When I was a girl in Iceland

Front matter

WHEN I-mSAGIRL

IN- ICE

HOLMFRIDUR ARNADOTTIR

Preface

Will yon kindly keep in mind that my childhood memories described in this book are from a time twenty-five to forty years ago. Although a great many things are just the same to-day, others have changed a great deal. I will also ask you to bear in mind that what is told in this little book of mine is not taken at random, but that I have given the facts of my own experience, told as truthfully as I was able to, and described as clearly as my imperfect knowledge of the English language allowed. I hope that many of the questions I have frequently heard about my country will be answered here, and I hope also that this book may lead to still further curiosity

VI

PREFACE concerning matters dealing with Iceland. The Icelanders discovered America and lost it again; let now the Americans discover Iceland and never lose sight of it again.

Written on my forty-sixth birthday, February first, 1919.

Holmfredtjb Arnadottib, 570 West 156th Street, New York City.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I The Country 9

II Discovery and Settlement . . 14

Chapter I The Country

I suppose you have all heard the name Iceland and know that it is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, touching the Arctic Circle. But the real name is Island, and the meaning of it is Iceland. In this book I will use the English name, Iceland, although it is not correct. Look at the globe, and you will find a little continent between Greenland, Norway, and Scotland. But it is far away from all these countries, and a little continent of its own; as you easily see. The imaginary line between the Old and the

New Hemispheres lies over Iceland; thus one part might belong to America, while the other was a part of Europe. We are not so particular and count it to be in the Old World. This is not at all a small island; it is really the largest island in Europe hut one, and that is Britain. The size approaches that of the State of New; York, or 42,037 square miles.

Iceland is a very mountainous country, and there are great volcanoes which often are active. You know the name Hekla. It is often mentioned with the name Etna, the other great volcano in Sicily near Italy ; these two have often been active at the same time. Hekla has erupted more than twenty times, as recorded in the History of Iceland. Many other volcanoes have been active there and caused awful damage.

In Iceland you will find the very famous Geysir, which has the special name that later has been borrowed for all hot springs

THE COUNTRY of s imil ar kind, the word of course being Icelandic, and meaning one who gushes. There are many other hot springs. There are also to be found large glaciers, one of them having about the same area as Greater New York.

The country has sometimes been called the island of fire and ice ; but you must not think it is nothing but ice and fire. Far from that, there are the most beautiful valleys, with green meadows dotted with flowers of all kinds, with fragrance that surpasses that of the garden flowers. Rivers, lakes, and brooks are all over it, in which are marvelous waterfalls ; one of them with the name Gullfoss, is the greatest in Europe. Trees are small and rather scarce there. The highest of them only reach thirty to forty feet. Mountain-ash and birch are the most frequent.

The climate of the country is not very cold, as it is modified by the Gulf Stream, coining all the way from the Gulf of Mexico. The current of it which washes the south coast prevents the Polar ice from blocking it. But on the northern side the Polar stream with the Polar ice sometimes overpowers the Gulf Stream and takes hold of the coast for some weeks and even for some months of the year. The summer is never so hot as in America, and it is very short. The winter is comparatively long and mild, and all the time the weather may be very changeable. It is considered a nice summer when it neither snows nor freezes for three months. If you look at the map of comparative temperatures you will learn that the actual mean temperature of January is the same in the southern part of Iceland and New York. But the mean temperature of July is similar to that of the southern part of Labrador.

As the island lies so far north, you can

THE COUNTRY imagine that the length of the days varies very much from yours. From the middle of May to the middle of August we can read and write at twelve o’clock midnight; there is no night at all. In the northernmost parts of the country the sun does not go down one week in June, that is the glorious Midnight Sun. But we have to pay for that in winter. Then the days are very short for some months, and at the solstice time if it is cloudy or snowy weather the lamps have to be lighted the most of the day.

Chapter II Discoveby And Settlement

You know that the world has been discovered from time to time during several ages. For instance, Iceland was unknown till the end of the eighth century, and even then known to very few people, for they had no cables nor telegraphs to send that news about the world, and no newspapers to publish it in. They who found it first are said to have been Irishmen and for a while some Irish monks lived there. After the middle of the ninth century a viking from Norway was shipwrecked on it. When he came home again, he related his adventure to his country-people and that was the beginning of several excursions up there by the Norwegian vikings. One of them gave the island that grisly name. Please keep in mind, that it is only that man’s whim we have to blame for that, and not the nature of the country.

Norway was then a very prosperous land where lived rich and noble people. Their chiefs have got the name vikings, because they anchored their vessels in viks (creeks) when they were hunting for each other, or preparing an attack on the coast. The Norwegian vikings used to sail their vessels or viking ships, as they were called, to England, Scotland, Ireland, and the neighboring isles. They fought with the people living there, and even sometimes took their lands and called themselves kings. They were at the same time very much feared and looked up to by the people. In winter time they generally lived on their farms in Norway, inviting each other to great feasts, and mutually telling their adventures in voyages of the last summer, and planning for the next trips.

We are very often astonished at reading in the Sagas how cruel these men sometimes were, but we often find them performing the most unselfish and noble deeds, even for their enemies. When we read about them, we ought to remember that their pagan gods not only allowed them to kill people, but even promised rewards to those who fought and died in battles. They believed in Odin, Thor, Frigg and Freyja and many others. You know these names from your names of the days. Wednesday comes from Odin (Woden), Thursday from Thor, Friday from Freyja, and so on.

At the time here spoken of Norway was divided into small states or what they called Fylki. Each of them was ruled by a king or earl. One of these kings had the name Harold, son of Halfdan Svarta (the swart or black). His father died when he was a very young boy, but his uncle governed the state as long as he was a child. He had grown to be a big, strong, and good-looking man when he was sixteen years old, and then he took the rule of the state into his own hands. Like most young men, he wanted a wife, and for that purpose he sent his messengers to a daughter of one of the other kings in Norway with the request that she become his wife. Her reply was such that it caused a great change in the current of the Norwegian people’s life, and had also a great deal to do with shaping the future of Iceland:

“I will not waste my maidenhood for the taking as husband of a king, who has no more realm to rule over than a few folks. Marvelous it seems to me, that there be no king minded to make Norway his own and be sole lord thereof in such wise as Gorm of Denmark or Eric of Upsala have done in their countries.’’

When Harold heard Princess Gy da’s answer, he said, “She has brought to my mind something which it now seems wondrous to me, I had not thought of before. This oath I swear to the God who made me and who rules over all things, that I will nevermore cut my hair nor comb it till I have gotten possession of all Norway, with the taxes thereof.”

It took Harold several years to conquer the kings and earls, but at last they had to submit to his strong will. The last battle he fought with them was in the year 872, called the battle of Hafursfjord. The Icelander, Snorri Sturluson, who wrote the History of the Norwegian Kings, completes this tale by saying: “ So King Harold took a bath, and then he let his hair be combed, and then Earl Rognvald sheared it and heretofore it had been uncombed and unshorn for ten winters. Aforetime he had been called Shock-head, but now Rognvald gave him a by-name and called him Harold the Fairhaired, and all said that saw him that he was most soothly named, for he had both plenteous hair and goodly.”

Now Gyda was willing to become Harold’s queen.

The consequence of this was that many of the chiefs and nobles in Norway, and even kings and queens, emigrated to the newly discovered island, called Iceland. There they found what they had lost in their native country: unbounded liberty.

I want to tell you another little story, which is connected with the settlement of Iceland, and in which another woman seems to have been the tool in the hands of Fate to urge the inhabiting of it.

There lived in Norway two young men who were near relatives. Their names were Ingolfur and Leifur. Helga, Ingolfur ’s sister, was a pretty girl. Leifur and Helga were good friends and had even secretly pledged their faith to each other. In that neighborhood lived an earl by name of Atli. He had three sons. They had in the previous summers been comrades of Ingolfur and Leifur on their viking raids. Once on a time Ingolfur invited them all to a great feast at his farm. At such occasions it often happened that the young men made oaths and swore either to die or perform some deed or other like that of Harold the Fairhaired. Helga was among the young ladies in the feastroom, and she wa*s the prettiest one. One of the earl’s sons could not help looking at Helga all the time; he had fallen in love with her. At last he rose and made oath that he would marry Helga or die. When

Leifur heard that, his face reddened, and, although it is not told, we can imagine that Helga was grieved. The next summer, instead of being comrades, Ingolfur and Leifur fought with the earl’s sons and killed two of them. On account of that they had to abandon their homes in Norway, for they were banished from the country. Ingolfur was the first settler of Iceland, but Leifur was killed by his thralls shortly after his arrival. That was in the year 874.

