The Iceland year-book - 01.01.1926, Blaðsíða 13

Longing thy song to know,
Valiant and sweet".*
The scenic beauties of Iceland are endless and
ever-varied, hut the beauty of some of the natural
phenomena is no less striking and extraordinary.
The grandest of all these — the Northern Lights
when at their best — is but seldom seen by for-
eign visitors, for few of them are sufficiently late
in the season to observe this phenomenon, and
those who have witnessed it have, as a rule, shrunk
from the impossible task of giving any adequate
description. When the entire vault of the sky is an
ocean of undulating flames displaying all the colours
of the rainbow, it is surely one of the noblest sights
mortal eyes ever looked upon; it is a worthy
subject for a great poet, hut had better be left un-
touched by the average writer.
Another phenomenon which has left many a
beholder speechless with wonderment is the Ice-
landic sunset (and sunrise). Pen-pictures of this
have often been attempted; as one of
Lord Bryce the most successful may be quoted
quoted. Lord Bryce’s description of an even-
ing in the desert of Central Iceland
in 1872, especially as it at the same time touches
upon the indescribable sight of the Northern
Lights:
,,The sun went down as we entered the majestic
sand-strewn portal between the two Jokulls, and
the eastern one, on whose snows his light lingered
longest, glowed with colours more glorious than
any we could remember in the Alps; the rose
* Miss E. J. Oswald: By Fell and Fjord. London 1882.
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