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Updated: June 4, 2025
The Thingvalla was herself badly crippled, but, after picking up thirty-one survivors, managed to limp into Halifax, from which port the rescued were brought to New York. Only fourteen of the Geiser's passengers had been saved and the Petersens were not among them.
An icy storm from the neighbouring glaciers was their constant companion, and made me shiver so much that I could scarcely keep my saddle. We had now ridden above thirteen hours. The rain poured down incessantly, and we were half dead with cold and wet; so I at length determined to halt for the night at the first cottage: at last we found one between two or three miles from Thingvalla.
Not far from the entrance of the ravine, the river Oxer rushes over a wall of rock of considerable height, forming a beautiful waterfall. It was still fine clear daylight when I reached Thingvalla, and the sky rose pure and cloudless over the far distance.
Yet this was the first and only grazing-place to be met with in all the long distance from Thingvalla. We therefore made a halt of two hours, to let our poor horses pick a scanty meal. Large swarms of minute gnats, which seemed to fly into our eyes, nose, and mouth, annoyed us dreadfully during our stay in this place.
It frequently rises to 76 deg. at Thingvalla during the months of July and August; and at the Geysers, and in some of the adjacent valleys, the heat is said to be quite oppressive.
Is the plain of Thingvalla, eight miles broad, its surface shattered into a network of innumerable crevices and fissures fifty or sixty feet deep, and each wide enough to have swallowed the entire company of Korah.
This had not been my original plan on starting from Reikjavik; I had intended to proceed from Thingvalla directly to the Geyser, to Hecla, &c.; but the horses were already exhausted, and the weather so dreadfully bad, without prospect of speedy amendment, that I preferred returning to Reikjavik, and waiting for better times in my pleasant little room at the house of the good baker.
I traveled with a native of Reykjavik some weeks after my visit to Thingvalla, and had an opportunity of judging what his impressions were of other countries. He was a very intelligent man, well versed in Icelandic literature, and spoke English remarkably well. Both himself and wife were fellow passengers on the Arcturus from Reykjavik to Grangemouth.
He accordingly chose one Thormod, a pious, patient, and kindly man, who, within the next year or so, did actually accomplish the matter; namely, get Christianity, by open vote, declared at Thingvalla by the general Thing of Iceland there; the roar of a volcanic eruption at the right moment rather helping the conclusion, if I recollect. Whereupon Olaf's joy was no doubt great.
We must now accompany our traveller on some longer excursions. And first, to Thingvalla, the place where, of old, the Althing or island- parliament was annually held. One side of the great valley of council is bounded by the sea, the other by a fine range of peaks, always more or less covered with snow.
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