Saga - 1980, Blaðsíða 185

VIÐHORF ÍSLENDINGA TIL SKOTLANDS OG SKOTA 173
At the outset tlie course of Scoto-Icelandic relations is outlined.
After close contacts in the Middle Ages the two nations did not
have extensive dealings with each other until the mid-nineteenth
century. Since then the Icelanders and the Scots have had impox-tant
^elations in various fields, especially in trade, culture and farming,
and many Icelanders have gone to Scotland to study there.
Some of the people referred to in the ai-ticle spent a relatively
long time in Scotland and came to know the country and the people
fairly well. Many of the available sources, however, are derived from
People who made only a brief stop in Scotland on their way to a dif-
ferent destination in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centu-
ries> i-e. students on their way to Copenhagen and emigrants on their
Way to North America. These people had usually not been abroad be-
f°re, which colours their descriptions of Scotland; they had, for ex-
ai*iple, no previous experience of large towns. There is a pattern in
fhat the accounts of people who have come to Scotland since the First
World War reveal more acquaintance with the outside world in
S'öneral, but in other ways the accounts of most of the Icelanders
Who visited Scotland in the period under review are basically on the
same lines.
Ihe writers in question often comment on people in Scotland and
various aspects of life there as well as on individual parts of the
c°untry. There are many accounts from Edinburgh and Glasgow
and sorne from other parts of Scotland such as The Borders, Ayr-
s ire, Perthshire, The Northern Highlands, The Hebrides, Orkney
aad ^hetland. Scotland — or individual parts of the country — is
en compared with Iceland, and in some cases a certain physical
löularity is pointed out. On the whole the Icelanders speak favour-
y of the Scots, suggesting that as a nation they possess many
ltlve characteristics such as friendliness and reliability. Some
the visitors mention the blood relationship between the two na-
y^ns’ especially with regard to the Shetlanders, the Orcadians and
fi'e Hcbrideans. The Icelanders, however, were on the whole not as
.0riSci0Us of their kinship with the Scots as with the Irish and,
°Peciallyj the Scandinavians.
ai'ious Icelanders wh,o were associated with farming were
ly lmpressed with Scottish farming and thought that they had a
rleat leal to leam from the Scots in that field, especially as
gards animal husbandry. Not only do they point out the high
ndard of Scottish farming; they also emphasize that farming
j dions in Scotland are less different from those in Iceland than
Ic lng con<Iitions in various other neighbouririg countries. Some
anders in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries