ICELANDIC SAGAS
BARING-GOULD, Sabine.
Iceland: its Scenes and Sagas ... With numerous Illustrations and a Map.
London, Smith, Elder and Co., 1863.
8vo, pp. xlviii, 447, [1]; with folding map (linen backed), 16 plates (4 coloured), and numerous illustrations in the text; frontispiece loose at foot, some creasing to map, some spotting; otherwise a good copy in contemporary half red morocco over red cloth, spine lettered in gilt, gilt edges; some wear to spine ends, joints and corners, a few marks to upper board; contemporary manuscript note regarding the basilisk at foot of p. 147.
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Iceland: its Scenes and Sagas ... With numerous Illustrations and a Map.
First edition of this account of a visit to Iceland by the clergyman, collector of folk songs, and hymn writer Sabine Baring-Gould (1834–1924), undertaken for ‘examining scenes famous in Saga, and filling a portfolio with water-colour sketches’ (Preface).
As well as providing an account of his travels, the text includes several chapters taken from the Grettis, Vatnsdæla, Bandamanna, and Flóamanna sagas; of the ‘The valley of shadows’, taken from the first of these, Baring-Gould writes, ‘it is so horrible, that I forewarn all those who have weak nerves, to skip it’. There are passages on Icelandic myths too, and accounts of buying manuscripts of sagas from the locals.
The work also includes discussion of Icelandic food, endearments, music, slang, poetry, female dress, ornithology, and plant life, and ends with ‘a few hints to the traveller’ e.g. ‘Extraordinary precautions must be taken to preserve thermometers from being shivered to atoms. Of ten which a friend of mine took to the Geysir wrapped in wool, seven were broken in two days’ (p. 398). Baring-Gould is perhaps best known for his hymn ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’.
The note at the foot of p. 147 reads: ‘The basilisk, so the ancients feigned, wch you see first, & before it has seen you, has nothing killing in its look. It is only when the basilisk sees you, before you see it, that its glance is fatal.’
