Reykjavík Grapevine - 16.08.2013, Síða 50

50The Reykjavík Grapevine Issue 12 — 2013
The Presence Of A People: Icelanders In 1900
by Vera Illugadóttir & Helgi Hrafn Guðmundsson
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of the D
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In the last decade of the 19th century a young
Englishman named Frederick W.W. Howell
travelled extensively in Iceland, visiting parts
of the country that were overlooked by most
other travellers and taking priceless photos
of the island and its inhabitants. Here is the
preface to a book he wrote about his trip called
‘From Icelandic Pictures Drawn With Pen And
Pencil (1893)’ and photos of some of the Icelan-
dic people that he met:

““But didn’t you find it very cold?” is a question
so often asked the writer, that he fears there are
many intelligent Englishmen yet to whom Saga
Land is little else than an ice-bound, ice-clad,
ice-capped isle, save where Hekla’s flames or
Geysir’s floods have pierced the crystalline
crust! To such, these pages will come with spe-
cial interest, revealing the wealth of historic
lore and the fulness of mountain beauty pos-
sessed by Iceland. And even the snowfields
themselves, in the hot bright summer days, be-
come dazzling fairylands, while the wild-flow-
ers at their feet can rival those of many a Swit-
zer Alp. There are few countries in which such
great changes of scenery occur within a com-
pass so limited. From pasture to desert, from
peak to sea, from ice to lava is often a transition
for which an hour may suffice. It is true that
monuments of antiquity are conspicuous only
by their absence; but the presence of a people
with the language and many of the customs of a
thousand years ago is a monument of itself….”
Helgi Hrafn Guðmundsson is one of the editors of an Icelandic web magazine called Lemúrinn (Icelandic for the
native primate of Madagascar). A winner of the 2012 Icelandic Web Awards, Lemurinn.is covers all things strange
and interesting! Go check it out at www.lemurinn.is.