SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

Scandinavicafor the I 8th-century Common Reader 235
caused by the plague of the fourteenth century and
the more recent smallpox. The increasingly urbanised
Englishman must have been surprised to read that trading
'towns' consisted of three or four dwelling-houses besides
the shop, warehouse and kitchen. The ordinary turf
house is described in its primitive simplicity - the halfdozen
rooms, the skin or bladder in the windows instead
of glass, the one outer door. "When the walls are green,
they appear like so many hillocks."
Horses were small, sheep plentiful, along with goats
and cattle. People laid in smoked meat for winter use
and made saltless butter, and cheese. Other food was
mainly milk and whey. It was mere calumny to accuse
the Icelanders of addiction to brandy. They were
robust up to about fifty, but liable to consumption, fevers
and leprosy.
Fishing, especially for cod, was the principal employment,
and details are given of the still familiar practice
of drying the fish on the beach. There was no agnculture.
The reader learns how eiderdown was collected and
how whales were caught for their oil, and of the great
advantage derived from seals. Many a modern visitor
would agree that "the only troublesome insect .. is the
gnat, which is sufficiently so".
There are notes on the unequal lengths of day and
night, the frequency of the Aurora and the rarity of
thunder, on the lack of timber - even of fir and pine ­
and on the hot springs. Earthquakes and eruptions are
rare: but a vivid account is given of a recent outburst
of 'Mt Krafle' and the lava-stream that reached as far
as Myvatn. The Review considers that the chapter on
Hekla contains nothing remarkable, "that celebrated
vulcano having for many years ceased to emit flames, so
that it now makes but a mean appearance". Unfortunately
Hekla still had daggers under its cloak for use in
more modern times, and the fiery energy of Iceland was
not dormant later in the eighteenth century.