, in the creation of which she had a hand,is dominated by the badstofa. The hand-work room has
panelling and a sloping roof, and windows that are too
small. Some of the bedrooms are also designed on thatmodel, and the schoolmistress hopes to introduce
lokrekkjur, the rather unhygienic cupboard-beds of theold farmhouses. She talked a good deal about the
Icelander's lack of a furniture-sense. Her own room isvery nice. One wall is filled with books, lovely old
leather-bound editions of the sagas and geographies of
Iceland. On the other walls are two or three paintingsby modern Icelandic artists. There is a wide window
with a picture better than any of the paintings, anexquisite view of Lagarfljot, with the mountains on theother side streaked with the white threads of falling
torrents. I was a little contemptuous of the morepractical side of this new building. The sanitary arrangements were hardly up-to-date; it is true there was abathroom, but it was in the basement, was unventilated
and smelt.
Next day was bright with sunshine. I said goodbye
to my embarrassed host and set out free as the wind,
because for the first time since leaving Akureyri I wastravelling alone and on foot. I felt free and happy todawdle along at my own pace and not the guide's or thehorse's, to start when I liked, to stop when I liked, andeven to take off my boots and paddle in the lake, though
I had felt no temptation to do this earlier on the mistshrouded mountains. The road went through the birchA journey to the East67

woods, which were no longer fragrant, as they had beenin last night's rain. I had had particular experience of
this fragrance the evening before when I had taken refuge
in a thick coppice from a young bull, which had snorted
and roared around my shelter for half an hour. At lastit had tired and I slunk home. When I made an allusion
to this terrifying animal, my host had said: "He's quite
harmless. He only does that for fun." He certainly
got his fun that night.
The road left the woods and ran along the shore of thelake for some miles. It was so hot I played with theidea of bathing, but I played too long for the road left theshore and turned inland for a mile or so. I stopped ata farm and asked for milk, and a pleasant woman, hotfrom hay-making, gave me a jug free and would takeno payment. She showed me some old side-saddles, withseats of embroidered velvet and a little rail at the back.
Then I tramped on in the sun and rested often, because
my pack and rucksack were burdensome. Rather
suddenly I came to Egilsstadir, a group of three or four
concrete buildings standing at the edge of the Fljot whichnarrows here almost to the width of a broad river and isspanned by a long slender bridge. There was a nicegreen petrol pump at the side of the road, and I nearlythrew my arms round it as I felt it was a messenger
from the great civilized world of baths and tramcars.
At Egilsstadir there is an hotel. I had for the last few
days been brooding over this and planning what I shouldhave for supper when I got there. I was looking forward
to being in a place where I could give orders as to my
comfort, and not feel that I was being obtrusive or a
nuisance as one is bound to be sometimes when one
arrives at a private house as an uninvited guest. So I
marched in and firmly ordered a hot supper. I was alittle dashed when they said that it would be ready ateight-thirty; I suggested they should hurry it up a little
as I was hungry. It came ten minutes before it was due.

68

Icelandic Journal

I ordered a packet of cigarettes, and with an intense
sense of luxury lit the last survivor of the last packet I
had brought from Akureyri. I ordered a bottle of beer —poor stuff this, but the best one can hope for in a semiprohibition country. Then I ordered breakfast for eighto'clock, with bread and butter and no cake. Finally I
ordered a packet of sandwiches to be ready for me at nine.
My orders were received with the utmost respect and I
even thought of putting my shoes out to be cleaned, but I
decided that perhaps that would be going a little far.
It was grey and misty as I went to bed, and from mylarge window, which did not open, I could see the whitewater of the lake and the grey hills. All the day thelake had been blue and the mountains quite distinct —Snsefell to the south and other snow-topped peaks to thenorth.
Egilsstadir is a beauty spot, famous I had been told
for its trees. I didn't notice any. Breakfast, broughtpunctually at eight, was a curious but not unpalatable
meal of coffee and bread and butter overlaid with meatand cheese. There was a dish of jam. I removed themeat, but grappled with the cheese which went very
well with the jam. It was a nice morning with rather
subdued sunshine. Snsefell was peering over the hills
at the top of the lake.
I had a mountain to climb before I could reach
Seydisfjord, so I left the motor road which I had followed
since Hallormsstad. The climb up the mountain was
hard; the sun shone and my two bags were heavy, but theview over Lagarfljot was superb. The snow was stilllying on the mountain top and sometimes unnerving. I
had long snow bridges to cross, and here and there werecracks in the snow revealing steep ravines filled withrushing torrents. Where the snow had melted was mud.
This was even more unnerving as, though it was
deceptively firm to the eye, one could easily sink down
into it to the knee. I thought what a nasty death itA journey to the East

69

would be to drown in thick mud. The mountain top was
bleak and stoney, with very little vegetation and a few
sheep nibbling what little there was. When I reached
the flat top the river I had been following broadened out
into an untidy lake, and I saw that a stream was running
down the other side to Seydisfjord. One could justdetect the ridge where the streams parted. There werea great many other lakes formed by springs andmelting snow.
The path turned down and I entered a narrow, long,steep valley. Below, the river foamed and spread into
blue and white patches. Far far away I could see acorner of the fjord and round it the tiny white housesof the village. It was a long time till I reached it, and I
had a river to cross; the water got into my boots. As I
went down I met a party on horseback, the first people I
had seen since leaving Egilsstadir. Then I met more
and more till there was a regular procession. I thoughtthat it was the usual Saturday exodus from the towns,
and felt that it was faintly like the Brighton road. I
learned later that it was the August holiday and that thepeople from Seydisfjord always spent that weekend at
Egilsstadir.
Seydisfjord looked a little dingy when I entered it.
I had heard that there was an hotel in Seydisfjord, andfurther that this hotel was kept by an English woman.
So I had pictured a nice, clean place like the one at
Akureyri, made even more comfortable by its English
proprietress. I thought I should arrive to find a niceclean room, a hot bath, a pot of tea, and a little
sympathetic conversation. I was rather dashed to findthat the hotel of which I had heard so much, and indeed
the only hotel in Seydisfjord, was the Salvation Army
Hostel. The English woman was there all right; but she
was Scotch, and a pathetic anaemic Army Captain, who
was so conscious of her exile that I got quite enoughconversation to make up for all that I had missed in the

