Mímir. Icelandic institutions with adresses - 15.12.1903, Síða 73

NOTES ON ICELANDIC MATTERS 63
numerous class of castle-like elevations is the Stora Borg (or
Borgarvirki) in the VWidalur, bearing aloft its high encircling
ramparts of thick-set basaltic columns, out of which a historical
tradition will have it that, just after the tenth century of our
era had passed away, a hero of the saga epoch made a real
fortress, and long and stoutly defended it. But there is left
here only room enough to catalogue, in a disordered way, a
few more of these multitudinous mountains — Arnarfellsjokull,
really a section of the far-extending Hofsjokull, sending forth
its score of glaciers; Langjokull in mid-Iceland, boasting half
a score more, and in the western snows of which lies that
cold, almost inaccessible valley, once lighted and warmed by
the hues and fires of fancy, the legend-rich Thorisdalur; Torfajok-
ull, its base fringed with clusters of steaming hot springs, and
lying in easy sight of Hekla; Eirlksjokull, from which came,
long ago, many of those tongues of lava, which lie in the upper
valleys of the historic Hvltfi, and which are described by a late
traveller as being beds “filled in all their hollows with pretty
foliage and flowers, and the contrast of the dainty blossoms
and ferns with the rugged black caves and clefts, in which
they are sheltered, gives a curious and unexpected poetry to the
scene” — but this is a picture again and again repeated on the
more ancient lava levels; *Glama and the Drangjokull, which
raise from the elevated plateau of the north-western peninsula,
their snowy cupolas and buttresses, the latter, morever, pushing
down its flowing glaciers almost to the water’s edge by the
harsh and inhospitable Hornstrandir, where the so-styled Drang-
ar, a series of gigantic pointed pyramids stretch out into the
icy sea and give their name to the loftier peak. — Of the most
observable features which characterize the fire and ice jokull-
regions may be especially cited the expanses of lava, large
and small, already passingly alluded to, such as the vast Odfida-
hraun (the “desert of evil deeds”) — once peopled, in the
popular imagination, by desperate outlaws; the long, grassless