Ultima Thule; Or, A Summer in Iceland (1875)

One of the keenest observers to visit Iceland in the 19th century was Sir Richard Francis Burton, who is best known for his travels in Africa, and notorious for his translations of Arabian erotica. Burton spent the summer of 1872 in Iceland; on his return to England he wrote the two-volume work, Ultima Thule; Or, A Summer in Iceland (1875), perhaps the most detailed and objective of all the 19th-century accounts of Iceland.

Farming

At present the grass lands are the wealth of the island, as they pasture the flocks and herds, which form the chief means of subsistence, and the most important articles of industry and commerce. The meadows are grassed over by nature, not ploughed or harrowed, such implements being rarely used. Nor are they seeded. The grass is soft and thick, much like our red-top, and about six inches high; only in rare places the ponies wade up to their knees in through the rich meads. The hay is carefully sheared, and is exceedingly sweet. White clover flourishes; and on the streams it is found growing spontaneously with caraway.

The farms are all named, mostly from natural features. The best are on the north side of the island; yet the three most generally cited as models are Viðey off the west coast, and Hólmar and Möðrudalur, to the east. The south-western (not the southern) shore supports a fishing rather than a pastoral or agricultural population. The non-maritime people live in scattered homesteads, which nowhere form the humblest village. The only settlements are the trading-places on the sea-shore.

Agriculture, being absolutely confined to haymaking, is a mere misnomer in Iceland, nearly three-quarters of whose population is pastoral, though not nomad. The wealth of the country consists of sheep, horses, and black cattle; goats are spoken of in the north, but the author did not see a single head. Each farm has, besides the tun, a bit of lowland upon which grass is grown, and a large extent of barren hill and moorland, where the sheep graze during the fine season; this is always assumed to belong to the property. The farm is divided from its neighbours by landmarks, natural and artificial; the latter are stone heaps, the former some marked limit, as a hill, a rock, or a stream. The boundaries are a perpetual cause of dispute, and some of the most complicated lawsuits have thus arisen.

Not a few of the wilder peasantry live in a constant state of land-feud; they "make it up" over their cups, and they return to the natural belligerent condition when sober.

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