70

Icelandic Journal

past fortnight. The rooms were not clean, and though
there was a bathroom, the furnace was broken and thewater supply defective. However, my room had a lovely
big balcony, and from it I could sit and watch the sun
gilding the mountain tops.
It doesn't gild Seydisfjord, which is shut in by
mountains on all sides. Even the mouth of the fjord is
closed so that one cannot see the open sea. It must bea gloomy place in the dark winter days, but it was rather
charming in the reflected autumn sunshine. The
mountains near the town are so sheer that you feel thatthey may slip at any minute and bury the town. Indeed
I was told that avalanches were an ever-present danger.
The town was gloomy that weekend because all the gay
young people had gone over to Egilsstadir. But in any
case there is a feeling of desolation about it; it has seen
better days for it grew to its present size through the
herring industry. Then, as a result of the mysterious
and incalculable movement of the fish, the North coastand Siglufjord became the centre of the industry.
Seydisfjord remains a monument to financial instability
with only its bank and its three-storied houses to tell its
former glories.
The boat was late so I had three days to wait. I foundit interesting because I amassed a great deal of information
about the Army, some of it rather discreditable. This
young girl had been sent out like all the officers in foreign
service with no fixed salary. She was given freequarters in the Hostel, which was run by an Icelandic
woman, but for money she had to depend on what she
could collect from the inhabitants (and that was very
little as, like most Icelanders, they were contemptuousof the Army), and what she could wheedle out of theNorwegian and English sailors who called at the port.
When a boat came in she went on board — if they would
let her for Army officers, h'ke clergymen, are considered
to bring bad luck — and handed round her collecting box.

A journey to the East

71

There was no one to keep any check on her accounts,
so she had the opportunity of helping herself, an obvious
stimulus to assiduous collecting. The Army, as far as
I could see, served no useful purpose in Seydisfjord.
There were no slums, no drunken wife-beaters to beconverted, no destitute men to house and feed. The
hostel was run purely as a commercial proposition andused by business men as an hotel. The Captain had
succeeded in persuading six little girls to become girlguides, but as the little girls were Icelanders, they alreadyhad the qualities of resource, reliance and honesty that
the Guide Movement is supposed to encourage. A
meeting was held once a fortnight for hymn and prayer.
This was attended very well, according to the Captain's
account, but she implied that many of the people camefor aesthetic rather than religious reasons, to hear her
solo-singing, and they asked her to sing not the Icelandic
hymns but English songs like "Home, sweet home".
The Captain had come out to Iceland with five or six
other officers about a year before, but in that time she
had learned very little Icelandic. She had a comic wayof using Icelandic words in English sentences — "Now
I'll deck the board" for "lay the table" — and of
expecting to be understood. But perhaps her lack of thelanguage was a good thing, for there was constant friction
between herself and the woman who ran the hotel.
Kristin was the Captain's Lieutenant, and there were
disputes about precedence. Then the Captain thoughtthat she should reprove the false standards of Kristin,
who was impressed by people whom she called "fine", forexample the dentist and the commercial travellers. I was
not considered "fine" because I came to dinner in mybreeches though I expect Kristin would have consideredme even less fine if I had come without them. On the
grounds of the superior standing of the commercial
travellers to myself, Kristin wished to turn me out of
my balconied bedroom and give it to them, but she

72

Icelandic Journal

found that she was up against a tougher proposition
than she imagined, and I stayed in my balcony room.
The commercials had to be content with a back one.
But it was a curious weekend for the weather was very
hot. There was a sort of sirocco blowing that raised thedust in wreaths and ruffled the waters of the fjord, but it
did not dispel the grey mist that brooded over the town.
I heard that in some parts this most unusual wind wreckeda seaplane and sank a number of small boats. In
Seydisfjord it damaged only the Salvation Army nerves.
The Captain was in a state of excitement the day I
arrived, as she and a nice blue-eyed boy who was livingin the Hostel thought of walking over to Egilsstadir
early on the Sunday morning, staying the night there andreturning on Monday. Certainly it was depressing forthe poor girl to see the gay crowds hurrying off and to beforced to stay behind. The chief difficulty was her
position. As an Army officer she had to be careful ofher reputation, and to be seen walking alone with a young
man might cause "talk". So I was a heaven-sent chaperon
when I arrived at five o'clock in the afternoon, rather
tired and muddy. She was all for starting back over the
fifteen miles I had just walked. I demurred. Then weshould start at four in the morning. I said that I would
start not a moment before eight, so we compromised withsix. Luckily no one woke before seven, so we were able
to get breakfast at a respectable hour and set out aboutnine. The young man, Sigurbjorn, was wearing whitetennis shoes, the Captain had a pair of black high-heeled
shoes but went back for white tennis shoes when I
suggested she might find walking over the mountains
rather exhausting in such flimsy foot-gear. Sigurbjorn
carried the lunch in my rucksack and complained at theweight as we toiled up the steep path. We crossed theriver with a good deal of giggling and shrieking from the
Captain and refusals from us both to be carried across by
the handsome Sigurbjorn. I refused because I was too

A journey to the East73

heavy for him and didn't want to be dropped in midstream, she because she was a Captain in the Army andhad to set a good example to other girls.
Quite soon it began to rain, so we sheltered under a rock.
There we had to restrain Sigurbjorn from eating the lunch
as it was not yet eleven. Then the sun came out so wewalked a little further. Then it rained again, so wethought we'd better eat the lunch before it got wet.
Then Sigurbjorn suggested we should go home, arriving
in time for the mid-day lunch. We discussed what they
were going to have for lunch down in Seydisfjord, whose
distant little roofs we could see from our shelter. But
the Captain was quite firm so we went on a little further.
Then we rested again. Then we came to a morass. After
we had gone three or four miles, the Captain asked how
much further it was to Egilsstadir. We told her about
twelve miles across the mountain. So she thought itwould be better to go home, which we did, getting backin time for afternoon tea, which was lucky as Kristin
had just made some fresh pancakes. She was not very
pleased to see us. For the rest of the day the Captainand Sigurbjorn sat in my room and played thegramophone. It seemed funny to me that they clung to
my chaperonage in this way, as the Captain sleeps in atiny bedroom that leads off Sigurbjorn's and had to go
through his room to reach her own. But to an Icelander,used to the tradition of the badstofa where the men's
room communicates with the girls', there is nothing odd
in such an arrangement. The Captain told me in a
shocked voice how Kristin had behaved when a lot of the
English and Icelandic officers were together. They wereall (mixed sexes) talking in a large room, which was to be
the women's bedroom that night. Kristin got tired andwanted to go to bed, and so she calmly began to undress
before the company.
The Captain and I went to the open-air swimming pool,and I had a swim. The water was not warm as the pool

