Árbók Landsbókasafns Íslands - Nýr flokkur - 01.01.1991, Page 85

GEORGE WEBBE DASENT
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Iceland’s rights & wrongs with great interest & if I can give you a
lift as I dare say I can I will. The great lift to Iceland will be the
increased intercourse now springing up between England & your
island, & though this may in some respects spoil the simplicity of
some of your countrymen it cannot fail to be attended with benefit
to the community at large. I have no time for more just now, but I
beg you to answer this one question by return of post; you have
marked öndvegi a æðra bekk thus & this is just where I should have
put it, but Sigurðr30 has put it on the other side or on the right hand
as you turn in to the Hall. His list is thus a öndvegi á óæðra b[ekk] b
öndvegi á æðra b[ekk]. One would have thought that a would have
been the upper level & b the lower. Also did houses stand nortli &
south or were they built facing all points of the Compass. I have got
the Thingfield all right. There will be maps & plans to your heart’s
content in my Njála.
[undated 1]. All right. I am rather too old a bird to be caught by
chaff & I believe Iceland could do less for herself without
Denmark than Ireland could without England; that is less than not
at all. At the same time you need not be so savage with poor
Guðbrandr. There was nothing of a conspiracy in his letter,31 & I
took it to be a letter which he might well write to me & receive after
the many letters which have passed between us. As for any harm
tliat might happen even if he had the ill intentions you speak of,
you surely know how hard it is to get our people here to enter into
the details of the Holstein & Schlesvig quarrel & therefore... you
know what likelihood there is of the Times taking up Iceland’s
cause in a revolutionary sense against Denmark. So I beg that you
will forgive Vigfússon & neither look upon him or me as Guy
Fawkes & Catesby.32 Not so long ago you yourself were rather a
young Icelander & I am sorry to see that you a[re] settling down
into a fat Bureaucrat. I am not; I am still as young as I ever was. At
present I must own I am more interested in Gauk Thrandil’s son &
why Asgrim killed his fosterbrother; in whether Sigurðr
30. Sigurður Guðmundsson (1833-74), the Reykjavík artist and engraver responsible for
the four plates. The plate referred to here is opposite Dasent, 1861, p.c.
31. Unidentified.
32. Guy Fawkes (1570-1606) and Robert Catesby (1573-1605); conspirators to blow up
the Houses of Parliament in London in 1605 during what became known as the
Gunpowder Plot.