Chapter 13 Chapter Thirteen

It should be night, but at this latitude of sixty-five degrees, I shouldn't be surprised at the long days; in June and July in Iceland, the sun never sets. But the temperature has dropped; I feel colder and more hungry.The local huts opened their doors and received us politely. It was a peasant's house, but from a polite point of view it was a royal palace.As soon as we arrived, the master shook hands with us, and without any ceremony, he asked us to follow him. It was impossible to walk side by side with him.A long, narrow, dark passage led to the house of rough square beams, and this passage took us into each of the four rooms--the kitchen, the weaving room, the bedrooms, and the best guest room.The house had not been built with consideration for my uncle's stature, and unfortunately he bumped his head against the ceiling beams three or four times.

We were taken to the guest room, a large room with a floor of trampled earth and windows of spread, opaque sheepskin instead of glass.The bed is made of dry straw stacked on two red-painted wooden shelves with Icelandic proverbs written on it.I wasn't expecting extreme comfort, the room smelled of dried fish, bacon and sour milk, and my nose couldn't stand it. While we were laying our traveling gear aside, we were called by the master, who invited us into the kitchen, which alone had a stove in the coldest weather. Uncle decided to accept the friendly invitation, and I followed him.It was a primitive stove—a stone in the middle of the room, with a hole in the roof for the smoke!This kitchen also doubles as a dining room.

As soon as we entered the host greeted us by saying, Saellvertu which means "Happy You" and came and kissed us on the cheek as if he hadn't seen us yet. His wife also said the word, and such a ceremony followed; then they both placed their right hands over their hearts, and made a low bow. I hasten to add that this woman was the mother of nineteen children, large and small, all crowded in the smoke that filled the room.Every minute I see some cute little head looking worried in the smoke.It conjures up images of a group of angels who have not been cleansed. Uncle and I were very fond of these little ones, and soon two or three were on our shoulders, many wrapped around our knees, and the rest nestled between our knees.The talking child repeats, "Have fun" in every tone imaginable.Those who can't speak just yell loudly.

The concert was interrupted by the announcement of a meal.Our guide simply let the horses go out to graze, and he came back when he had arranged them; the poor ponies were content to gnaw at the scanty moss and not-so-abundant seaweed on the rocks; Automatically come back to continue working. "Happy to you," Hannes said as he entered. Then he kissed the master, the mistress, and their nineteen children in sequence, calmly and mechanically, each kiss no hotter than the other. After the ceremony was over, we all sat down, a total of twenty-four people, and it was really one on top of the other.The most honored one had two small children on his lap.

As soon as the soup arrived, our small group fell silent, and this silence, which is natural to Icelanders and even to youth, began to hang over everyone again.The host shared a soup made from lichens that was not unpalatable, followed by a large piece of dried fish soaked in sour butter, which had been preserved for more than twenty years and, according to the Icelandic concept, was better than meat. Fresh butter is more popular.There were also biscuits, and curds with juniper syrup; and for drinks, milk and water, which they called "blenders."I can't decide whether this weird meal was good or bad.All I knew was that I was hungry, so I wolfed down my last spoonful of thick buckwheat soup.

After dinner the children disappeared; the older ones gathered around the stoves burning with peat, ferns, cow dung, and dried fish bones.After warming up, everyone went back to their rooms.According to custom, the hostess came to take off our socks; and as I declined, and she did not insist, I ended up crawling into my straw bed. At five o'clock next morning we said good-bye to the Icelandic farmer; the uncle took great pains to get him to accept a proper payment, and Hannes told us to leave as soon as possible. A hundred meters from Kadan, the shape of the land began to change; it had become a swamp, and walking was more difficult.The mountains on the right continued to infinity, and appeared to be a long series of natural fortresses. We followed the outer cliffs; often some streams crossed our path, so that we had to wade across without splashing. Wet our luggage.

By this time the surroundings were growing wilder; but often a figure could be seen who seemed to be fleeing, and when the winding path brought us unexpectedly near the vicinity of one of these ghastly figures, I suddenly saw a The bald puffy head, the glistening skin, and the nasty abscesses visible through the cracks of his poor tattered clothes made me sick. The poor fellow didn't come, and didn't stretch out his deformed hand, but ran away, but not too quickly, just because he didn't want Hans to say, "Happy to you." "Leprosy!" he explained. "A leper!" repeated the uncle.

Those words alone are annoying. The dreadful and painful leprosy is endemic in Iceland; it is not contagious, but hereditary, and marriage to such unfortunates is forbidden. These phenomena can't embellish the increasingly silent scenery here, and the last few grasses under the feet are dying.Not a single tree, except some birches that were as low as bushes.There were no beasts of any kind except a few horses whose master had no fodder to feed and therefore roamed about in the fields.Sometimes, the eagle soars on the gray clouds, and flies quickly to the sunnier place; I am completely absorbed in the sad scene unique to this wild place, and the memory brings me back to my hometown.

We were fortunate enough to cross several small and one large fjords just when the tide was in our favor, and found we had to spend the night in a desolate house, which belongs to the Norse mythology. A proper abode for all goblins; and here, naturally, the Frost-Fiend found his abode, and so sprinkled his frost-powder at night. There was no particular adventure the next day—same swamp, same gloomy landscape.That evening, however, we were halfway through the journey to Snaef, and we slept in Closhardbert. On June 19, the lava under our feet was almost a mile long; the wrinkles on the surface of the lava were like anchor chains, sometimes stretched out, sometimes curled up; there were huge waterfalls in the valleys, which proved the former activity of these now extinct volcanoes .The water vapor that is now rising here and there indicates the heat flow in the subsurface.

We did not have time to investigate these phenomena; we had to rush forward.The swampland criss-crossed by small lakes soon reappeared at the feet of our ponies.Our current direction is due west—we have circled Faxa Harbor for a week, and the white twin peaks of Snaefer appear in the clouds, about twenty miles away from us. The horse walked well and was not blocked by obstacles on the ground.I was beginning to get tired, but my uncle was still as energetic as the first day. He and the guide treated this expedition as a small trip, and I had to admire them. At six o'clock in the evening on June 20, we arrived at a village on the shore of Bautier, and Hans asked us for the agreed salary.Uncle lives with him.This is his own home, and they—including his uncle and cousins—are very polite; we are well received, and before they kindly invite me, I would like to take a rest at their home to recover from the fatigue of the journey .Uncle didn't need to recover from fatigue, however, nor would he think about it, so next morning we mounted our faithful pony again.

The ground here showed that it was not far from Snaefer, its granite roots sticking out of the ground like the fibrous roots of an old oak tree.We are approaching the huge base of the volcano.The professor kept looking at it, gesticulating as if he didn't think much of it, and saying: "That's the giant we want to conquer!" Finally, the horse automatically stopped in front of the priest's mansion in Stanby.