74

Icelandic Journal

was filled from the river which comes down from themountain swollen with snow-water.
The last day was spent waiting about for the boat.
"Esja" was due to arrive at any moment. There was theundercurrent of excitement that runs through these little
ports when a boat is expected, hopes of letters andparcels. Several of the men were taking "Esja" back to
Akureyri, so we were busy paying our bills, packing andso on. Quite suddenly as we were sitting over the ruinsof afternoon coffee, the steamer's whistle blew. We all
hurried to fetch our luggage and take the twenty minutes
walk to the quay. While we were waiting the Captainintroduced me to a fellow-countryman, a fisherman from
Hull who had been knocked on the head by a hatchway
on his trawler and hurried unconscious to the nearest
port. He was enjoying himself and told me how kindthe people at the hospital were and how they gave him
tea and bread and butter when the other patients were
having soup. Then the boat started and I waved goodbye
to the two little scraps of jetsam on the quay — the fisherman and the Captain, thrown up on that desolate shore,
the one by the rage of the sea, the other by a flood of
emotion, to be left high and dry.
The sunset was wonderful. There was a frail moon,and the sky blushed over the sea and snow mountains.
The waters of the Heradsfloi, which lay to port, were
darker blue than the sea, and the mountains showed likewraiths.
The morning was cloudy, but the sky soon cleared andwe sailed in a sea as soft as milk. We stopped atThorshofn, a desolate little bunch of houses on the edgeof a long ridge of shingle. But we couldn't go ashoreas the ship did not go in to land. Then we sailed into the
Arctic circle. The coast was grim, often low with longshingle stretches. On one of these was the rusty wreckof an English trawler, which had run ashore the previous
winter in fog. There was a surprising cliff, Raudinupur,A journey to the East75

craggy but set in banks of red earth like Namafjall near
Myvatn. Then we reached Kopasker which is the
shopping town for Grimsstadir and Modrudale. When I
had heard of it on these two farms, I had pictured a gay
metropolis, teeming with traffic, picture theatres andamusements. There were two or three houses, one ofthem the Co-operative warehouse, and a church a mileor so away.
The sunset was wonderful again, but the colours were
so cold. The mountains facing the sun were a ghostly
grey-blue impossible to describe — not lavender, butsomehow the pale ghost of a lavender that has turned blue
with cold. Then there was a rainbow rising from themountain, with straight-up sides — a larger section ofa circle than we commonly feature at home. And there
was Flatey, an insecure little island that seemed to befloating in the sunset, and looked so low that it might besubmerged in the first high sea. Behind it the sun was
setting in clouds and the sea was shades of pale green, bluegrey, mauve and pink. It was all very pastel with noneof the stronger shades one sees in the South, of even in
Finland.

Chapter FourA RIDE IN SKAGAFJORD
THE next morning I was drinking coffee in the Hotel
Godafoss in Akureyri. We had turned into Eyjafjord
on the previous evening and at last I had been able toreturn to my dear Godafoss and its comforts. I had alovely day littering my clothes about my room, fetching
letters from the Post Office, eating, bathing and taking
gentle walks.
Akureyri seemed a very pretty place to come back to.
The street is so gay and the view of the fjord andmountains as lovely as anything in Iceland. I think I
should retire there in my old age and snub the English
tourists.
I met a great many people I knew there. As I was
having lunch on the second day after my return I had avisit from a girl I had met in Reykjavik. 41 She wasreturning there in a round-about way, and she suggested
I should join her in a little detour and do some riding.
So we got my heavy luggage packed off to Reykjavik
to await my arrival, and I donned once more the riding-kit
I had discarded, I thought for good. My friend wasgoing a short motor tour with some friends, and I was tomeet her in Skagafjord at a farm called Vidivellir.
I was to go by car on Sunday morning. There were theusual misunderstandings. I was ready for the car andit didn't start; it was ready for me and they couldn't
find me. Then it did start and the radiator leaked, thewater boiled and the cap flew off on Oxnadalsheidi.
The heidi was grim and the corners terrifying, taken rather
41 Steinunn Anna Bjarnaddttir (b. 1897). Studied at Westfield College inthe University of London 1919-22 and is the author of a text book forEnglish. In 1933 she married Sera Einar GuQnason, the priest at Reykholt
in BorgarfjorSur which Miss Selby visited on her return journey to Reykjavik(p. 87).

A ride in Skagafjord

77

recklessly by our driver who never worried about theravine below.
I felt rather like Thomas a Becket's mother, 42 as I had
two words of information only about our joint plans —Vidivellir and the name of my friend. So when the car
stopped and the driver announced that this was
Vidivellir, I felt a little unfriended. I walked up to thehouse and explained in my halting Icelandic that I wasthe "English girl", and that my friend had told me tomeet her there. Happily my hostess seemed to have been
forewarned, and I put in two or three hours waitingin the front room. Then my hostess came in with a meal
and we talked.
She is a charming and remarkable woman, well known
in Iceland for her hospitality. 43 She will not takemoney for her food and shelter, and as her house lies on
the main road between Akureyri and Reykjavik a day
never passes without some incursion. She had a tent at
the Althing celebrations and for three days served coffee
and cakes to any who chose to come. Every year she
gives a party to the children of Skagafjord and entertains
some hundreds of them. My friend knew her first someyears ago, when she was riding in Skagafjord and thrownfrom her horse. Her wrist was badly hurt, and Lilja took
her into the house, nursed her devotedly and would takeno payment. Since then she had stayed with my friend
in Reykjavik and had invited her to return some time
and to bring a friend for a little riding holiday. The
invitation had been extended to me, so here I was at
Vidivellir.
Lilja is unmarried and so is her twin brother Gisli,
who by the curious picaresque convention that I've talked
about before turned out to be one of the horse drovers*' The legendary story of the Saracen maid who came to London seeking
Thomas's father can be found in the preface to the Life of St Thomas by
Edward Grim (Rolls Series, 1876, 455).
48 Lilja Sigur6ard6ttir (b. 1884) farmed Vioivellir with her twin brother
Gisli for many years. She also taught for a time at the Kvennask61i in
Blondubs.

78

Icelandic Journal

whom I had met in the East. I felt that the cigarettes
that I had unselfishly, and rather reluctantly, as mysupply was limited, cast on the water of Jokulsa, werereturning to me multiplied tenfold.
Lilja and Gisli then are childless and unmarried, but thehouse is full of children. There are the children of a sisterand two little boys Lilja has adopted. And these boys
have friends with them, so there was always a group of
blue-dungareed boys in front of the house or leading in thehay, slung in two large bundles, one on each side of apony's back. Lilja has another comfort — her garden.
This is famous in Iceland and many visitors stop to see it.
To us with our rich deep soil and the care of centuries,
it would seem a pathetic little place, but to the Icelander
it is a horticultural wonder. It was blossoming bravely
when I saw it with crane's bill and a sort of valerian.
There is an attempt at a rockery in the middle, and a few
shrubs. Away from the house they've planted some trees,
and these are growing as well as they can in the shallow
soil and bitter winds.
My friend arrived in the evening with a gay party.
They brought with them a most unpleasant medicine
which they produced with a good deal of giggling —Icelandic brandy. It was pure alcohol, diluted withwater. They laughed and sang, and a nice little
clergyman from the next farm led the singing and thegaiety. 44
It rained all night and the roof leaked, though I had
hopefully thought that here at last was a waterproof
house. We spent an idle day, eating and hoping therain would stop. We had two car loads of visitors. The
first party was led by a large handsome elderly lady,
who smiled a great deal, took her coffee with consideredcharm, and kissed us all when she left. 45 She is thewidow of a well-known poet, and having been a famous
44 Presumably Miklibser. The incumbent at that time was Sera Larus
Arn6rsson.
46 1 have been unable to trace the handsome elderly lady.

A ride in Skagafjord

79

beauty in her youth has still something of the professional
charmer about her. When she had gone, my friend andI went up to our room and read her late husband's poems.
We were disturbed by the arrival of a second car whichcontained the Anglo-American caravan that I had met in
the East. I was not altogether surprised to see them as
I knew they were coming that way.
When they had gone, we went to the next farm to drink
chocolate with the little clergyman of the night before.
Then we had supper.
Next day we continued to eat. We had three coffees
and a large lunch before we started on our tour at one
o'clock. Lilja rode side-saddle and had a long-skirted
riding habit. We took a pack-pony, which was a constantnuisance, as it refused to keep up with the other horses
and had to be dragged along. So one of us used to ride
behind and hit it continually. We followed the motor
road and had to go slowly because of the stoney surface.
We reached the bridge over the Heradsvatn, the riverwhich provided the deh'cious trout which was seen driedon the roof of the house. We followed, crossed and recrossed one of the rivers, and stopped to look at a waterfall and get a distant view of Vidivellir across the Heradsvatn. Lilja told us a pretty story of her old mother. 46
She had lived when she was a child at a farm close by,
and in the summer she had often been sent to watch
over the sheep near this waterfall. The child, alone inthese solitudes, had amused herself by looking across theriver to the distant Vidivellir, which was the only housewithin view. She had sat and dreamed of it through thelong summer days, and so closely had the place woven
itself into her consciousness that she used to call it"home" and came back to her parents with accounts ofwhat they were doing "at home" that day. Later when
she grew up, she met the owner of Vidivellir, married
him and so it became in reality her home.
" GuBrtin P6tursd<5ttir, born at Reykir in Tungusveit in 1852.

8o

Icelandic Journal

We left the waterfall and climbed a stoney track, andseemed to be penetrating uninhabited regions — mountains, stones, an occasional pony, but no house. It wasnine o'clock and was getting dark. Still we rode andstill there were no houses. At last, at ten o'clock, we
saw a grey house through the dusk — a fine stone housewith large windows and a long flight of steps. This was
Tunguhals, where we intended to spend the night.
Lilja went up to the front door and knocked gently,
but there was no sign of life. Then she tried the door
and peered in. Anna joined her and I was left alone
with the horses. They disappeared into the house andcame back to say that no one was stirring. There was asort of assembly hall where we might be able to sleep, but
the prospect was cheerless as we hadn't eaten since one
o'clock. They went off to investigate the hay house,
thinking that it might be warmer than the bare boardsof the assembly hall. Then through the dusk I saw thedoor of the grey house open and a skirt or something
fluttered round the edge. It looked rather uncanny inthe half-light, and wearied by the long ride I wondered
if here perhaps was a house of the dead and that one ofthem had risen and the grave clothes were fluttering in
the wind. Anna and Lilja were still hidden behind the
hay house. After a few seconds the door opened a little
more and the ghost came out — a young woman who had
obviously put on a dress over her nightgown, hence thefluttering effect.
The evening was still ghost-like. We unsaddled thehorses in the dark and went into the dark house, where
we sat in a large hall and could but faintly perceive twolarge ornamental windows, a great litter of bedclothes,and some books. We talked together in whispers, andthe ghost woman hurried about with mattresses andbedding. Then we were led through a long room fullof sleeping men and women. There were two beds oneach side of the room, and in one of them a child coughedA ride in Skagafjord

