RECOMMENDED: Icelandic Journals by William Morris, 1871-1873 ⛵⛰️🐎

„In his journals he manages to get over the trepidation of stepping into the unknown, from his preparation, to stepping on the boat in rough seas in Scotland, to journeying by horse in the most challenging weather in Iceland itself. He tells also of the landscape in vivid prose, and of the hospitality of local people who often took him into their houses on wild nights in the middle of nowhere.” - www.safe-return-doubtful.com (about the 2011 publication)

William Morris in Iceland: six weeks in 1871 and a further two in 1873 through ‘the most romantic of all deserts’. He kept very few diaries and the Icelandic Journals are the most complete. Written daily, in pencil, in small black-covered notebooks, they are unguarded, spontaneous and by turn discouraged and excited. He records wild flowers and wilder landscapes, spectacular sunsets, vast expanses of lava, magnificent waterfalls, dangerous tracks and rivers. He does a report on Icelanders: priests, farmers, scholars and children. Their kindness, generosity and hospitality – despite their poverty – moved him greatly and had a profound effect on his political thinking. His journey included visits to many of the main Saga sites – a route that is still followed by some.

„The journey was by mail boat,1 the 240-tonne Diana, which set off on the evening of Saturday 8 July from Granton Harbour, Edinburgh, to Iceland via Torshaven in the Faroe Islands, arriving in Reykjavik on Friday 14 July. When in Iceland the party travelled on horseback. Including mounts for guides and pack animals, they numbered 20 ponies in all. Morris became so attached to the latter that he brought back to England one ‘Mouse’ for his daughters, which lived out its days at Kelmscott Manor. The party mostly camped, and from time to time stayed in farmsteads, or occasionally in more salubrious circumstances with a local official. The expedition lasted just over two months, from 6 July to 7 September 1871, and throughout that time Morris, who was in charge of the cooking, kept a journal. It was intended to be a private record for his close friend Georgiana Burne-Jones rather than for publication, and along with its companion journal of his 1873 trip, it was not published until 1911.

William Morris was not the first English ‘man of letters’ to visit Iceland, but arguably his visits have had the greatest lasting impact both in Iceland and abroad. He travelled there in 1871 and again in 1873, and his experiences of those journeys are recorded in his Icelandic Journals as well as in the poems that the trips inspired, ‘Iceland First Seen’ and ‘Gunnar’s Howe above the house at Lithend.’ In Iceland, both trips commenced and finished in Reykjavik. The first journey focused on the south and west of Iceland, with the Morris party setting out south and east into Njáls saga country, including a short visit to the Þórsmörk valley. At this point, the party headed north as far as Hnausar and then west to the Snæfellnes peninsula, then turned south to return to Reykjavik via Þingvellir. The 1873 journey was more ambitious in scope, taking in much more rugged country. It included a longer visit to the Þórsmörk valley before turning north to cross the central Icelandic desert on the Sprengisandur, a route which is open even nowadays for only about eight weeks a year, then venturing east to Lake Mývatn and the Dettifoss waterfall. From there the travellers turned east to Iceland’s second settlement Akureyri, before returning cross-country to Reykjavik, again via Þingvellir.” - www.morrisarchive.lib.uiowa.edu

>>> FULL ARTICLE HERE !!!

>>> FURTHER DETAILS: www.icelandreview.com

>>> COOL STUFF: www.morrissociety.org (1), www.morrissociety.org (2)

>>> Icelandic journals (digitalised scan)
Publication date: 1969
Publisher: Fontwell, Centaur P.

>>> Icelandic journals (xerox scan)

>>> ADDITIONAL CONTENT HERE !!!

RECOMMENDED PRINT:

Published by Notting Hill Editions 

Paperback – 226 pages - 2017

ISBN 978 19107 49562

 

 

Cover: www.wmgallery.shop