Tímarit Þjóðræknisfélags Íslendinga - 01.01.1936, Síða 120

102
Tímarit Þjóðrœknisfélags íslendinga
—greyness into dusk, until the
wliite wings of a gull, the small
cheery light from a boat are the
only transgressors against the
kindly darkness.
* # *
In a small village on the coast
there is no ugliness, but a beauty
as ovenvhelming as tlie drabness
of Eeykjavík; music more roman-
tic than any Wagnerian overture—
the music of the sea crashing
against the broken, rugged shore.
Deeply wrinkled black rocks with
faces of old men — unresisting',
impassive, stoical, cut the spray
that leaps like playful cliildren
upon them, only to fall back into
the sea — lifeless.
Sometimes there are great flats
of small stones, rusted by the wash
of many years, and licked by a sea
abruptly and berserkly green. But
ahvays the frame of black rocks—
a ledge of them projecting far out.
With the tide, the sea recedes, leav-
ing a stretch of darkish sand, and
twisted masses of sea-weed.
Incredible, almost capricious, is
the infinite flexibility of the land-
scape; the permutations and com-
binat-ions, given an ever-ohanging
sea, the mountains, a rocky shore,
the galaxy of colors. The warm
yellow of lamps gleams from great
windows in a purple sky before the
sun falls into the sea. Or magnifi-
cently extravagant, the sea be-
comes suddenly pink — becomes
an immense salmon, with faintly
bluish fins protruding.
Far out, the breakers move slow-
ly, even awkwardly, like a cumber-
some sea-monster, fat-bellied as in
Böcklin’s “Spiel der Wellen.” And
when it is more somberly green,
this is Böcklin’s sea. His Triton
rises out of it; Nereide suns her-
self on the rocks; the Najaden dive
laughing' into the spray.
Twelve miles inland—and death-
ly stillness everywhere. The sun
was pale gold over tlie mountains
and cast rosy shadows on tlie
Avhite-capped peaks. Tlie little
streams were clear and dark, and
almost sang tlieir way along. For
long stretches, great expanses of
snow, then eurious bump.s of earth
under a white blanket, or crouch-
ing, gnome-like rock formations.
In tlie early afternoon, the sun
began to drop. Great bars of gold
and purple splashed across the
sky, reflected themselves in the
blue deep of Borgarfjord, and
were lost in the flames of the sun.
Behind us, the last pale fingers of
lig'ht were rapidly pulling the
dusk shrouding over the moun-
tains, until the peaks, veiled in
grey, stood like ghostly norns
guarding the entrance to Ultima
Thule at the “lag end of the
world.” Over the barrier, I sus-
pect, there is no twilight of the
gods, and tlie magnificent figure
of Wotan still dominates the Val-
kyrie. Brunnliilde is seen dimly on
every mountain top. Norse myth-
ology springs from, and has its
life in such a background.
M. M.
1P TP W
But we have in Iceland more
than a vaporous mythology. We
have a solid literary tradition
based on the sagas; we have a folk-
lore replete with tlie mysticism and
superstition ,so characteristic of
our people. (And it is impossible