81

uneasily in its sleep. We came into a little room anddimly saw two nice white beds. Then we had a meal
taken blindly, but my sense of taste told me that it wasrye bread and butter with milk, and finally fumblingwith our clothes in the dark fell at last into bed.
Next morning the sun shone, and after a meal we started
up Vesturdale. We crossed the bridge over Jokulsa
and made for Hofsdale. After riding for perhaps twohours we came upon the farmer from Gil, a house at which
we had called on our way up the valley. Our tour was
in a sense a social one, at least for Lilja, and she had agreat many calls to make at different farms. The farmer
from Gil was at his hay-making on a little estate with adeserted farmhouse that he had rented. 47 While Lilj a andhe chatted, I sat and dreamed that I should take thedeserted farmhouse and live in this solitary dale for the
rest of my life. I had just reached the point of furnishing
the eldhtis when the farmer said we must go down to theriver and see the view. It was very fine, as the riverflows through a deep ravine. We climbed about on thecrags and looked at the little flowers growing in thecracks of the cliff. Then there was a great discussion
as to whether we should go further up the valley. The
farmer was enthusiastic that we should and offered toaccompany us. Another two or three hours ride up thedale would give us a splendid view of the glaciers of central
Iceland.
In the end the project was reluctantly
abandoned; it was now four o'clock and we had fiveor six hours ride to reach the farm where we intended
to spend the night. I was interested to see therecklessness and hardihood of the Icelandic character inthis discussion. Lilja was particularly eager to see theglaciers and was prepared to forego food and sleep todo so. We had no food with us, and as far as I could see
no chance of getting any as the upper part of the dale
was uninhabited. We had had nothing since we left•' Probably E>orljotssta8ir in Vesturdalur.

82

Icelandic Journal

Tunguhals at ten that morning. When we discussed thequestion of sleep, they said airily, "We shall just have tolie down in the open for a few hours." Later I discussed
this question of hardihood with Anna and she admitted
that it was an important quality in the Icelandic
character today as it had been with the saga-folk of old.
It is closely linked with their pride; she says that the
motor-drivers on the road from Reykjavik to Akureyri
are prepared to drive eighteen hours without rest, andthis on a road that taxes both muscle and nerve as thesurface and the gradients are very trying.
But I think that my two friends were influenced on thisoccasion by consideration for the English lack of hardihood; with many backward glances at the invisible
glaciers we turned our horses' heads in the direction of
Maelifell where we hoped to stay the night. It was agood thing perhaps that we did turn back. We had
several minor mishaps. I got my boots full of water as
we crossed the river. Lilja was sick because we dranksome sour cream at a farm. Then her horse came down
on some loose stones, and she fell. Fortunately she was
not hurt, but the frightened horses had to be pacified.
It seemed a long way to Maelifell and we didn't get there
before ten-thirty. The sunset was beautiful, the sky very
pink in the east and the mountains grey and blue. We
filed through the magic twilight, a very tired caravan,
Lilja at the head, bravely perched on her pillion saddle,
Anna leading the pack-pony, and me at the rear occasionally flicking at the animal in a half-hearted way. But,
curiously, when we reached Maslifell in a state of theutmost exhaustion and fell stiffly off our horses, theexhaustion vanished. We found the house still awake,as they were awaiting the return of the clergyman. We
had a blind supper, smoked salmon on bread — I think.
Then Anna and I went to bed and talked so long that
I thought the household would protest. We discussed
the quality of hpfdingskapr (liberality, or to translate

A ride in Skagafjord

83

the word literally, the disposition of a chieftain). We
thought that Lilja, and her brother, and her mother had
it. It seemed odd to use the word of the mother — agentle, dirty old woman, who sits on the front steps withher knitting on summer evenings. But it was quite truethat the courtesy and consideration with which she treated
her tiresome and rather inarticulate English visitor mightwell deserve the term. And the hospitality that they
delight to show — they invited eighty members of aglee-club to a party — is like the lavishness and liberalityof a chieftain of old.
The next day was very hot, and everyone exclaimed
at the heat. It seemed a nice warm summer day tome. We were going to climb a mountain near the houseand get, perhaps, a view of the jokuls we missed the day
before. But as everyone was sitting about groaning at
the heat, it was decided to give up the idea. We sat
about and drank several coffees. Some other visitors
drifted in, so we had some more coffee. My friend and I
were to ride to some point on the main Akureyri andReykjavik road and intercept a car which would take us
to Blonduos. There we were to spend the night, and I
was to travel on to Reykjavik the next day with the samecar. Anna was to stay in Blonduos with friends.
We started in the early afternoon, and it was pleasantriding in the warm sun, though the horses seemed disinclined to hurry. So we dawdled along with frequent
rests. I was getting a little anxious, as the car which wewere to intercept was scheduled to leave Saudarkrokur atfour. But I consoled myself by the thought that thedriver had no better time-sense than other Icelanders I
had met. It was well after four when we came in sightof the main road, and almost immediately we saw a car
drive past. The thought that it was ours made us urge
the horses to a gallop. So followed a comic cinema chase.
The car was proceeding fairly fast along a long flat road,
it turned uphill where the road began to zigzag up a

84

Icelandic Journal

mountain side. We shouted and hallooed, but the carignored us. We flogged our horses, and they simulated
a gallop which was in reality no faster than a trot. In
fact we provided an excellent slow-motion picture where
all the movements of the gallop are produced but thepace is of the snail. We hooted and clattered for about
two miles after the fast receding car, and the dust flew
from under our horses' hoofs. Finally we reached a farmand a petrol pump, and gave up the chase. We enquired
from the man at the farm who told us that we had beenchasing an illusion, for the car was not driven by Pallbut contained some quite irrelevant tourists from
Akureyri. To add to the comedy, the car now came backslowly along the road for its occupants had decided tofill up with petrol before climbing the pass over the mountains.
It was nice to rest here at Vidimyri, to cool ourselves
and to inspect the old church; 48 there is some pretty
woodwork inside, including high carved pew-ends andsome old painted inscriptions.
Then a car arrived, driven not by Pall but by the young
man who had brought me from Svarfadardale that wet
Sunday, which now seemed so long ago. As we didn't
know whether Pall was ahead or behind, we decided totravel in this car. So we said goodbye to Lilja who wasriding back to Vidivellir with the horses, and we turned
up over the heidi. We had a lovely ride, and the view
from the top was superb as we could see Langjokull and
Hofsjokull. We ought also to have been able to look'down Skagafjord to the sea, but at that point the poka
descended. We came down into Langidale and saw where
the Svarta (the Black river, which is transparent) met
Blanda (the mixed river that is opaque, formed from themelting glacier snows). My friend told me how thesnow-rivers vary in height from hour to hour and how in
48 The old turf church at Vl&imyri was built in 1834-5 by Einar Stefansson,
the grandfather of the poet Einar Benediktsson.

A ride in Skagafjord

85

the morning many of the rivers are quite safe to cross,whilst in the evenings, particularly after a warm day,they are swollen by the melting snows and extremely
dangerous to cross. Langidale was very pretty in theafternoon sun. It is a wide, peaceful valley and themountains are not too high or terrifying. Men andwomen were hay-making in the flat meadows by the river.
Then we drove out of the sun into poka, and thedescent into Blondu6s was like passing from summer into
winter. The place seems horrid, little low houses
creeping round a grey sea which was dashing against thepebbles of the beach. The sea birds were screaming. It
is surprising to find how the weather varies within a small
area in Iceland. One dale may be enjoying the sun, thenext is in mist or actual rain. I was told that the weather
in Akureyri was never the same as that in Reykjavik.
So that sun in Akureyri always means rain in Reykjavik.
I found it curious coming back to responsibilities andorganisation again. The last few days I had been sowell looked after by my friends that I had felt as if I was ona Cook's tour. I had gone where I was taken, eaten mymeals when I was told — usually at most unusual hours,
and I had slept when the others slept. Now I was Masterof my Fate again. I had looked forward to an hotel in
Blondu6s. Indeed there was one, but it was untidy
and uncomfortable, and the supper was not punctual.
Indeed I found in most of the hotels I stayed in or ate inthat the standard of comfort was much lower than inprivate houses. Possibly this is one of the many
manifestations of Icelandic pride. If you are accepting
hospitality as a guest (even if he knows you will pay asmall sum when you leave), he does his best to make you
comfortable, feeling probably that he is your host. But
when the element of commercialism comes in and you arebuying food and lodging from him, he does not feel boundto study your comfort. Further, pride forbids the
Icelandic guest to complain, even if the hotel is86

Icelandic Journal

uncomfortable and the food poor and tardy. In this hotel
I was woken up in the middle of the night by an
unexpected guest who was parked in my bedroom. The
guest rose at five-thirty and did her toilet with justenough noise to wake me, and just enough hush to be
irritating.

Chapter Five
RETURN TO REYKJAVIK AND FAREWELLI FELT rather cross when we did start, as we hurriedover our breakfast to be ready by seven, the scheduled
time, and then waited half an hour for the apothecary andhis wife, who had overslept. 49 The apothecary's wife wassoon bilveik. The road twisted along the course of anold pony track, and the swaying motion evidently upset
the lady. But I think the horrors of motoring in Iceland
are much exaggerated. We were fourteen hours on theway, and nearly all of it was agreeable and very little of it
terrifying. I believe that in wet weather it is muchworse. All the cars carry a spade or two with which the
car can be dug out of the mud if it sinks too deeply.
The most striking feature of the landscape in the earlier
part of the ride was a curious formation of little hills at
the mouth of Vatnsdale. Here are countless little mounds(and I use the word countless as more than a cliche, for
I was told that there was a superstition that no one could
count these hills twice and get the same total). Theylooked like children's sand mounds poured from a bucketor, even more prosaically, like a very large collection of
rubbish dumps.
We stopped at Graenumyrartunga for coffee before
crossing the long long heidi, which was so incredibly boringthat I fell asleep. When I awoke we were following ariver and descended into a flood of hraun in a district of
low scrub. We passed several hot springs and arrived at
Reykholt, formerly the home of Snorri Sturluson, atthree in the afternoon. Nowadays there is a grand new
49 Helgi ap6tekari, as he was called, was E>orvar8arson. He worked as apharmacist for his brother-in-law Kristjan Arinbjarnar who was the doctor
in Blonduos at the time. Helgi's wife's name was Jakobina.

88

Icelandic Journalbuilding there — in winter a school and in summer ahotel. It is centrally heated from the hot springs, and I
greatly enjoyed washing my hands in a nice white basinwith new taps. We had a meal there. My fellow
passengers sat down at three-thirty on a hot afternoon tostewed mutton followed by porridge. I noticed that noneof them complained at the unsuitability of the fare. I
should have done, but had anticipated by insisting onsome cold food. We climbed up onto Kaldadalsheidi andhad a marvellous view of the glaciers — Langjokul andEiriksjokul — and the bleakest expanse of country —stones, mud, snow, not a blade of grass, and the roadzigzagging across the grey and stoney surface. Hereno road-makers have been at work, the cars have simply
cut a track across the soft rubble of the mountains.
Then there were more mountains, some of them looking
very insecure and with rocks that seemed to be shifting
as we passed. We saw Skjaldbreid, a tame affair, I
thought, to have made all the mess of lava that became
Thingvellir. Then a narrow pass between two mountainsof rubble and we came down under the ridge that runs
on to form Almannagja. Now there was a nice quick ridealong what seemed a marvellously smooth road. I had
to remind myself with some effort of the time I jolted
along this same road when I first visited Thingvellir, andI reflected how one's standards change. Soon we were in
Reykjavik and it all seemed urban and over-populated.
I found my luggage waiting for me at the Hotel Island.50
I was pleased to unpack the things I felt I had lost someyears before. I went down to the restaurant and had ameal of asparagus soup and fruit salad — the items on themenu that most forcibly symbolised civilization andcosmopolitanism to me at the moment. The place seemedbrilliantly lighted, and the third-rate dancing and music
incredibly gay. I gaped for some time like a hay-seed,went out into the streets and looked in a daze at the
60 The Hotel Island was in the main street and burned down in 1944.

