JUNE, 1923
THE WESTERN AMERICAN
13
Iceland—The First Land ot the Western Immigrant
By E. M. Newman, in the Mentor
| YING JUST UNDER the Arctice Circle and known
by a forbidding name, Iceland is a land of beauti
ful scenery, mild climate, and interesting people. Con
trary to general belief, it is not a remote island;
actually it is nearer to North America than South
hampton or Le Havre. A moderately speedy steamer
can make the trip from New York in six days. Un
fortunately there is no regular service from
America. Saving only an occassional freighter or
an especially chartered excursion steamer, the only
way of reaching the island is by steamer from Nor
way or Denmark. During summer a weekly steam
er service is maintained from these countries.
Iceland is not a land of snow and ice. There are
large uninhabitable parts of it, due to soil and
climatic conditions, but in the habitable parts, thanks
to the Gulf Stream, the climate is milder than that of
New York. There are many rainy days, mist, and
fogs during the summer, and deep snows in winter,
but it is rarely, if ever severely cold.
The island is about two hundred miles wide and
three hundred miles long. There are no railways and
but few wagon roads. The island pony, a sturdy
little beast capable of doing twenty miles a day, is
the only means of inland travel.
Nowhere more than in Iceland have the telegraph
and telephone abolished distance.
The island is
webbed with telephone lines, and the farmers are in
constant touch with all parts.
About eighty thousand people inhabit Iceland.
Other than Reykjavik, the capital, a town of 14,000
population and Aukreyri, on the northern coast, there
are no larger towns. The people live on farms and in
small communities. These are maintained by an ex
tensive commerce, chiefly in fish, cattle, sheep, hides,
wool, and eiderdown.
Reykjavik is a thoroughly modem city. It has its
own gas plant, sewers, mning water in the houses,
streets, gutters, and curbing such as one would find
in any American city. Its library contains 80,000
volumes, among which are well-thumbed copies of
Webster’s unabridged dictionary and Ralph Waldo
Emerson’s works. The classics and the best litera
ture of all lands are in demand. “Light reading”
as we know it, is little desired. At the capital, also,
is a university, a school for music, public schools,
opera house, and the inevitable motion picture
theater.
The impression that Iceland is semi-civilized is
I rediculous. Twenty-five newspapers and fifteen
periodicals—one ninety years old—are published
there. There is an Icelandic Salvation Army “War
Cry” and a woman suffrage organ, “The Suffragette,”
besides religious journals, scientific, farm and mis-
I cellaneous publications. Cable connection and the
I weekly steamer service keep Iceland in contact with
I the outside world. There is an active social life—
I balls and banquets are frequent. European manners
I regulate social life at the island capital.
Reykjavik has two good hotels. In the early
morning coffee is brought to one’s room. Then
comes breakfast of cereals, eggs, bacon, ham, fish,
coffee, tea, or cocoa. The main meal is at two in the
afternoon, at which soup, fish, two kinds of meat,
vegetables, dessert, and coffee are served. In the
evening one has coffee again, and, usually, rusks.
In the interior there are no hotels. Travelers are
always welcome at farm houses. It is customary to
thank the host after each meal, to which he responds,
“May it do you good.” Inland, women do not dine
with the men, unless the woman is an honored guest.
The Iceland woman never loses her maiden name; she
is always the daughter of her father, just as a son is
always the son of his father. The son may marry and
his son in turn chooses whatever Christian name he
pleases, but his surname always indicates that he is
the son of his father, and thus the family goes on.
Physicians have said that Icelanders are affected
with a curious malady, Icelandic morbitus, a form of
melancholy due to the depressing climate. In the
early days the desire for strong drink threatened to
undermine the people, and strong prohibitory liquor
laws were passed. If the average Icelander suffers
from morbitus, I failed to see it. They are typically
Scandinavian in appearance, most of the men and
women have bright blue eyes, blond hair and a
peaches-and-cream complexion. The unmarried wo
men wear gayly colored clothes similar to those worn
in the interior of Norway and Sweden. The older
women wear severely plain clothing.
The interior is a land of contrasts, resembling in
many ways the mountainous regions of the western
United States. Years ago, Mt. Hekla and other vol
canoes buried much of the interior under lava, and
today one sees a fertile valley, carpeted with nu
tritious grass upon which thousands of sheep and
cattle are grazing, along side a lava field. Mt. Hekla
is still smoking, but has not erupted for nearly two
hundred years. There are hot springs near the
capital, in which the people wash their clothes, and
in the interior there is a region of geysers and boiling
lakes similar to Yellowstone National Park. Numer
ous waterfalls and rushing streams add to the natural
beauty. The Gullfoss, the largest fall, has a power
probably in excess of Niagara.
The dwellings in the interior are mostly frame
or log dwellings with sod roofs. There is little left of
the spledid workmanship in wood that marked the
manor houses of the vikings and their retainers.
The
the North Atlantic had for unnum
bered centuries oeaten against the basalt cliffs of
Iceland before it was known to man. In 860 A. D.,
a viking from the Faroe Islands was driven by ad
verse winds into its latitudes. He landed, but Avon
left in digust, naming the place Snaeland, the Norse
for Snowland. Four years later a Swedish viking
landed and built the first house. By 874 A. D. other
vikings had come, and Reykjavik, “Smoking Creek,”
was established. In 880 A. D., King Harold of Nor
way swept the pirate vikings from the islands around