Читать книгу The Modern Vikings - Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen - Страница 3

“Iceland is the most beautiful land the sun doth shine upon,” said Sigurd Sigurdson to his two sons.

“How can you know that, father,” asked Thoralf, the elder of the two boys, “when you have never been anywhere else?”

“I know it in my heart,” said Sigurd, devoutly.

“It is, after all, a matter of taste,” observed the son. “I think if I were hard pressed, I might be induced to put up with some other country.”

“You ought to blush with shame,” his father rejoined warmly. “You do not deserve the name of an Icelander, when you fail to see how you have been blessed in having been born in so beautiful a country.”

“I wish it were less beautiful and had more things to eat in it,” muttered Thoralf. “Salted codfish, I have no doubt, is good for the soul, but it rests very heavily on the stomach, especially when you eat it three times a day.”

“You ought to thank God that you have codfish, and are not a naked savage on some South Sea isle, who feeds, like an animal, on the herbs of the earth.”

“But I like codfish much better than smoked puffin,” remarked Jens, the younger brother, who was carving a pipe-bowl. “Smoked puffin always makes me sea-sick. It tastes like cod-liver oil.”

Sigurd smiled, and, patting the younger boy on the head, entered the cottage.

“You shouldn’t talk so to father, Thoralf,” said Jens, with superior dignity; for his father’s caress made him proud and happy. “Father works so hard, and he does not like to see anyone discontented.”

“That is just it,” replied the elder brother; “he works so hard, and yet barely manages to keep the wolf from the door. That is what makes me impatient with the country. If he worked so hard in any other country he would live in abundance, and in America he would become a rich man.”

This conversation took place one day, late in the autumn, outside of a fisherman’s cottage on the north-western coast of Iceland. The wind was blowing a gale down from the ice-engirdled pole, and it required a very genial temper to keep one from getting blue. The ocean, which was but a few hundred feet distant, roared like an angry beast, and shook its white mane of spray, flinging it up against the black clouds. With every fresh gust of wind, a shower of salt water would fly hissing through the air and whirl about the chimney-top, which was white on the windward side from dried deposits of brine. On the turf-thatched roof big pieces of drift-wood, weighted down with stones, were laid lengthwise and crosswise, and along the walls fishing-nets hung in festoons from wooden pegs. Even the low door was draped, as with decorative intent, with the folds of a great drag-net, the clumsy cork-floats of which often dashed into the faces of those who attempted to enter. Under a driftwood shed which projected from the northern wall was seen a pile of peat, cut into square blocks, and a quantity of the same useful material might be observed down at the beach, in a boat which the boys had been unloading when the storm blew up. Trees no longer grow in the island, except the crippled and twisted dwarf-birch, which creeps along the ground like a snake, and, if it ever dares lift its head, rarely grows more than four or six feet high. In the olden time, which is described in the so-called sagas of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Iceland had very considerable forests of birch and probably also of pine. But they were cut down; and the climate has gradually been growing colder, until now even the hardiest tree, if it be induced to strike root in a sheltered place, never reaches maturity. The Icelanders therefore burn peat, and use for building their houses driftwood which is carried to them by the Gulf Stream from Cuba and the other well-wooded isles along the Mexican Gulf.

“If it keeps blowing like this,” said Thoralf, fixing his weather eye on the black horizon, “we shan’t be able to go a-fishing; and mother says the larder is very nearly empty.”

“I wish it would blow down an Englishman or something on us,” remarked the younger brother; “Englishmen always have such lots of money, and they are willing to pay for everything they look at.”

“While you are a-wishing, why don’t you wish for an American? Americans have mountains and mountains of money, and they don’t mind a bit what they do with it. That’s the reason I should like to be an American.”

“Yes, let us wish for an American or two to make us comfortable for the winter. But I am afraid it is too late in the season to expect foreigners.”

The two boys chatted together in this strain, each working at some piece of wood-carving which he expected to sell to some foreign traveller. Thoralf was sixteen years old, tall of growth, but round-shouldered, from being obliged to work when he was too young. He was rather a handsome lad, though his features were square and weather-beaten, and he looked prematurely old. Jens, the younger boy, was fourteen years old, and was his mother’s darling. For even up under the North Pole mothers love their children tenderly, and sometimes they love one a little more than another; that is, of course, the merest wee bit of a fraction of a trifle more. Icelandic mothers are so constituted that when one child is a little weaker and sicklier than the rest, and thus seems to be more in need of petting, they are apt to love their little weakling above all their other children, and to lavish the tenderest care upon that one. It was because little Jens had so narrow a chest, and looked so small and slender by the side of his robust brother, that his mother always singled him out for favors and caresses.