the only Englishmen who have suffered from
the hospitality of the Geheime Etatsroed;
for, since the first edition of this work was
printed, I have had the honor of becoming
acquainted with Sir John Stanley, at whose
table I once had the pleasure of meeting
Sir Joseph Banks and Mr. Bright; thus
being one of four persons, each of whom, in
the course of forty years, had made a separate
voyage to Iceland; and each, too, had fresh
in his memory the events of the day on
which he partook of the feast of the same
noble Icelander. I do not recollect the ceremony
of the goblet of wine, which, according
to Mr. Bright, took place when he and
his friends were at Vid5e, but I well remember
that the old gentleman made us
strike our tumbler-like wine glasses with our
finger nail, that we might convince the company,
by the vibration of the glass, that we
had drunk off the last drop of liquor. At
table we were waited upon by two females*,
so exceedingly handsomely dressed, that I
* As I had this day, for the first time, an opportunity
of observing carefully the dress of an Icelandic
lady, which is different from that of other countries, I
shall avail myself of the present occasion of describing
concluded they were not common servants,
and I afterwards understood that my conjectures
were right, and that it was always
the custom for the ladies of the house to
it at some length; a thing I am the better able to do,
since I had the good fortune to bring one of the richest
in the island safe to England with me. I have
preserved, also, an Icelandic account of the different
articles it is composed of; from an English translation
of which, that the governor has been so good as
to procure me, I have borrowed a great part of what
follows. To begin then with the Faldur, or head-dress:
this is the most singular and unbecoming part, and I
feel such a difficulty in making my description of it intelligible,
that I think it right to annex
an engraving of it. The inside is composed
of a number of pieces of paper,
folded into an oblong shape, and neatly
covered with two white linen handkerchiefs,
in such a way that, below the
bottom of the paper, they are formed
into a sort of cap, that fits the head,
and goes on nearly as far as the ears,
which are, however, always exposed,
whilst the hair is carefully twisted into
a knot on the crown of the head, and
entirely concealed. From the top of
the head to the extremity, the Faldur
measures eighteen inches, and, from a cylindrical shape
below, becomes gradually compressed, till the upper
part is quite flat, and bends over in the front in a man