Iceland: Horseback tours in saga land. W. S. C. Russell
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Cutting up Whale Meat at Thorshavn.
Heads of the Bottle Nose Whale.
In Thorshaven and in the larger villages there are schools. There is also a Teacher’s College in the capital city. The people have local option in educational matters and many prefer to teach their children at home. If it is voted to have a school in a given village, then all the children must attend it, the parents must supply a teacher and provide sufficient pasturage for one cow for the use of the teacher, but the government pays the meager salary.
The results of their home education are excellent; the children study for the sake of knowledge. The most simple ones have a good knowledge of history and geography. The law requires that the church services, the village schools and the proceedings of the Lagthing be conducted in Danish. On all other occasions the Faroeman uses his own language. They use the Danish only upon compulsion. There is a strong anti-Danish feeling which is kept alive by the supercilious behavior and affected superiority of the resident Danes, who, however, in politeness, integrity and hospitality are inferior to the Faroese. The Danes in Faroe are not to be confounded by the reader with the Danes resident in Denmark.
The people are stoutly built, with fair complexions, usually handsome, mostly short in stature, broad shouldered and rugged, descendants of the ancient Norse Vikings who settled in Faroe prior to the settlement of Iceland. They have kept the race pure. If asked his nationality, the Faroeman proudly replies—“I am a Faroeman.”
The men have a national costume, which is shown in the frontispiece of this volume. This suit I purchased of Peter Arge in Thorshaven. I asked him where I could obtain one of these suits and he took me to the little bed room at the top of his house and asked me to try on his best suit. I did it and found that it fitted closely, and so it was in style in Thorshaven. He willingly sold it saying that he could make another during the winter when there was no work. A brief description of this costume is not out of place at this point. It consists of knickerbockers, slashed at the knee and secured with four silver buttons and a broad, double-hinged silver buckle. The waistcoat is scarlet, fastened with six silver buttons. A continuous spray of forget-me-nots, daintily worked with colored silk, extends down each edge of the waistcoat and across the two diminutive pockets. A tightly fitting jersey of homespun, with twenty-four silver buttons, twelve on a side, is put over the waistcoat and over this, in cold weather, is worn a short heavy jacket fastened with silver buttons of large size. This is used much as we use an overcoat. The cap is of closely woven material in fine stripes of red and blue; it has no visor, is cylindrical in shape and gathered at the top in the form of a rosette, which is pulled down on the right hand side and fastened at the edge of the cap. Thick, homespun stockings of soft wool and sheepskin slippers—or sometimes a Danish shoe with silver buckles—fastened around the ankles with red or white cord complete the costume. No—the Faroeman is not fully “dressed” without his beautifully inlaid knife in a highly ornamented sheath fastened to his belt with a twisted cord. This knife, as well as scores of similar knives from Faroe, was made by Mr. Arge, who is expert at inlaying shell, silver and wood. The suit was made in his own family and his daughter embroidered the waistcoat. The Faroese women, like the Icelandic men, have no national costume.
The people are very seclusive. Many families claim descent from the ancient Kings of Norway and Scotland, and will marry only among themselves. They are so clannish that the people on one island rarely marry with those of another island. To illustrate—A woman born on Strömö married a man from Nalsö. The result was that she was boycotted by all the Nalsö people. Contrary to the dogma of the medical fraternity this inbreeding has not produced extremely abnormal offspring. Mental, moral and physical degeneration has not resulted from this long series of close inbreeding.
The language of the Faroese must be classed as a dialect. Although having the same origin as the Icelandic tongue, it differs strongly in pronunciation. In the Viking days the same speech was employed in Norway, Faroe and in Iceland. Icelandic has remained nearly pure but Faroe, being in close contact with Shetland, Orkney and with the numerous fishermen, its language has been much adulterated. Faroe has its Sagas as well as Iceland, Norway and Orkney, but there were no Sagamen or historians as in Iceland. The modern Faroese dialect has been written less than eighty years. The ballads, folklore and traditions are now being reduced to writing by the scholars and many French, English, Danish and Icelandic works have been translated.
The Faroese have escaped the demoralizing influences of the continent and for centuries have lived simply and quietly along the lines of their ancient customs. Their hospitality is generous, their courtesy to strangers extensive, their inborn honesty is perfect. The people, when not engaged in fish curing or in whale dissection, are clean and their homes are models of tidiness. Their centuries of isolation and peaceful living have eradicated every trace of the cruelty, piracy and murderous tendencies of their Viking progenitors. They have some vices—what nation has none? They lack originality, their ambition and energy is at a low ebb, they take life as a matter of fact and do not worry. They surpass all other people in their love of gossip and in sarcasm. There is a lack of gaiety and a tendency towards melancholy. If climate has any effect upon the spirits of a race, surely the heavy fogs, that hang over these islands for weeks and saturate everything with chilling moisture, are responsible for the melancholy. The long, dark winters, the continuous roar of ocean through these ancient fiords is also responsible for the mental cast of the race. But, they have a peculiar humor and are fond of joking each other. This is a trait inherited from their Viking ancestors and this trait is strong in Iceland. The people dislike very much to be laughed at or to pose as objects of curiosity before the gaze of the foreigner. It was with the greatest difficulty that I obtained my series of one hundred photographs of these people and their homes.
Conservatism is their prevailing characteristic. Some European method or idea may be better than their own, but they cling to their ancient customs as their bird catchers to the cliffs. They build their houses as did their grandfathers because their grandfathers constructed their dwellings after the designs of more remote generations. Birch bark is still imported from Norway to cover the drift-wood rafters and over this is placed a layer of turf where the grass grows throughout the year and the flowers bloom in profusion in the long summer. The ancient wooden weighing beam, the quaint antique iron lamp for train oil, the implements of the forge, the fishing tackle, the boats and their rigging—all are constructed according to ancestral specifications. Modern ideas are scoffed at, the old ways are the best. The Faroese are happy in their own seclusion and they live in the shadowy paths between the superstitions of ancient Scandinavia and the vigorous, pulsing life of western civilization. They care little for the outside world and its problems. A local newspaper, in spite of the submarine cable, gives only a fourth of a column to news of the outside world; the remainder is filled with gossip which every one knew before the sheet issued from the press.
The streets of Thorshaven are narrow, uneven, crooked and crowded. The houses are built mostly of wood on high stone foundations, the walls are frequently coated with tar and in the summer time festoons of fish are suspended from the gables to dry. Within the home everything is neat and clean, the Norway spruce is sanded, colored by time and untarnished with paint and has become a beautiful chestnut brown.
The people retain some of their ancient superstitions and believe that the result of a day’s fishing, or success in bird-netting, will depend upon some chance of minor importance. The trolls, underground people of diminutive stature, elves and fairies live largely in the imagination and the folk stories relative to these phantoms have a strong influence upon the children. Where the cliffs rise directly out of the sea, there are many isolated columns, like the “Old Man of Hoy” in Orkney, which have been left standing by erosion of the waves. The water surges around them and they stand erect in the mists, solitary and unpressed by human foot. The Faroese call them the “Fingers of the Norns” and the fishermen hold them in deep superstition. This northern superstition, the control of mortals by unseen powers, has been made use of by Sir Walter Scott in that mysterious character in the Pirate, Norna of the Fitful Head.
The people are chiefly occupied in fishing, sheep raising and bird catching. The codfish abound in these cool northern waters,