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Iceland   /ˈaɪslənd/   Listen
Iceland

noun
1.
An island republic on the island of Iceland; became independent of Denmark in 1944.  Synonym: Republic of Iceland.
2.
A volcanic island in the North Atlantic near the Arctic Circle.



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"Iceland" Quotes from Famous Books



... lemonade Slippery elm tea Toast water Tamarind water Bread Recipes; Diabetic biscuit Diabetic biscuit No. 2 Gluten meal gems Jellies and other desserts for the side Recipes: Arrowroot jelly Arrowroot blancmange Currant jelly Iceland moss jelly Iceland moss blancmange Orange ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... evidence of the Norsemen having been in America 500 years before Columbus touched the outlying islands of the West Indies. The Sagas of Leif the Lucky and Eric the Red told some marvelous stories of discoveries to the southwest of Iceland. Some of these stories seem to be verified in many ways, by digging up the logs of the Norse huts, by the written characters on Dighton rock, by the old tower at Newport, by the Benheim map of 1492, and a number of other ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')

... occasion, and aspires, with the proud; is here the pleased companion of the ground-ivies, and there the unrebuked rival of the larkspurs: on the rocks of Coniston it effaces itself almost into the film of a lichen; it pierces the snows of Iceland with the gentian: and in the Falkland Islands is a white-blossomed evergreen, of which botanists are in dispute whether it be Veronica ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... mythology as Yama, the first man, who explored the way to the Paradise called "The Land of Ancestors", and over which he subsequently presided as a god. Other Babylonian myths link with those found in Egypt, Greece, Scandinavia, Iceland, and the British Isles and Ireland. The Sargon myth, for instance, resembles closely the myth of Scyld (Sceaf), the patriarch, in the Beowulf epic, and both appear to be variations of the Tammuz-Adonis story. Tammuz also resembles in one ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... from Japan to all Asia and—again relayed—to Australia. South Africa would get the coverage by land-wire down the continent from the Pillars of Hercules. The Mediterranean basin, the Near East, Scandinavia, and even Iceland would see the spectacle. Detailed instructions were given to Gail to ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster

... efforts. [Footnote: As used in this chapter the term "land" is held to include not only such natural resources as soil, minerals, forests, and bodies of water, but climate as well.] The vigorous Scandinavians have made great advances in inhospitable Iceland and Greenland, the French have reclaimed an important section of Algeria, and the British have worked wonders with some of the barren parts of Australia; nevertheless, it is with great difficulty that prosperous communities are developed in lands ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson

... AND GREENLAND.—Iceland was settled by the Northmen in the ninth century, [Footnote: Iceland became the literary centre of the Scandinavian world. There grew up here a class of scalds, or bards, who, before the introduction ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... Greenland, Lapland, and Iceland, there are no cats, nor does the lynx in Europe extend farther ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various

... so good that none gainsaid it; and they drew lots. And the lot fell to Bjarne that he should go in the boat with half his crew. But as he got into the boat, there spake an Icelander who was in the ship and had followed Bjarne from Iceland, 'Art thou going to leave me here, Bjarne?' Quoth Bjarne, 'So it must be.' Then said the man, 'Another thing didst thou promise my father, when I sailed with thee from Iceland, than to desert me thus. For thou saidst that we both should share the same lot.' Bjarne ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... an elevation near the sea, who, by concerted signals, directs the fishermen when a shoal of fish is in sight. Synonymous with conder (which see). Also, the hot fountains in the sea near Iceland, where many of them ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... whole towns crushed and buried, with their thousands of living inhabitants. Think of rivers of glowing lava streaming up from regions below ground, and pouring along the surface for a distance of forty, fifty, and even sixty miles, as in Iceland and Hawaii. Think of red-hot cinders flung from a volcano-crater to a height of ten thousand feet. Think of lakes of liquid fire in other craters, five hundred to a thousand feet across, huge cauldrons of boiling rock. Think ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various

... Twenty years ago I translated all the "Sagas" relating to the voyages and exploits of the Northmen in these northern seas and islands, their explorations of the coast of North America centuries before Columbus was born, their doings in Iceland and on all the islands great and small now forming the British realms. This gave an additional zest to my enjoyment in standing on the shore of the Pentland Firth and looking over upon the scene of old Haco's and ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt

