ON A Moderately Successful Poet
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On A Moderately Successful Poet
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Monthly Archives: May 2013
Wild Times in Reykjavik, 1862
I found Faroe and Iceland in a second hand bookshop, unwanted, unloved, unread. I scooped it up. It was owned originally by a Mr. Edmund Wilford Bulkley, 1880. It has some fine sketches in it. I think I paid $5.00 for it. The author is Andrew James Symington and the book was published in London, in 1862.
Symington wants to go to Iceland, that no longer so distant but still fabled place. He thinks that he might try getting to Iceland on a private yacht (if he can find one that is going), to rent a sloop or to get a passage on a mail ship from Copenhagen. The first two are highly uncertain. The third possibility is important. This is 1862, steam ships have appeared and changed everything. They can travel in any weather, they can keep to a schedule, and they are relatively cheap. These are the reasons ten years later that our ancestors were able to leave Iceland in large numbers. It was actually possible to plan.
He sees an ad in the Times for the Danish mail-steamer
Mackenzie, 1810: Danish war
In 1810, Sir George Steuart Mackenzie, Baronet and Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh went on an expedition to Iceland. He later wrote a book, Travels in the Island of Iceland. He took with him a number of other distinguished or, soon to be distinguished, men. One of whom was Dr. Holland who wrote his own book.
None of these people were your average English or Scotsman. You note that good old George was
A Revelation
Using a crosscut saw
I had a revelation last Sunday. Nope, didn
Ruckle Park Farm Day
On Sunday, I slipped away from a lot of hard physical labour, to spend an hour or so at Ruckle Heritage Farm Day. Sure glad I did. Because I couldn
Iceland: War With England
Have you heard of the Napoleonic wars? Did you know that because of them, England and Denmark were at war? Did you know that Danish ports were blockaded by the English and that the trade ships that were supposed to supply Iceland with food and trade goods and take Icelandic goods in return were not able to leave port?
Did you know that the people of Icelandic were brought to the brink of starvation? That friends of Iceland in high places in England intervened and obtained a declaration from the English king to lift the blockade on Iceland?
That
