Penny Magazine

No. 104 - THE PENNY MAGAZINE - Nov. 16, 1833

THE ICELANDERS.— No. 1.

IN a recent Number of our Magazine an allusion was made to the love of reading and civilization common to the inhabitants of the poor and sterile island of Iceland. We now propose to give a short account of that interesting people, who, under almost every physical disadvantage, attained the inestimable advantages of general civilization at an earlier period than any of the more favoured nations of modern Europe.

A glance at the map will sufficiently explain the geographical position of Iceland, lying far to the north of the Shetland and the Ferro Isles, within two hundred miles of Greenland. The first discovery of the island, authenticated by history, was made about the year 860, by some adventurous Norwegian and Swedish rovers. At that time Norway was a separate state, governed by a king of its own. its inhabitants were a branch of the Great Teutonic family. About fourteen years after the discovery of Iceland, the reigning sovereign of Norway made encroachments on the freedom of his subjects. To these many would not submit, preferring rather to emigrate to the uninhabited and unfruitful island. The first colony took possession of part of the coast of Iceland about the year 875. . Soon afterwards the same love of liberty drove other Norwegians to the same stormy shores. and in the course of a few years the strength of the infant state was further increased by many families of Danes and Swedes, and by a few Scotch and Irish emigrants. The Icelandic historians have carefully preserved the names of these Scotch and Irish.

There are some grounds for believing that the climate of Iceland was then somewhat less inclement than now but it is to be doubted whether corn ever grew there. Many parts of the island, however) which when not covered with snow, offered good pasturage; and the surrounding sea teemed with fish of various sorts, from the herring to the whale, which not only furnishes food, but oil to enliven the gloom of the long, dark winter of the new settlers. At their first settlement the Icelanders were only shepherds and fishermen. In this condition, and long before numerous concurrent circumstances produced such a system in any other part of Europe the Icelanders formed a representative government. The possession of property gave any man a vote: by mental attainments and moral conduct any free man could aspire to civil influence and dignity in the state ; but by degrees many of the chief offices were made hereditary in families of ancient or celebrated lineage, and a somewhat exclusive aristocracy was established. Beyond the circle of government, however, the rights of every free Icelander were most scrupulously respected. The Althing, or national assembly, met every year on the shores of the lake Thingvalla, and there, in the open air, deliberated On the measures to be adopted for the common good. A Laugman, or president, in whom was vested the executive power, was elected, and displaced at the pleasure of the assembly.

During the summer~months, these hardy men tended their flocks, tilled patches of the rude soil of the island, and fished in the stormy sea; but winter brought a long season of darkness and necessary repose. To lighten the tedium of that oppressive season, they recited to their families assembled round the fire and the lamp, the descent and noble deeds of their ancestors, and described in Runic verse the lands whence they had come to Iceland in pursuit of freedom.

They had brought with them this love of genealogy and poetry, which was indeed common to the Norwegians, Danes, and all the Teutonic tribes; but in the sunless winters of Iceland, where they had scarcely any other amusement or resource, they indulged in it far more than they had done when occupying a happier climate. The effect of this was seen in the improvement of their poetry and their chronicles. In course of time, this excellence was rumored abroad, and the skalds, or bards of Iceland, were invited to foreign courts. The princes of England, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway, after entertaining them most honorably, dismissed them with wealth. "Thus," says Dr. Holland, "literature became with the Icelanders a species of commerce, in which the fruit of their mental endowment was exchanged for those foreign luxuries or comforts which nature had denied to them from their own soil *." As fishermen, the Icelanders were bold sailors; seamen were necessary to carry the skalds to the distant courts, and in this service their nautical skill was enlarged. Soon after, traders went in the train of the poets, and thus obtained for the island the advantages of an increased and increasing foreign commerce.

