bed of Sphagnum latifolium, intermixed
with Hydrocotyle vulgaris, and the elegant
little Epilobium alpinum, then in full blossom.
Our course had hitherto been westerly,
but we now turned our faces to the
south, and looked towards Skalholt, pursuing
a tolerably good track, which led us through
a less boggy soil to the house of the priest
whom we had met at Haukardal, and whom
we now found busily engaged in cutting
peat * from a neighboring morass for his winter
fuel, dressed in clothes made of undied
worsted, with along blue cap upon his head.
The church, hard by, however, which contained
his wardrobe, afforded this worthy
man a suit of black wadmal, in which he
attired himself to accompany us to Skalholt.
It required some caution to wade
through the morass which lay between us
and that place, but the immediate entrance
to the small cluster of houses that com*
The instrument used for this purpose is called
Torf-Liaar, and is well figured in the Atlas of the
Voyage en Islande, tab. 8. f . 3. In shape it is not
much unlike an instrument used in this country for
cutting hay on the stack, and it is employed in the same
way.
posed this village, which was but a few years
ago the residence of the bishops, and
the capital of Iceland, was, if possible,
still worse, being an extremely wet and
boggy soil, interspersed with large pieces of
rock. One good turf house, and three or
four smaller ones are, besides the church, all
that now remains of the town. The adjacent
country is by no means pleasant,
though grass is tolerably abundant. Immediately
surrounding Skalholt we remarked
the ground formed into a number of little
hills, among which was to be seen here and
there the steam arising from some hot-
springs, and on the opposite shores of the
river Hvitaa, which is here of considerable
width, is situated a small and rather grassy
mountain, In the south-east, over a low
range of hills, Hecla reared its head full in
our view, covered with snow, more than
half way down from the summit. We had
scarcely pitched our tents, when a handsome
young widow, of the name of Joneson,
richly dressed in the Icelandic fashion, came
down and invited us to her house, where she
set before us some Ren, or rye-pottage, in a
turenne, and a basin of cream and sugar. It