What’s remarkable about Icelandic soil is not above but underneath.”

I went out, and wandered wherever chance happened to lead me.

It would not be easy to lose your way in Reykjavik. So I had no need to ask for directions, which leads to many mistakes in the language of gestures.

The town extends over low and marshy ground between two hills. An immense bed of lava borders on it on one side, and falls gently towards the sea. On the other side lies the vast bay of Faxa, bounded in the north by the enormous glacier of the Snaefells, where the Valkyrie was at the moment the only ship at anchor. Usually the English and French fish-patrols anchor here, but just then they were cruising on the eastern coast of the island.

The longer one of Reykjavik’s two streets runs parallel to the beach; here live the merchants and traders, in wooden cabins made of horizontal red boards; the other street, further west, leads to a little lake between the houses of the bishop and other non-commercial people.

I had soon explored these bleak and sad streets. Here and there I caught a glimpse of a bit of faded lawn, looking like an old wool carpet worn out by use, or of some semblance of a kitchen garden whose sparse vegetables, potatoes, cabbages, and lettuce, would have seemed appropriate for a Lilliputian table. A few sickly wallflowers were also trying to look as if they were graced by sunshine.

Toward the middle of the non-commercial street I found the public cemetery, enclosed by a mud wall, where it seemed plenty of room was left. Then, a few steps further, I arrived at the Governor’s house, a farmhouse compared to the town hall of Hamburg, a palace in comparison with the cabins of the Icelandic population.

Between the little lake and the town stood the church, built in Protestant style with burnt stones taken from the volcanoes themselves; in strong western winds its red roof tiles would obviously be scattered in the air, endangering the faithful.

From a neighboring hillside I saw the national school where, as I was informed later by our host, Hebrew, English, French, and Danish were taught, four languages of which, to my disgrace, I don’t know a single word.y I would have been last among the forty students at this little college, and unworthy of going to bed along with them in one of those closets with two compartments, where the more delicate would die of suffocation the very first night.

In three hours I had visited not only the town but its surroundings. Their aspect was peculiarly melancholy. No trees, no vegetation worth mentioning. Everywhere the bare edges of volcanic rocks. The Icelanders’ huts are made of earth and peat, and the walls lean inward. They resemble roofs placed on the ground. But these roofs are relatively fertile meadows. Due to the heat of the house, the grass grows there almost perfectly, and is carefully mown in the hay season; otherwise domestic animals would come to pasture on top of these green abodes.

During my excursion I met few people. When I returned to the commercial street I saw the greater part of the population busy drying, salting, and loading codfish, their main export item. The men seemed robust but heavy, blond Germans of sorts with pensive eyes, who feel a bit outside the rest of mankind, poor exiles relegated to this land of ice, whom nature should have created as Eskimos, since it had condemned them to live just outside the arctic circle! In vain did I try to detect a smile on their faces; they laughed sometimes with a kind of involuntary contraction of the muscles, but they never smiled.

Their clothes consisted of a coarse jacket of black wool called ‘vadmel’ in Scandinavian countries, a hat with a very broad brim, trousers with a narrow edge of red, and a piece of leather folded up as a shoe.

The women, with sad and resigned faces of a pleasant but expressionless type, wore a bodice and skirt of dark ‘vadmel’: unmarried women wore a little knitted brown cap over their braided hair; married women tied a colored handkerchief around their heads, topped with a peak of white linen.

After a good walk I returned to Mr. Fridriksson’s house, where I found my uncle already in the company of his host.

X

DINNER WAS READY; IT was eagerly devoured by Professor Lidenbrock, whose compulsory fast on board had converted his stomach into a deep chasm. The meal, more Danish than Icelandic, was unremarkable in and of itself; but our host, more Icelandic than Danish, reminded me of the heroes of ancient hospitality. It seemed obvious that we were more at home than he was himself.

The conversation was carried on in the local language, which my uncle mixed with German and Mr. Fridriksson with Latin for my benefit. It turned on scientific questions, as befits scholars; but Professor Lidenbrock was excessively reserved, and his eyes at every sentence enjoined me to keep the most absolute silence regarding our future plans.

In the first place Mr. Fridriksson asked what success my uncle had had at the library.

“Your library!” exclaimed the latter. “It consists of nothing but a few tattered books on almost empty shelves.”

“How so!” replied Mr. Fridriksson. “We possess eight thousand volumes, many of them valuable and rare, works in the ancient Scandinavian language, and we have all the new publications that Copenhagen provides us with every year.”

“Where do you keep your eight thousand volumes? For my part—”

“Oh, Mr. Lidenbrock, they’re all over the country. In this old island of ice, we are fond of study! There’s not a farmer or a fisherman who cannot read and doesn’t read. We believe that books, instead of growing moldy behind an iron grating, should be worn out under the eyes of readers. So these volumes pass from one to another, are leafed through, read and reread, and often they find their way back to the shelves only after an absence of a year or two.”

“And in the meantime,” said my uncle rather spitefully, “foreigners—”

“What can you do! Foreigners have their libraries at home, and the most important thing is that our farmers educate themselves.

I repeat, the love of studying runs in Icelandic blood.