In the year 1000, these interesting people were converted to Christianity. About fifty years after, their first bishop founded their first school or college, and then the Roman alphabet was substituted for the rude and defective Runic characters. Three other schools soon followed, and the monasteries, which were now first erected, were so many places of education. During the latter half of the eleventh and the whole of the twelfth century, the Latin classics were diligently taught in these seminaries; and some of the poor, remote Icelanders even studied Greek. The mechanical sciences, mathematics, and astronomy, of which they felt the want in proportion as they extended their maritime adventures, were also cultivated with assiduity.

In the middle of the thirteenth century, numerous jealousies and dissensions having broken out among the chief aristocratic families, the island was, by agreement, transferred to the Norwegian Kings. In 1380, Norway itself ceased to be an independent kingdom; it was annexed to Denmark, and Iceland went with it. Both these transfers seem to have been effected without any violent shock, and to have produced few and very slight changes in the laws and government of the country. It was owing to circumstances entirely foreign to these political changes that Iceland lost her literary supremacy, which had been almost a monopoly in the north of Europe. The fact was simply this,—other countries had awakened from their sleep of barbarism, and begun to cultivate letters and sciences.

In 1402, a dreadful plague carried off two-thirds of the inhabitants of Iceland; this calamity was followed by a winter so severe, that not one-tenth part of their cattle survived it, and this loss again was followed by the depredations of certain barbarous English pirates. There was a consequent depression both in the moral and physical state of these unfortunate islanders, but neither then nor at any other period did they relapse into indolence and ignorance.

They struggled manfully with the evils that beset them, preserving in an enlightened system of internal policy, in liberal methods of education, and in a quiet, steady line of moral, blameless conduct.

The Icelanders received their first printing press in 1530, and the reformation of their religion soon followed its introduction. Their types were at first made of wood, and very rudely formed. In 1574, one of their bishops made great improvements in the printing establishment, providing new presses and types, some of which he made with his own hands. Before the conclusion of the sixteenth century, many valuable books, well printed, were published and sold through the country.

The rough, unpromising coasts of the island continued to be visited by pirates. As late as 1616 they suffered much from certain English and French freebooters, who must indeed have been monsters to plunder a people at once so poor and so inoffensive. A still heavier calamity befell them in 1627, when some Algerians found their way to this remote island, and landing on the southern coast, committed the greatest atrocities. This is one of the saddest pages in the history of the simple, yet enlightened Icelanders. Forty or fifty of them were butchered, and nearly four hundred of both sexes were carried off to the Mediterranean and sold as slaves. Nine years after, when the King of Denmark obtained their liberty by ransom, only thirty-seven of the four hundred were found alive, and of these thirty-seven only thirteen ever reached their native land.

In Iceland the eighteenth century was ushered in by a dreadful mortality from small-pox, and about fifty years later, above ten thousand deaths were occasioned by a famine. In 1789, volcanic eruptions, more terrific than had ever been seen, burst out in every direction. Deep rivers were filled up by lava; the cattle and the pastures were every where destroyed, and for more than a year a dense cloud of smoke and volcanic ashes covered the whole of the island. Even the sea was contaminated; the fisheries were destroyed, nor have they yet entirely recovered from the effects of those mighty convulsions. Famine and the small-pox following in the track of this desolation, destroyed a fourth part of the population. The island had scarcely begun to breathe from these calamities, when, as a dependence of Denmark, it found itself involved in the miseries of the last war, and saw its commerce, now indeed limited, but absolutely necessary to the existence of its inhabitants, interrupted by the powerful navy of Great Britain.

To the honor of our government, they sent instructions to our cruisers to respect, and in no ways molest, the inhabitants of the Ferro Islands, who were in a situation even worse and more helpless than that of the Icelanders; at a later period they even granted licenses to ships to trade with Iceland.

Few countries have ever been visited by such a series of misfortunes as this, and yet between 1650 and 1810, Iceland produced from two to three hundred respectable authors.

[To be concluded in the next Number.]

* Inserted in Sir George Steuart Mackenzie's 'Travels in Iceland.'

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