... Peregrine (F. Peregrinator) whose tiercel is the Shahin (or "Royal Bird"). It is sometimes applied to the goshawk (Astur palumbarius) whose proper title, however, is Shah-baz (King-hawk). The Peregrine extends from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin and the best come from the colder parts: in Iceland I found that the splendid white bird was sometimes trapped for sending to India. In Egypt "Bazi" is applied to the kite or buzzard and "Hidyah" (a kite) to the falcon (Burckhardt's Prov. 159, 581 and 602). Burckhardt translates "Hidayah," the Egyptian corruption, by "an ash-grey falcon of the smaller ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... gave his undivided attention to the flower-borders, and enlarged in his poetical way on the beauties of the Iceland and Shirley poppies. ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... metrical romances. It is quite unknown whether it was first turned into Latin, French, or Welsh verse; but an established fact is that it has been translated into every European language, and was listened to with as much interest by the inhabitants of Iceland as by those of the ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber

... is called Marelle, in Poland Siegen Wulf Myll (She-goat Wolf Mill, or Fight), in Germany and Austria it is called Muhle (the Mill), in Iceland it goes by the name of Mylla, while the Bogas (or native bargees) of South America are said to play it, and on the Amazon it is called Trique, and held to be of Indian origin. In our own country it has different names in different districts, such as Meg Merrylegs, Peg Meryll, ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... again the Irish Church came back into closer association with the Church throughout {115} Europe. This union was due very largely to the influence of learning, and still more to the influence of missionary zeal. "From Iceland to the Danube or the Apennines, among Frank or Burgundian or Lombard, the Irish energy seemed omnipotent and inexhaustible." [2] Into Ireland it would seem that classical culture was introduced by the first Christian teachers, ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton

... displeases, you, my dear Madam P' said I. 'Why,' she answered, 'it is terribly out of the way; down in the very right-hand corner of the world.' The chart being mine, I cut it in two through the meridian of Iceland, transposed the parts laterally, and turned them upside down. 'Now,' asked I, 'where is England P' 'Ah, boy,' she replied, 'you may do what you like with the map; but you can't twist the world about in that manner, though they are making sad changes ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... cleaves again; and finally placing the knife at right angles to the two former positions, we find a third cleavage. Rocksalt cleaves in three directions, and the resulting solid is this perfect cube, which may be broken up into any number of smaller cubes. Iceland spar also cleaves in three directions, not at right angles, but oblique to each other, the resulting solid being a rhomboid. In each of these cases the mass cleaves with equal facility in all three directions. For the sake of completeness I may say that many crystals ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... Afterwards the water being suddenly raised into steam produces all the explosive effects of earthquakes. And by new accessions of water during the intervals of the explosions the repetition of the shocks is caused. These circumstances were hourly illustrated by the fountains of boiling water in Iceland, in which the surface of the water in the boiling wells sunk down low before ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... heroic exertions, saved a fragment of his kingdom from them. Later, under Canute,[6] they become its kings. The Northmen penetrate Russia and appear as rulers of the strange Slavic tribes there; they settle in Iceland, Greenland, and even distant and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... Coleccion de Viages, tom. ii., Col. Dipl., no. 1.—Munoz, Hist. del Nuevo-Mundo, lib. 2, sec. 17.—It is singular that Columbus, in his visit to Iceland, in 1477, (see Fernando Colon, Hist. del Almirante, cap. 4,) should have learned nothing of the Scandinavian voyages to the northern shores of America in the tenth and following centuries; yet if he ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott

... northern Atlantic, islands are stepping-stones from the Old World to the New. Yet because in the latter case the islands are far apart, it is harder to cross the water from Norway and the Lofoten Islands to Iceland and Greenland than it is to cross from Asia by way of the Aleutian Islands or Bering Strait. Nevertheless in the tenth century of the Christian era bold Norse vikings made the passage in the face of storm and wind. In their slender open ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington

... all fine weather up there among the mountains in the beginning of summer. In the first week of June even, there was sleet and snow in the wind—the tears of the vanquished Winter, blown, as he fled, across the sea, from Norway or Iceland. Then would Donal's heart be sore for Gibbie, when he saw his poor rags blown about like streamers in the wind, and the white spots melting on his bare skin. His own condition would then to many have appeared pitiful enough, but such an idea Donal ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... mistake to imagine that the author or the artist should stuff his beautiful, empty mind with knowledge, with impressions, with facts of any kind," said Amarinth. "I have written a great novel upon Iceland, full of colour, of passion, of the most subtle impurity, yet I could not point you out Iceland upon the map. I do not know where it is, or what it is. I only know that it has a beautiful name, and that I have written a beautiful thing about it. This age is an age of identification, in which ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens

... superfluous to say that this book makes no pretension to originality of any kind. If it contributes towards restoring to Englishmen that precious heritage—the old language and literature of Iceland—which our miserably narrow scheme of education has hitherto defrauded them of, it will have ...
— An Icelandic Primer - With Grammar, Notes, and Glossary • Henry Sweet

... are slightly bearded; they mix with the men, whom they satisfy mechanically, but without enjoyment (?). MacGillivray, of the "Rattlesnake," saw near Cape York a woman with these scars: she was a surdo-mute, and had probably been spayed to prevent increase. The old Scandinavians, from Norway to Iceland, systematically gelded "sturdy vagrants" in order that they might not beget bastards. The Hottentots before marriage used to cut off the left testicle, meaning by such semi-castration to prevent the begetting of twins. This curious custom, mentioned ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... was the musical center of the world; students went there from all Europe as to an artistic Mecca. Iceland has long lost her musical crown. And Welsh music in its turn has ceased to be the chief on earth. Russia is sending up a strong and growing harmony marred with much discord. Some visionaries look to her for the new song. But I do not hesitate to match against the serfs of ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes

... labors he imitated the apostles, so God was pleased to authorize his preaching, by conferring on him an apostolic grace of the miraculous powers. Out of his monks and disciples, he sent many missionaries to preach the faith in the north of Scotland, in the isles of Orkney, in Norway, and Iceland. ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... father's aid," "Men faint in public and lose $153,000," "Death note writer caught in Capital," "Losses of women duped by Lindsay," "Iceland cabinet falls," "Tokio diet in uproar over snake on floor," "Saddle horse from Firestone, Harding's favourite mount," and short notices on Ireland, Paris and London; you are encouraged to turn to page 6, column five or column 8, page 5 and finish with ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith

... pleased with your fancy in making the author you mention place a map of Iceland instead of his portrait before his ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... where he had acquired some knowledge of Latin, and was introduced to the study of those sciences to which his inclinations and his opportunities enabled him later to devote himself. He knew the Atlantic Coast from El Mina in Africa,(6) to England and Iceland,(7) and he had visited the Levant(8)and the islands of ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt

... streaks of light. Nine years later Dr. Henry Draper of New York got an impression of four lines in the spectrum of Vega. Then Huggins attacked the subject again in 1876, when the 18-inch speculum of the Royal Society had come into his possession, using prisms of Iceland spar and lenses of rock crystal; and this time with better success. A photograph of the spectrum of Vega showed seven strong lines.[1415] Still he was not satisfied. He waited and worked for three years longer. At length, on December 18, 1879, he was able to communicate to ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... Icelandic language. "The Icelandic language!" he exclaimed. "So you also in America call it Icelandic; but you ought to know that it is Norwegian. It is the same language spoken by the Norwegian Vikings who colonised Iceland—the old Norsk, which originated here, and was merely carried thither." "We certainly have some reason," I replied, "seeing that it now only exists in Iceland, and has not been spoken in Norway for centuries; but let me ask why you, speaking Danish, call your language Norsk." "Our language, ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor

... friendship, loyalty, love of kin, affection for home. The links that bind us to the past and the threads that stretch out into the future are more satisfactory to us here in the United States, with the complexity of its interests for us, than they would be in Nicaragua, or Guam, or Iceland. ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick

