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
Using a crosscut saw
I had a revelation last Sunday. Nope, didn
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
![4324832-sm[1]](http://wdvalgardsonkaffihus.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/4324832-sm1.jpg)
When I am researching a subject, the strangest bits of debris turn up, sort of like driftwood on the beach, not surprisingly there but still a surprise. I stumbled across a copy of Nature Magazine, 1879 and lo and behold, there was a report on conditions in Iceland.
I was most pleased to see the report because 1879 is right in the thick of the emigration from Iceland to Amerika. To stay or to leave was not only a difficult choice for many because it would mean leaving everything they knew behind for an uncertain future, leaving family behind, leaving farms that may have been where their people had lived for centuries.
One of the arguments for not leaving was that conditions in Iceland were improving. However, I’ve never come across any precise description of these improving conditions. Until, that is, I discovered Nature, 1879. There are a number of parts to the report but the one I immediately was drawn to was the following:
“Improvements in Iceland.
If, when you transported yourself to the Iceland of 1772 with the help of a green bottle
So, there you are, a few drinks of Black Death have transported back to Iceland in 1772 and you
1772. Think on it. One hundred years before our ancestors started fleeing Iceland for Amerika . Can you imagine it? The Vikings disappeared in 1066. Approximately, 700 years have passed. Generations upon generations, living and dying in isolated coves, on moors isolated by rivers and mountains, most of the people never seeing a foreigner, often never seeing anyone but their closest neighbours. Along the coast, ships from the Hanseatic League appear in summer
Odinn riding Sleipnir by Gerhard Munthe in the 1899 edition of Kongesagaer
Okay, here
In her talk at the INL conference, Trish Baer discussed the work she has done over the last five years on images from the Eddas.
Old Scandinavian history from the time of the Vikings was lost in Europe after Christianity took over. The lack of understanding of that earlier time can be seen in many of the illustrations about the various pagan gods. We
