The Iceland year-book - 01.01.1926, Blaðsíða 14

perhaps less vivid than that which burns at dawn
upon the Silberhorn, but with an infinitely varied
and tender alternation of violet and purple, opal,
and pink and orange, passing from one tint to an-
other in swift iridescent pulses till they died away
into chilly blue. Darkness had hardly descended,
before what had seemed a steel-grey bank of cloud
in the north-east turned to an auroral arch, which
soon shot forth its streamers across the zenith,
throbbing and glancing from one side of heaven
to the other, and flinging themselves into exuber-
ant folds and curves of vaporous light."
Few foreign writers have ever possessed such
intimate and all-embracing know-
Professor ledge of Iceland and matters Ice-
Willard Fiske landic as the late Prof. Willard
on Iceland. Fiske. An authority of such in-
ternational standing is worth
quoting, and an extensive quotation from one of
his luminous essays will, therefore, hardly be
judged amiss here. He writes as follows:—
,,When a traveller in the arctic Thule* returns
home and becomes reminiscent, it is difficult for
him to avoid the language of exaggeration. If he
has sailed all around the island, and has, besides,
wandered up and down its interior, he has seen a
new world, has observed a surprising number of
new objects, and has lived through a new life. If
it be not all beautiful, it is all fascinating — al-
though sometimes with the fascination of awe. For 4
there is no country, travelled of man, which com-
bines as Iceland does, the antagonistic marvels of
* The Thule (Ultima Thule) of the ancient Greek and
Roman writers has commonly been identified with Iceland.
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