VOYAGE

ICELAND and GREENLAND,

DITHMAR BLEFKENIUS.

CHAPTER I.

When Iceland was first discovered.

1563. How the author finds the opportunity to go to Iceland.

An ornamental woodcut initial letter "I" decorated with intricate leaf and flower motifs.
In the year 1563, there were certain merchants in Hamburg who were to dispatch two ships to Iceland: following custom, they requested the ministers of the divine word in said city to provide them with a preacher. I was there at that time, awaiting my books from Rostock, being in the meantime in daily contact with the ministers. Doctor Paulus van Eitzen, who was the foremost among them, proposed this to me beforehand. I, who was very eager to see new and strange lands, accepted it willingly. On April 10th, we set sail, navigated past England and Scotland, and passed the fifteen Orcadiſſe Eylanden Orkney Islands, of which only the Faroe Islands and Shetland were inhabited; there we saw a high rock in the shape of a monk's cowl, under which there is a safe shelter from all winds. On June 14th, we saw Iceland, appearing like a cloud in winter; the day after, we arrived at the harbor of Hafne-fort, which is in the south, and went ashore.

His desire for travel.

Description of Iceland, and in particular.

Iceland (so named for the great cold and the constant ice) is a rough and mountainous land, full of snow, fully twice as large as the island of Sicily, having, according to the account of Olaus Magnus, a length of one hundred miles; for eight months there is ice there, and yet the island burns from within, and all the more so because during this time the heat is kept inside by the cold. This island has a latitude across the Æquator Equator of 65 and a half degrees. On its north side lie the islands of Ebudæ Hebrides. Whether this is the land that Ptolomæus Ptolemy calls Thule, or whether it has been more appropriately christened Iceland, is unknown to me, just as the Thule of Ptolemy is not found; mapmakers of past times also set a greater length near Scotland and the surrounding lands than Ptolemy did. I shall trace the origin of the people a bit further back, following therein the annals of Iceland.