Mímir. Icelandic institutions with adresses - 15.12.1903, Blaðsíða 71

NOTES ON ICELANDIC MATTERS
61
tiform mountains of Iceland can be cited here. The most re-
nowned of the volcanoes is, of course, Hekla, around which
grew up in Europe, during the middle ages, a whole world
of myths and superstitious beliefs, somewhat akin to those which
had centered, during classical pagan times, in Etna and Vesu-
vius. Hekla is, from most points of view, hardly worthy its
world-wide fame — a more or less imposing, but rather rough
and rugged eminence; while the Orasfajokull, the highest of Ice-
land’s mountains, whether fire-spouting or not (nearly 6,400 feet),
and lying in the south-east — an outpost of the vast glacial
domain of that region — soars, with icy majesty, above its many
companions. To the traveller approaching from the Faeroes,
Eyjafjallajokull, in the uttermost south, is apt to be his first
Icelandic vision; he sees before him not a few cloud-tipped
peaks, climbing finally into a noble ice-crowned summit. As,
later on, having left Hekla behind him, he rounds the island’s
southwesternmost point into the waters of the broad FaxafjorS-
ur, his eyes, looking northward, are fastened upon the Snce-
fellsjokull, in pre-historic days a fuming giant and now resem-
bling, in its outline, Mediterranean Etna, as one comes sailing
from the Levant to that towering warder of Sicily; a memor-
able mount indeed is Snaefellsjokull, even when seen across
the water from Reykjavik sixty miles away, notably when its
dome is set in the unequalled glories of an Arctic sunset; and
on the same fjord, turning toward the capital its great motley-
coloured bluffs, stands Esja, an unending delight to the eye.
Near the northernmost Jokulsa rises the ponderous-looking
HerhubreiS (the “broadshouldered”), dark-blue of hue and
steeply-sided, surmounted by its double glaciers, which, under
the sheen of the sun, become alternately masses of frosted and
masses of polished silver; and in the same quarter is the still
higher Snaefell (5,800 feet) — not to be confounded with the
western Snaffellsjokull — on which the light seems always to
fondly linger, as its far-seen summit looks down upon the