I have already told you that the Norwegians were then pagans. The farmers used to have the engravings of their gods on the pillars they had always placed on both sides of their seats in the main room in their houses. These pillars were the relics of each family.

Now Ingolfur was a great believer in destiny. Besides all his movable property, the high-seat-pillars were shipped on

22 WEEN I WAS A GIRL IN ICELAND

board his vessel, which had a dragon’s head as an ornament at the prow. When he had reached so far as to see the land he had made his destination, he threw the pillars overboard and said he would build his farmhouse where they drove on shore. He landed safely land nowhere were the pillars to be seen. He sent two of his thralls to search for them, and they found them at last in the third year, driven ashore on the southwest coast, where Ingolfur now built his farmhouse and took possession of a vast stretch of land. He called his farm Reykjavik (Smoking Creek), for near there are hot springs, all the time veiled with smoke.

He placed his pillars on the sides of his seat in his new home. And what is worth mentioning is that this first settler’s farm has grown to be the capital of Iceland, which has the same name as his farm had. Ingolfur lived there the rest of his life, and his descendants lived there, too. In about sixty years Iceland became as much inhabited as it is to-day, and, as before told, the settlers were mostly Norwegians. But many of their thralls were Celtic people whom they had captured in their viking forays. For instance, it is related in one of the Sagas that Melkorka, the daughter of Myrkjartan, king of Ireland, was the slave of Olaf Pa, who was one of the chiefs, and he had a child by her who became a great man.

What language did these people speak? They spoke the language that was then used with trifling variations in all the Scandinavian countries and in a great part of England, too, now called Old Norse. We see from the Sagas that all these nations have understood each others speech, and as you know, the Anglo-Saxons had migrated from north Germany and Scandinavia to Britain and were near relatives to the Scandinavians. Nowadays that language is called Icelandic and is nowhere spoken except by the Icelanders, of course with some unimportant changes. When Iceland was settled there was established a commonwealth, and for several centuries it was the most independent country that existed.

In the year 1000 Christianity was adopted in Iceland, and, as elsewhere, it was followed by the development of the people. Schools were established there, monasteries and nunneries were founded, many books were committed to writing, which have made the country and the nation known among all the great scholars of the world. The so-called Sagas, I have mentioned before, are from that time. They relate the daily life, not only of the Icelanders, but also wherever they paid their visits, which they did to most countries then known. Many of these

Sagas, the Eddas and other legends, are translated into English, and I will earnestly advise you to read them, if you want some interesting books. Very likely you have often noticed in your English dictionary in the definition of a word the letters Ice. That means that the original word is Icelandic. This shows how related these two languages are.

CHAPTER in

In the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is a sculpture of the hand of the Creator holding two soundly sleeping babies. That view awakened in my mind the remembrance of loving parents ’ tender care, which was my first experience in this life.

How beautiful to be a child in the hands of good father and mother!

I was the eldest of four children, two boys and two girls, but the elder of my brothers died when he was four years old. We were all sick then, and one day we saw our mother kneel in silent prayer beside my brother’s bed. And then she told us

he had passed away. We cried long and

MY ROME AND FAMILY 27

bitterly. But children forget more easily than grown people. My mother could never mention that boy without getting tears in her eyes, and she told us that he had been the fairest and cleverest of her children.

My father was a stout man of medium height, strongly built, and with an expressive look. He had only to give us a look, if he disliked something we children said or did, and we knew at once what he meant and changed our behavior. My mother was a rather tall woman with lovely mild face, rich, dark hair, and brown eyes that had a tolerant look, which we children sometimes took too much advantage of. I think I may have been only two or three years old when I remember sitting, one beautiful day, on the lawn in front of the farmhouse, picking buttercups and dandelions. The next event printed on my memory is that I was running from one to another, showing to them a bine sweater I had just got, and of which I was very proud. My clothes were mostly either knitted, or of homespun and homewoven woolen cloth, from the wool of father’s sheep. My shoes were sheepskin slippers, bordered with white skin and fastened round the ankles with a white thong of skin. They were also made at home.

My father’s farm was one of seventeen farms in a little valley on the northern coast of Iceland. The farms all had their special names. Our farm’s name was KalfsstaSir (calf -place). The man who first settled there had the name Kalfur (Calf). Still there is a little mound near the farmhouse where he is said to have been buried.

