The Iceland year-book - 01.01.1926, Síða 34

Commenting upon Iceland as a
Iceland as a summer sanatorium, Prof. Fiske
Health Resort, writes: „Those who are best ac-
quainted with the great northern
island most fully appreciate the remarkable union
of natural qualities and influences which make its
climate, in the year’s warmest months, absolutely
the best attainable (taking the ease of access into
account) by the inhabitants of the overcrowded
cities and districts of north-western Europe for
the purpose of a sanitary or restorative sojourn.
To enumerate or dwell on the features of Iceland
which make this statement true, is not possible in
the restricted space at the command of the writer.
A few of the more salient can alone be passed in
review. The foremost are the
Clearness of extraordinary purity, clearness
the Atmosphere, and, in summer, general dryness
of the atmosphere — pure by
reason of its freedom from the taint of dust and
other contaminations of civic communities, and
because of its clarifications, every eight or ten days,
even in the warmest season, by a strong wind; clear
to such an extent that through it mountains are
visible and recognizable a hundred miles away; and
dry because it is permeated, often for long periods,
by twenty hours of sunshine in every twenty-four,
the effect of which even light showers, or a suc-
cession of light showers, or an occasional moun-
tain-born storm, does not essentially modify, since,
as has been said, it takes much rain to wash out
a northern sun. This presence of unsullied at-
mospheric medium, previously tempered by the
glaciers and the sea, and then pervaded all the
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