Mímir. Icelandic institutions with adresses - 15.12.1903, Síða 68

58 NOTES ON ICELANDIC MATTERS
over his surprise at learning that God has given the sun to
this favoured land for a light by night as well as by day. At
midnight he reads his guide-book, or gazes at the landscape,
near or far, with the same ease and enjoyment as at midday.
If he be early enough, he may still see a pale aurora shim-
mering in the firmament, but for a sight of that phenomenon
in its full magnificence, wrapping the whole sky in a mantle
of overwhelming and ever-shifting beauty — of which dwellers
in lower latitudes can form no adequate conception - he must
wait until the nights have grown longer and darker in the last
fortnight of August and through the months of September and
October. As he becomes more familiar with his surroundings
he will discover, if he be English, that he is acquiring a clearer
notion than he has ever had of the life led by his Anglo-Saxon
ancestors, and that he is really making the acquaintance of a
yeomanry as sturdy as that of the early English ages. If the
Althing be in session at Reykjavik, and he enter the capitol
to listen to its debates, he finds himself in the presence of the
oldest existing legislative assembly — dating back to the days
when the Witenagemot of his forefathers was still making the
laws of England. From day to day, as he journeys, he will
note along his path so many objects, delightful or startling to
his vision, that they cannot all be enumerated in the lines we
are writing. Among the first of them may very likely be the
strange features of the worlds of lava and basalt. The wide-
extending plains of the former, the vast dykes resulting from
the sudden cooling of its streams, the fantastic masses which
they pile up as they flow, and above all such singular gorges
as . the Almannagja and the Hrafnagja - - less than a day’s ride
from the capital — will overwhelm him with their strangeness.
Farther on, in the north, are the clefts of the Asbyrgi — that
rocky wonder — with its charming accessories, such as the cool
green of trees in its sheltered depths; while the unending lava
levels he traverses in reaching it, and which extend into many