Return to Reykjavik

89lighted shop windows and teaming crowds of passers-by.
Then I went to bed.
Breakfast next morning presented a bewildering variety
of fancy and plain breads. I had a bath, dressed inleisure, went to fetch my letters, had my hair cut, met agreat many people that I knew, and received an invitation
to a child's birthday party.
The party seemed to me a very sensible one. The child
was ill in bed, so the grown-ups gorged chocolate, whippedcream cakes and coffee, while the child was allowed ascrap of cake and a sip of chocolate. The family, which
is a huge one, talked English and we were very gay.
At this party was a pretty girl, the fiancee of one of theyoung men. She was a pretty fragile thing with a paleface, broad brow and large greenish eyes set far apart.
I noticed that she was smiling and bowing from time totime in an unmotivated way. When I had left I
mentioned this to my friends. They replied, "Oh, she
was only greeting the dead relations as they came into
the room to join the party." Further, they told me that
if this girl came to see them she would often look roundrather vaguely after entering the room. "Won't you sit
down," her hostess would say. "I'm sorry, I can't,"
she would reply. "All the chairs are occupied." Andthis in a room where the hostess was sitting alone waitingfor her guests. We met the same girl the next morning.
"I'm so tired this morning," she said. "A friend,"and she mentioned the name of a girl who had died a day
or two ago, "came to see me last night and she stayed
talking so long that I had to turn on the light to get
rid of her."
I went to see the Einar Jonsson sculptures which arehoused in a new and modernistic building. I had heard
a great deal of this sculptor for the Icelanders are very
proud of him. Iceland is in a sense a paradise for artists
and poets. The intense national pride creates a sympathetic feeling towards any form of art displayed by a

90

Icelandic Journal

fellow-countryman. The government creates nice softjobs for the poets, librarianships and the like, so that theartist can live untroubled by the struggle for existence andproduce his masterpieces at leisure. It is surprising toobserve the feeling that most of the people have about
poetry, particularly if the verse is of a geographicalnature and is written about waterfalls and mountains.
Poetry with this theme is far more popular and also more
emotional than love poetry. Often I noticed that thepeople I met would quote some poem at an appropriate
spot — as if a member of a charabanc party in Englandshould talk about "this precious stone, set in a silver sea"
when he had the first glimpse of the Channel from theSouth Downs. Even tiny children would lisp the morefamous of the national songs. I think it is part of thesame feeling that created the sagas, an intense nationalism
and a love of their country and of the particular cornerof it they know, so that the events and people of that
district become of the utmost importance in the minds ofthe poet or saga-writer. In the poetry, however, theconcern is mainly with natural objects and is notprojected into the inhabitants of a district, so that to me
personally there is a bleakness in the verse. I can't keep
on being interested in a waterfall as I can in a person.
I found Einar Jonsson's sculpture disappointing. His
best work is that in which there is a design, where he isbuilding round a pattern, triangle or cross. The
Mountain Troll is rather impressive, a woman who issaved from the troll by the rays of the rising sun. His
later work is spoiled by a detailed symbolism, which often
seems to me to be merely funny. There is a statue of
Evolution — a horse, out of which grows an ape, then aman, then a cross and a small figure praying. His naturalistic work did not convince me. His female figuresthough striving to imitate the human form have a curious
lack of force.
I tried bathing in Reykjavik, but it was not a greatReturn to Reykjavikgisuccess. The water was exceedingly cold, the sunshine
in which we sat after bathing was tempered, and theforeshore dirty and strewn with miscellaneous objects.
That evening I went with a friend for a picnic and walk
across the lava to Hafnarfjord. We took a car out tothe Sanatorium and walked from there.51 It was a lovely
evening and the sun put all sorts of magic colours on thesea, the mountains and the lava. We sat and chatteredin the twilight till it grew so dark that we could hardly find
our way across the jagged lava rocks. It was night by
the timeVe arrived in Hafnarfjord. The little town by thesea seemed very romantic with its small houses and theirlighted windows. Late as it was, my friend took me backto her home, and I saw her mother, a wonderful old
lady, whose photograph has been incorporated in a
German collection of Women of All Nations. 52 The
old lady is like a woman of the sagas and will keep thecontrol of her household in her wrinkled hands to thevery last. Suitably enough she is a sort of curator in theMuseum of Antiquities, and in her the visitor will see amuch more potent reminder of the days of old than in the
woven and embroidered fabrics that moulder in theglass cases with a scent of moth ball.
I went the next day to see the Museum. The old ladies
who guard it would be very little protection against
burglars. I was amused at this ingenious method of
the Icelandic government of pensioning off its distinguished but impecunious old ladies. I called at the
Natural History Museum, but did not find the birds andfish interesting enough to drown the natural atmosphereof death and corruption.
I had puffin for lunch next day, an agreeable bird notunlike goose in flavour. Then I made an expedition tosl Vinlssta5ir, a tuberculosis sanatorium.
"1 have been unable to trace the German book, but "the old lady" wasalmost certainly Gu8rf3ur Gu8mundsd6ttir, the wife of Matthias &<5r8arson,
the curator of the Museum of Antiquities. The daughter's name was
Sigribur.

92

Icelandic Journal

Hafnarfjord, which I had already seen in the romantic
darkness of the night before. The place was less interesting in the clear light of the early afternoon, but there is alittle garden in the lava which is appealing if only for thehuman optimism to which it bore witness.63
That night I left Reykjavik in the "Gullfoss". I had
left undone many of the things I had meant to do. I had
no time to visit Hekla and the Geysirs, to see thewaterfall Gullfoss, and — the thing I regret most — tovisit Hlidarendi, where the brave Gunnarr of Njdlssaga
lost his life.
It was dark when the boat left. There were faintreflections of the sunset, and I amused myself by
pretending that I was seeing the Northern Lights, though
I knew it was too early in the year for this phenomenon.
I was touched, as we moved slowly off, to look down on
the crowd of up-turned faces and shadowy forms on thequay.
We had a long wait at Vik on the south coast while
countless sacks of wool were brought on board. The
shore is too exposed here and the sea too rough to allow ofmotor boats, so the sacks of wool were piled in large
eight-oared boats. It was amusing to see these boats
being launched. They were carried to the water's edge
on the shoulders of a great many men, so they looked likebeetles or centipedes — a rounded shell above a series oftrotting legs.
My last parting from things Icelandic was sad. We
had a cargo of ponies, poor little things packed tightly,
head to tail in pens of eight, in the hold. They are packed
so tightly to prevent them lying down and so being trodden
on.
I left the boat at Leith as they were being unloaded,each one strapped onto a pulley and suspended in the air
before it was gently lowered to the quay. It was sad to" This small park is known as HellisgerOi.

