SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

Saga-Book of the Viking Society
The Critical Reuiem" recounted from Pennant's Supplements
to Arctic Zoology a description of "the eruption
of fire" in Iceland" in June 1783 when some twenty
villages were destroyed, 220 lives lost by fire and 21 by
water, when twelve rivers dried up and two new islands
appeared. The rain was so impregnated with salt and
brimstone that the hair and skin of cattle were destroyed,
the grass covered with soot and filth, and some people,
especially the old and chesty, were killed by the poisonous
arr.
Late in the century, the Critical" considered a translation
of Dr von Troil's Letters on Iceland. This book
had an initial interest for English readers, since he went
to Iceland with Mr (afterwards Sir Joseph) Banks, who
kept a journal but did not publish it. 9 From the review
we learn that Icelandic houses could be built of lava,
and that the people were honest, serious and sullen, and
"did not laugh". (We may doubt whether Lord Chesterfield
would have felt at home there, despite their conformity
to his standards in this last point.) There is a
detailed description of the Great Geyser, and a comment
on basaltic formations.
In 1797 this Reuieto'" quotes from the Transactions
of the Royal Society of Edinburgh a vivid and scientific
" Account of the Hot Springs in Iceland" by Joseph Black
and J. T. Stanley - the Great Geyser's colours were
now "the purest and most beautiful blue", now"green
like that of the sea" and now white as the jets "broke
into 1,000 parts".
From 1755, any reader
information about Norway.
could have had plenty of
In that year and the next,
6 Critical Review 64 (1787), 35-7.
7 At Skaptarjokull. See K. Gjerset, History of Iceland (1922), 343.
8 Critical Review 49 (1780), 360-6. The original Swedish was reviewed
hy the Monthly in 1778 (LIX 506-9) and the translation in 1780 (LXIII
187-q8).
9 See Beatrice White, 'Ultima Thule', in Essavs 01111 Studies 01 Iii"
En elish Association Irn6I), 82. .
10 Critical Review 21 (New Arrangement; 1797), 197-202.