The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

ICELAND. 27The present population are almost exclusively of Norwegian origin, althoughtheir language is now pure Danish. Their ancestors were exiles and shipwreckedseafarers, who arrived during the second half of the ninth century. Nearly allthe men are tall, robust, and healthy ; many reach a great age, thanks to theirsimple lives ;and disease or malformations are very rare. They are generally of agrave, almost stern disposition, harmonizing well with their surroundings, yet arevery hospitable, although looking with some alarm on the arrival of strangerswho have so often introduced epidemics amongst them. Travellers stopping atThorshavn, the chief seaport of the Archipelago, are always well received, andhailed as messengers from the civilised world by the Danish officials banished tothese lands from their beloved Copenhagen.The group comprises six districts—Stromo, Nordero, Ostero, Vaago, Sando,and Siidero. The people elect a local assembly, and are represented in theCopenhagen Chambers.II.—ICELAND.General Aspects.— Glaciers.This Danish island, three times larger, but far less populous than the state towhich it belongs, is almost uninhabited, except in the neighbourhood of the coasts.Although ethnically forming part of the Scandinavian world, it seems, like theFaroer, to belong in other respects to the British Isles. Separated from Norway bywaters in some places over 2,000 fathoms deep, it is connected with the Faroer andHebrides by banks and ridges nowhere 550 fathoms below the surface. But, owingto its central position in the North Atlantic, Iceland is completely isolated fromthe rest of Europe. It lies nearer to the New "World, of which it might almostseem to be a dependency, though still decidedly European in its fauna and flora,the plateau on which it rests, and the history of its inhabitants. Originally calledSnjoland (" Snowland"), it received its present appellation from the Norse navigatorFloki, owing to the masses of floating ice often surrounding it.The interior has not yet been entirely explored. Covered with ice andsnow-fields, pierced with active craters, enveloped in rugged streams of lava,guarded by rapid torrents and shifting sands, the central uplands are extremelyinaccessible, and it was only so recently as 1874 that the Vatna-Jokull plateau, onthe east side, was for the first time explored, and its highest ridge ascended.These hitherto unknown regions were for the natives lands of mystery and fable,and here might be placed the city of Asgard, mentioned in the cosmogony of theEdda. Even amongst the educated classes the tradition still lingers of adelightful retreat, a "garden of the Ases," hidden away in some remote valley inthe centre of the island.Iceland is, on the whole, a somewhat elevated land, the interior being occupiedwith plateaux, while volcanic mountains occur beyond the limits of the uplands inthe peninsulas. One of the loftiest summits is the Snaefells-Jokull (4,702 feet), a