The farmhouse was an old one when my father bought the farm and moved to it to live there a few years before I was born, but he rebuilt all the buildings, both dwelling-houses and stables. He hired some laborers and a carpenter but he was the master-builder himself. When children visited me I used to take them about to show them the houses I heard the other farmers admire, and now I want you to go with me for a while.

Let us first examine the three rows of turf houses with their fronts and back made of timber. A door is leading in to each row, but between them inside are also passages. We step into the guest-room, a small one with blue walls, white ceiling and brown floor, all of timber. The room gets light through one window on the front side with six small square panes of glass. White curtains are draped at three sides of the window.

In one corner was a press, where my father kept sometimes one or two bottles of wine to treat his best friend, who occasionally called on him. The walls were decorated with some pictures. There was also a memorial tablet made in 1874, the millennial anniversary year of the first settlement in Iceland, 874. This was placed between the portraits of King Frederick VIII of Denmark, who was one of our best kings, and his queen. You know Iceland belongs now to the King of Denmark. Beneath these pictures was a cushioned trunk and in front of it stood a red table with a red cover with an embroidered center. A little stand was in one corner with embroidered cover and on it were placed family portraits. A big chest of drawers stood against the wall and near it a book-case. Four chairs were placed at the table. A little room above served as the bedroom for guests.

Opposite the guest-room we find the larder, and beside that a workshop with implements and topis of several kinds. From the passage we come to the kitchen, a big room with open fireplace and also a stove for cooking. Opposite the kitchen is the dining-room, and under that a cellar which makes the pantry. In the dining-room stands a long, whitewashed table with benches on both sides. On the wall are fastened shelves for plates and dishes under which stands a long sideboard. At this mother stood when she was serving the food on the plates and into bowls, making the coffee and pouring it into the cups for the thirsty people, who came to get a few minutes’ rest and some refreshments to be better able to go on with their twelve to fourteen hours’ day work. From that sideboard I was handed many a nice cake and a lump of sugar.

At the end of the long passage we come to the badstofa, which serves both as bedroom and sitting-room. It is divided in the middle, one part for the family, the other for the servants. In the room of the family are three beds, all folded in the daytime and opened at night. The walls are lined with timber and so is the floor, but the walls on three sides are built of earth, sod, and stone on the outside, one side being wholly of timber. Each of these rooms has two windows. In one corner is a little iron stove ; the fuel used for it is peat and sheep manure. The upper floor in the badstofa was only a place for keeping spinning-wheels, cards, a loom, and other tools when not in use, and the wool was also stored there.

Now we are getting tired of walking about the farmhouse, let us take a seat on a little hill in front of it and look around. We fix our eyes on an island in the midst of the Skaga-fjorSur. The sides are so steep that it is impossible to ascend except at one place. At the one end of it stands a rock like an Egyptian obelisk, at the other was once a similar one, but it has tumbled down. I want you to listen to the story of that island.

Long long ago the world was, as all children have heard, full of trolls, elves, and fairies. The trolls were sometimes giants, and all their animals were gigantic, too. One of these trolls and his wife were once moving with all their domestic belongings. In order to take the shortest cut they waded over the fjord, the giant leading their cow by a rein, and the giantess bringing up the rear. But it is the nature of the trolls that if the sun shines on them they become stones or rocks. They have therefore always to do their work on the surface of the earth at night, and their homes >are generally in the mountains or on rocky coasts. But now it happened when they were just in the middle of the fjord the sun rose and they were too late to be able to bide themselves from its beams, and accordingly they turned into stones and their cow, too. Ever since they have stood there with the cow, which now is the beautiful isle between them, called Drangey.

Now the giant (Karlinn) has become age-decrepit and has bent very low, but the giantess (Kerlingin) bears her old age with honor. The cow is worth more than any other cow ever known, for on its cliffs are annually caught many thousands of black gulls and puffins, as it is the home for myriads of sea-birds.

