especially water-fowl and the larger inhabitants
of the deep, are of course but occasionally
procured and cannot be taken into
account, while speaking of the general mode
of subsistence of the Icelanders, any more
than the native vegetable productions which
are occasionally prepared for food; such as
the Angelica Archangelica, Cochlearice,
Riimices, and Dryas octopetala, with Lichens
and Fuci of two or three kinds. The
Lichen islandicus alone is sometimes eaten
in considerable quantity; but more is gathered
for exportation.
Of the amount of the population of Iceland
in early times I am ignorant, except as
far as some sort of estimate may be made
from what is mentioned by Arngrim Jonas*,
that four hundred people paid tribute in the
year 1090; but in this number neither
women,' children, nor poor were included.
In the fourteenth century a dreadful malady-}«
called the sorte dod, or black death, is reported
to have swept away almost every in-
* Arngrim Jonae Brev. Comment, de IslandiS,
t Horrebow.
habitant from off the island; so that, comprehensive
as are the annals of Iceland, this
circumstance is, omitted in them, and it is
thence inferred that no person of ability
survived to record it. The years 1697, 1698,
and 1699 were remarkable for the mortality
caused by famine, and the year 1707 for the
destruction of twenty thousand inhabitants
by the small-pox; yet in 1753 Horrebow
estimates the population at eighty thousand,
and Von Troil in 1772 at sixty thousand;
but, in consequence of the tremendous eruption
of Skaptar-Jokul in 1783 and other unfortunate
events, the number is now reduced
to forty-eight thousand. Independently of
the destructive effects of volcanoes, disease,
and famine, which so often ravage the island,
the quantity of those who die in their infancy
for want of proper nourishment is extreme.
It is remarked* that Barderstrand Syssel in
the year 1749 contained three thousand inhabitants,
but that in the short space of
thirteen years (in 1762) this amount was
diminished to two thousand one hundred
arid seventy-five. From the poverty of this
district the want of necessary nutriment for
* Voyage en hlande.
h