dark, you come to others which branch off to
the right and left, and communicate to the
different chambers or rather cabins, of which
the whole house * is composed. One or
two are occupied as sleeping-rooms, where
two or more beds, elevated about four feet
from the ground, are placed by the side of
the wall, the head of one touching the foot
* Sir George Mackenzie gives the following strongly-
drawn picture of an Icelandic house., which, unfortunately,
is applicable to too many of them: ■<f the thick
turf walls, the earthen floors, kept continually damp and
filthy, and the personal uncleanliness of the inhabitants,
all unite in causing a smell insupportable to a stranger.
No article of furniture seems to have been cleaned since
the day it was first used; and all is in disorder. The beds
look like receptacles for dirty rags, and when wooden
dishes, spinning-wheels, and other articles are not seen
upon them, these are confusedly piled up at one end of
the room. There is no mode of ventilating any part of
the house; and as twenty people sometimes.eat and sleep
in the same apartment, very pungent vapors are added,
in no small quantity, to the plentiful effluvia proceeding
from fish, bags of oil, skins, &c. A farm-house looks
more like a village than a single habitation. Sometimes
several families live enclosed within the same mass of
turf. The cottages of the lowest order of people are
wretched hovels: so very wretched that it is wonderful
how any thing in the human form can breathe in them.”
Travels in Iceland, p. 115.
of another. The bedstead is made of boards,
and has high boards on the side, so that,
except in being larger, it differs but little
from such as are frequently seen in ships’
cabins. Curtains, and all other kinds of
bed-furniture, are unknown. The beds
themselves are either of down, or are merely
a loose heap of Zoster a marina, over which
are thrown three or four thick coarse pieces
of wadmal. One room is appropriated to
the loom, another serves as a sitting-room,
and a third as a kitchen, where the fire is
made of turf, or, as is the case at Thinge-
valle, of small twigs of birch. Sometimes,
also, the same entrance leads to the dairy,
but the priest of Thingevalle had his in a
detached building, differing, however, in no
respect from the rest, where the milk and
cream were kept in large square shallow
wooden troughs, standing upon stools all
round the apartment. The fish-house, in
which, besides the dried fish, wool, clothes,
tallow, saddles, and the few implements of
husbandry, are placed, is considerably larger
than the other rooms, to which, however, it
is united, but has a separate enti'ance. The
fronts of all thdfee places resemble the gable