I suppose it would interest you to hear how they catch the birds. In spring when the birds begin to make their nests, they go to the isle. The puffin burrows in the ground like a rabbit and therte rears its young. The black-gull and many others lay their eggs on the projecting ledges at the sides of the isle. Nets made of horse-

MY DOME AND FAMILY 35

hair are fastened to a float of wood and placed in the sea near the isle, or they are spread over the nest-holes, and then the bird becomes entangled and its life is taken. Sometimes they are so tame that the fowler takes them with his hands, and, one twist of their neck and they are gone. The fowler has to be a cool, collected, and skilful cragsman, for often he has either to creep along the narrow shelves hundreds of feet above the sea-level, where the least incautious step would cost his life, or he is suspended like a pendulum on a rope, which is made fast at one end at the edge above. It is considered both an art and an occupation to be a fowler in Iceland.

It was in Drangey in olden days that a gray shaggy hand sometimes appeared. It held a knife and cut the ropes the fowlers were swinging in. GuSmundur the Good, one of the bishops of the see Holar,

36 WEEN 1 WAS A GIRL IN ICELAND

was a very holy man, and on account of that, many miraculous things occurred caused by his prayers. He was therefore asked to try to prevent the spirits of the rocks from doing so great damage. He promised to do so and was let down by means of a rope. He was all the time singing hymns and praying aloud. Thus he had nearly gone all over the sides of the isle when he heard a loud voice say. ‘‘Not farther, not farther, GuSmundur bishop; the wicked must somewhere have a place to stay in.” He did not continue his prayers hut was pulled up again.

This cliff where he heard the voice come from has since that time been called HeiSnabjarg (pagan cliff) and is never entered. After that the gray hand never appeared. But it must not be forgotten that the bishop had a hammer with him, and was heard all the time hammering the sharp edges of the projecting cliffs.

These sharp edges had cut the ropes. Where the only trail is upon Drangey we shall come to a big slab, which is called the Altar. At it the traveler always stops to say his prayers. After having done so, he continues his ascending or descending course, which is not at all free from danger.

There is still one story connected with that isle and you can read it in English translation. It is one in the series of the so-called Icelandic Sagas, and its name is the Grettirs Saga.

Chapter IV

“Hello, Total” I cried one morning to my sister. “Do you know that we have got permission to go to the lambs ’-fold to-day?” My sister, who was in bed, started up at hearing this good news. “And are we to walk?” she asked. “No, no, we are both to ride on old Skjona (Piebald),” I answered, “and of course I am to hold the reins,” I continued. “Then I must have the whip,” she said. I agreed to that.

In the afternoon six horses were driven home to the farmhouse. Among them was old Skjona ; a felt saddle was placed on her back and fastened with a girdle. The other horses were saddled for father and some of the servants. They had to round the ewes up in the mountain and other pastures, and we had to ride direct to the fold and wait there till they came. It was a beautiful afternoon in June. How we looked forward to the trip ! We bade mother and the others good-by and mounted old Skjona. She did not move. Tota began to beat her with her green whip. At last we could make her understand that she was meant to carry us on, when she saw the other people mount their horses and start their riding. When we at last came to the fold, which was built of sod and stones on a pretty lawn, we dismounted, and old Skjona began to graze, glad to be quit of her burden. The dogs were all the time barking while they were driving the sheep down the mountain slopes, and we heard the shepherds shout to them what they wanted them to do. At last they all came with the ewes and lambs. “I am afraid your Mora is lost, Frida, ” the herdsboy cried to me, “or it is there and the lamb is lost,” he added, teasing me, as he knew nothing worse could happen to me. At last I found my Mora with the pretty black-and-white spotted lamb. Tota had been so fortunate that her ewe had borne two lambs. But they were both white, so I thought it better to have one colored as mine was.

In the morning when the cows had been milked I had to drive them to the pasture. I was not more than eight years old when that was my business. The pasture was some distance from the farmhouse. Sometimes I was allowed to ride on old Skjona or Grani. When the cows came home in the afternoon, I had either to drive them again or guard the “tun” or the home-field, that they did not graze there, for the grass on the “tun,” had to be mown and stored for the cows to feed on in winter. But then I was never alone. Tota, Ami (my brother), and Siggi (my cousin) went with me. We got our rye-bread sandwiches and ran as fast as we could. When we had driven the cows to the place where they could graze, we began to play. There we had built a turf house, that was so large, that we could all sit in it, of course on the floor. We could just crawl into it. Some of the cows were our good friends and some were our enemies, so were sometimes the bulls. I was glad when I saw the servants come with the milk-pails, for then the cows had to be housed, and I knew I was to get my share of the lukewarm milk. As soon as I was able to, I became milkmaid and left to the younger children the driving of the cows and the guarding of the tun.