Mímir. Icelandic institutions with adresses - 15.12.1903, Blaðsíða 88

I 78 NOTES ON ICELANDIC MATTERS
I
will secure this — not to speak of what, with the diminishing coal !
deposits of the neighbouring countries, may ultimately prove of
inestimable value — the available force of its very numerous water-
falls, so rich in water and so high in fall, which has been calcula-
ted at some thousands of millions of horse-power.
Iceland’s new Coat of Arms. — Simultaneously with the
1. signing of the act establishing the above-mentioned new clauses
of the constitution — which go into operation with the beginning
; of 1904 — the king of Denmark has sanctioned the adoption
of a new coat of arms for the Icelandic state. Its old one, which
is to be seen in certain old books, printed in Iceland or else- [
where, was of a very quaint design. It represented a stock-fish,
such as, caught so numerously in Icelandic waters, is sent, dried
and clipped, to all quarters of the globe. It was crowned and
emblazoned upon a proper shield, though it was never so con-
ventionalized by the heralds as to give it the grace which even
ugly objects assume when thus treated. In modern times it
has been little used, although it is displayed over the door of
the national Althing’s House at Reykjavik. But Icelandic taste
in escutcheons has, of late, turned from the sea to the air, and
so the king has proclaimed that the new armorial bearings
shall be a falcon, the largest native bird of prey. The falco
islandims is a sort of cousin german to the gerfalcon — the
true gerfalcon being Greenlandic or Norwegian; and something
like a depot of these birds used to be kept, we believe, at
Bessastadir or Reykjavik, whence the Danish kings, in the days
! of falconry, were wont to obtain specimens for the sports of
the Danish and other courts. Whether the design for the new
emblem of Iceland’s nationality hasyet passed through the hands
of any learned heraldic authorities, that it may be properly and
fittingly displayed, is not known. The description in the newspa-
pers simply says, that it consistsof a white falcon on a blue ground.
We are not told whether the falcon is to be flying or at rest,
couchant or rampant. The arms will doubtless be employed