Return to Reykjavik

93

think that they were destined to the eternal darkness ofthe pit — gallant little Icelanders who had cropped thesweet grass and frisked in the sunshine of their native
mountain-sides.

ALICE SELBY
A personal recollection by G. R. Hibbard
I STILL remember my first meeting with Alice. It was
the beginning of the Autumn Term in 1934; and I was
one of a class about to make its first acquaintance with
the History of the English Language and the mysteries of
Indo-European Philology. Alice came in, sun-tanned,
vigorous, alert, and began to teach. There was no
introductory waffle. She had a job to do, she knew how
to do it, and she got on with it. By the end of the hour
it was already abundantly plain to us that at least one
philologist was emphatically not the dry-as-dust pedantthat the study of philology was popularly supposed to
produce. We had felt the impress not only of superb
teaching but also of a highly individual personality.
At that time Alice was Senior Lecturer in English in
the University College, as it then was, of Nottingham,
which, having no charter of its own, prepared its students
for the External Examinations of the University of
London. She had been there for sixteen years, having
joined the staff of the English Department in 1918, after
completing her studies at Cambridge. It was a tiny
department, tucked away in a provincial backwater, but
it was vital, creative, and exciting in a manner that makes
many of the large English departments in our universities
today look lethargic and elephantine. All the essential
work was done by three people: and what remarkablepeople they were! Utterly unlike each other in almost
every respect, they formed a perfect team. Poet, polyglot, and enthusiast for learning, the Head of the Department, Reginald Mainwaring Hewitt, with a lock ofwhite hair sweeping over his high-domed forehead,
seemed like a reincarnation of the Renaissance ideal of

Alice Selby95

the man who took all knowledge for his province. Blessedwith a prodigious memory, he imparted information, muchof it rare and out of the way, with unstinting generosity
and unfaltering eloquence. George Stuart Griffiths, on
the other hand, was a man of intuitive insights. He would
often begin a lecture in what appeared to be a rather
fumbling manner as he searched for the right opening into
his subject, but, having found that opening, he caught
fire, as it were, and said things that many of his students
have never forgotten. Alice's special contribution, particularly in all matters that affected the day to day runningof the Department, was that rare commodity, good, hardcommon sense. Overworked — Alice, for example,
taught Anglo-Saxon, Middle English, and Old Norse inaddition to the History of the Language — and underpaid,
eking out their salaries by doing extra-mural teachingin the evenings, they had neither the time nor theopportunity to engage on any scale in the publication bywhich the academic world of today sets such store, evenhad they wished to do so. In fact, they did not. Highly
civilised and very much alive to the nature of the world
they were living in, they regarded the competitive spirit
which prompts so much "research" with a proper degreeof suspicion. They wrote only when they felt they had
something to say; and the standards by which theydecided whether a thing was worth saying or not were
extremely high. But they never neglected their students.
Far from being "unproductive", they helped to produce
what a university should produce: men and womencapable of making the most of such intellectual endowments as they have.
In 1935 I began to read Old Norse with Alice, andcontinued to do so until I left Nottingham in 1938. It
was a richly rewarding experience, for, of all the subjects
she taught, this was the closest to her heart. At
the centre of her interest in the past, and in the present
too for that matter, was her feeling for everyday life.

g6

Icelandic Journal

She never allowed us to forget that philology was about
the speech habits of men who had lived and laboured on
this earth; that Beowulf came out of a specific kind ofsociety, with its own organization and its own rules. The
sagas ministered, to an extent that no other older literature
could, to her love of the factual and to her instinctive
response to the hard realities of life. But her absorption
in them also revealed another side of her nature to me,which I had barely glimpsed until then: practical, competent, efficient though she was, she also had somethingof the romantic in her. She delighted in the extreme
individualism of the saga heroes; their adventurous
journeys struck an answering chord in her; and she
admired the ethos that prompted their last stands. The
journey she had recently made to Iceland had evidently
not been without its sentimental — in the very best
sense of that word — motives and overtones.
For a period, during the early years of the Second
World War, Alice was in charge of the English Department
at Nottingham; but from 1939 until 1946 I was out of
touch with her. In the Spring Term of 1946, after being
demobilized, I returned to Nottingham as a lecturer, andfor the next five years we were colleagues, until she
finally retired from university teaching in 1951, afterworking on a part-time basis for several years. Characteristically, Alice's retirement was no ordinary retirement.
Active by nature and of an enterprising temperament,
she had no intention of sitting down to do nothing inparticular. Instead, she had decided to embark on a
new way of life which would also be an assertion of her
attachment to traditional ways. Knowing that acceptance by a rural community is a slow and difficult process,she had taken the first steps towards a change ofoccupation in the mid-thirties, when she bought a cottage
in the village of Kniveton, near Ashbourne. There she
spent her week-ends and vacations, immersing herself
in village life. Then, in 1944, she bought Church Farm,Alice Selby97

in the same village, and, with the help of her sister
Dorothea, adventurously set about running it, applying
her ability to learn to the acquisition of new skills andalso new items of vocabulary. By this time she was not
only well known to the villagers but had also won theirrespect and trust, with the result that she became theirrepresentative on .the Rural District Council, where she
was able to put her good sense about matters in general,
together with her specialized knowledge of education, topractical use in the service of the community to which
she now belonged. She eventually gave up the farm in
1953, to move into a house she had built on the other sideof the little Anglo-Saxon church, but she continued toparticipate in the life of the village.
In 1946 my debt to Alice was deep. In the years that
followed it became immeasurably deeper. Visiting her,first at the farm and then at the Croft, was one of life's
major pleasures. Good conversation was assured. At
times it turned on village happenings, in which she took
the keenest interest, often making them into minor sagas.
More frequently it touched on larger topics and issues:
history, politics, religion, the emancipation of women, towhich her own life was a testimony, and so forth. To her
discussion of them she brought that profound respect
for facts and that sceptical attitude towards opinions
which had been the very basis of her teaching. She neverhesitated to say exactly what she thought, and what she
thought was always worth thinking about. To know her
was a liberal education. To know her well, in all her
freshness of mind and generosity of spirit, was to feel astrong and abiding affection for her. She belonged
to no school, she followed no fashion, she was her own
unique self.