Norðurfari. Rambles in Iceland

A PREFACE to a book, is a sort of pedestal where the author gets up to make a speech; frequently an apologizing ground, where he “drops in—hopes he don’t intrude;” a little strip of green carpet near the foot-lights, where he bows to the audience, and with a trembling voice asks them to look with lenient eyes on his darling bantling that is just coming before the world. Very likely he tells of the numerous difficulties and disadvantages under which he has labored; perhaps apologizes for his style, under the plea of writing against time, and that he has been greatly hurried. Readers and critics are usually indulgent towards the minor faults of an author, provided he entertains or instructs them; but they pay little attention to special pleadings. The writer who deliberately perpetrates a stupid or silly book, deserves the fate of dunces—obloquy and contempt. If he adds to this the double crime of setting up a justification, and asks that his work be not subject to the usual canons of criticism, then the reviewers should level their heaviest guns, pepper him pungently, and prove him but a buzzard, while he claimed the honors of a game-cock. We however, have a right to expect and demand more from a veteran author, than from a young and inexperienced one.

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The world is so perverse, so incorrigibly an unbeliever, that very likely it would not credit a word of it—without finding the statements proved—if the author of this little volume were to say, that it was a readable and valuable work, “just what has been wanted,”—a good thing, and in season. Yet, gentle reader, “and still gentler purchaser,” seeing you have paid your dollar!—it is most undoubtedly true of the “Rambles” of this “Northurfari,” your humble and obliged servant.

Dropping the εγω, he will tell you how it was. Spending a few years in travel, he found himself after the “Great Exhibition” epoch, like the unconquered and unconquerable Macedonian, seeking for a world to pommel—with his footsteps—and after diligent and long-continued search on all the maps of all the Wylds, Johnstones, and Coltons in Christendom, could find but one land that was untrodden; but one that was not as contemptibly common as Irkoutsk, Timbuctoo, or the Niger itself. ICELAND was the shining bit of glacier, the one piece of virgin ore, the solitary lump of unlicked lava; and straightway to Iceland he went. It might not interest his readers any, were they to be told whether these pages were written in the saddle, or on Mount Hekla; in a tar-painted house in Reykjavik, or in a marble palace in London; on the deck of a Danish schooner, in a continuous summer day of the Arctic sea, or by the light of bright eyes in Scotia’s land. It so happens that the most of them were penned in the ULTIMA THULE, the Terra Incognita which they attempt to describe; and very little has been altered or amended since the original draft. The spirit 

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of travel is the freshest at the time the travel is enjoyed; and all impressions are then the most vivid. What is written on the spot, carries with it a vraisemblance; and, though an after revision may add some polish to the style, yet to a certain extent, it takes away the life and vivacity of the narrative. This “polishing” and “editing” process, may reduce it to a dead flat, and, like an attempt to smooth a butterfly’s wing, remove the bloom, and leave it but a bony shard. Slang may be bearable, though it can hardly be creditable; puns may be so bad that some might call them positively good; but dullness, and a style that is heavy to stupidity, are the unpardonable sins of authorship. This work, however, may have all, and more than all these faults.

There are no accessible books, of a late date, in our language, that give either an intelligible or faithful account of Iceland. The object of the following chapters has been to present a readable and truthful narrative, to create some interest in the people, the literature, and the productions of the lonely isle of the north; and of the good or ill performance of the task, the public must be the judges.