Bulfinch’s Mythology · Chapter
Iceland explained
This chapter introduces Iceland as the source of the Eddas and Sagas, contrasting its harsh, volcanic landscape with the classical world of Greece.
What happens
This chapter introduces Iceland as the source of the Eddas and Sagas, contrasting its harsh, volcanic landscape with the classical world of Greece. Carlyle's lecture describes Iceland as a land of barrenness, lava, geysers, and volcanic chasms, yet home to poetic men who recorded deep thoughts musically.
Key passages
“In that strange island, Iceland—burst up, the geologists say, by fire from the bottom of the sea, a wild land of barrenness and lava, swallowed many months of every year in black tempests, yet with a wild, gleaming beauty in summer time, towering up there stern and grim in the North Ocean, with its snow yokuls, roaring geysers, sulphur pools, and horrid volcanic chasms, like the waste, chaotic battlefield of Frost and Fire—where, of all places, we least looked for literature or written memorials—the record of these things was written down.”
Iceland is a strange island formed by volcanic eruption, a barren and lava-covered land that endures months of dark storms but has a wild beauty in summer. It rises grimly in the North Ocean with glaciers, geysers, and volcanic pits, resembling a chaotic battlefield of ice and fire. Unexpectedly, this harsh place became the home of written literature and memorials.
Carlyle describes Iceland's dramatic geology and its surprising role as a literary birthplace.
“On the seaboard of this wild land is a rim of grassy country, where cattle can subsist, and men by means of them and of what the sea yields; and it seems they were poetic men these, men who had deep thoughts in them and uttered musically their thoughts.”
Along the coast of this wild land, there is a strip of grassy land where cattle can survive, and people live off the cattle and the sea. These people were poetic, with deep thoughts that they expressed musically.
Carlyle highlights the contrast between Iceland's harsh interior and its habitable coast, and the poetic nature of its inhabitants.