The Iceland year-book - 01.01.1926, Blaðsíða 31

with travellers of many generations, has ceased,
since the earthquake of 1896, to exhibit its peculiar
powers, but Geysir yet has, in the same plain,
more than fifty lesser companions. Far south, near
the sea, was, till lately, another spouting well
called the Little Geysir, but it too, has nearly
suspended its operations, rising only occasionally
when Hekla shows some sign of life. Of other
boiling sources the number is infinite, as the list of
places on the map containing the word reykur
(reek, steam) or one of its derivatives suf-
ficiently indicates. One western
Snorri Sturluson’s valley, the Reykholtsdalur, is
Residence. particularly noted for its many
visible columns of steam. In
the middle of one of its streams stands a quaint
pile of tufa (calcium carbonate), raised by the
deposits of a tiny geysir issuing from its top to a
height of some feet, while at other places steam
floats up from fissures in the bottom of the stream.
Farther up the valley, near the farmstead and
church of Reykholt, the residence and death-place
of Snorri Sturluson, Iceland’s formost son, there
are two considerable steaming fountains, one of
which (Skrifla) still feeds the great bath, con-
structed of large blocks of hewn stone by
the celebrated sagaman of the thirteenth
century. Of the other sites of this sort,
historically noteworthy are the warm baths of
Reykjalaug some miles west of the Althing plain,
and those of Krossberg north of the same spot, in
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