... brotherhood that grew presently among men, of the saving of laws and books and machines, of the strange change that had come over Iceland and Greenland and the shores of Baffin's Bay, so that the sailors coming there presently found them green and gracious, and could scarce believe their eyes, this story does not tell. Nor of the movement of mankind now that the ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... my plain unvarnished account of "A Voyage to the Holy Land, and to Iceland and Scandinavia." Emboldened by their kindness, I once more step forward with the journal of my last and most considerable voyage, and I shall feel content if the narration of my adventures procures for my readers only a portion of the immense fund of pleasure derived ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... all—it is one of the boldest and handsomest. I don't wonder you never saw it before; for it is truly a bird of the Northern regions, and does not come so far south as the territory of the United States, much less into Louisiana. It is found in North Europe, Greenland, and Iceland, and has been seen as far north on both continents as human beings have travelled. It is known by the name of 'jerfalcon,' or 'gyrfalcon,' but its zoological name ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... the captain's opinion, that the coast of Iceland should be explored; but Penellan observed that, at the time of the catastrophe, the gale came from the west; which, while it gave hope that the unfortunates had not been forced towards the gulf of the Maelstrom, ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne

... first to see Shaftesbury, a little old Wessex town that was three or four hundred years older than Salisbury, perched on a hill, a Saxon town, where Alfred had gathered his forces against the Danes and where Canute, who had ruled over all Scandinavia and Iceland and Greenland, and had come near ruling a patch of America, had died. It was a little sleepy place now, looking out dreamily over beautiful views. They would lunch in Shaftesbury and walk round it. Then they ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells

... of captives. Land-leaping, too, continued in full force. "The godless hosts of pagans swarming o'er the Northern Sea," continued to arrive in fresh and fresh numbers from their inexhaustible Scandinavian breeding grounds—from Norway, from Sweden, from Denmark, even, it is said, from Iceland. The eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries are, in fact, the great period all over Europe for the incursions of the Northmen—high noon, so to speak, for those fierce and roving sons of plunder,—"People," says an old historian quaintly, "desperate in attempting the conquest ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless

... Iceland moss one-fourth of an ounce, boiled in a quart of water, and a little rectified spirit added, so ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young

... legends and traditions. We are told by an old chronicle, that Brendan, an Irishman, discovered this continent about 550 A. D., and named it Irland-Kir-Mikla, or Great Eire; this is corroborated by the Scandinavians. Iceland was settled in the sixth century by Irish, and when the Norsemen settled there, they found the remains of an Irish civilization in churches, ruins, crosses and urns: thus, it is not at all improbable ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various

... was young. The time seems near, if it has not actually arrived, when the chastened sublimity of a moor, a sea, or a mountain will be all of nature that is absolutely in keeping with the moods of the more thinking among mankind. And ultimately, to the commonest tourist, spots like Iceland may become what the vineyards and myrtle-gardens of South Europe are to him now; and Heidelberg and Baden be passed unheeded as he hastens from the Alps to ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... surface of the island of Zeeland is uniformly low, in this resembling Holland, the highest point reaching an elevation of about two hundred and fifty feet. To be precise in the matter of her dominions, the colonial possessions of Denmark may be thus enumerated: Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe group of islands, between the Shetlands and Iceland; adding St. Croix, St. Thomas, and St. John in the West Indies. Greenland is nearly as large as Germany and France combined; but owing to its ice-clothed character in most parts, its inhabitants ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou

... we thought it was lightest. At night I used to keep two men up for a lookout, lash the wheel, and let her drift like a Dutchman. One way as good as another. Mary, when I saw the sun at last, enough to get any kind of observation, we were wellnigh three hundred miles northeast of Iceland! Talk of ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale

... John Silver, I suspect, smokes an occasional pipe in that old place. And many are the times I've seen the slim shade of young Jim Hawkins come running out. Take Labrador cod for export to the Mediterranean lands or to Porto Rico via New York. Take herrings brought to this port from Iceland, from Holland, and from Scotland; mackerel from Ireland, from the Magdalen Islands, and from Cape Breton; crabmeat from Japan; fishballs from Scandinavia; sardines from Norway and from France; caviar from Russia; shrimp which comes from Florida, Mississippi, and ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday

... Louis Marie Julien Viaud, and he is an officer in the French army. His work is particularly celebrated for the vividness and brilliancy of his descriptions. He has described scenes in Africa, India, China, and on the ocean. One of his best books is "An Iceland Fisherman."] ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker

... being able to repeat and remember whatever they heard, if they earnestly attended to it. Earnest attention in this case means a strong exercise of forethought, or determination to an end or given purpose. In Iceland, that which has since become the English common law, was at an early date very fully developed, without any books or writing. And there were lawyers who had by heart all the laws, and incredible numbers of precedents, ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland

... of their characteristic snail-pace. A marvelous spectacle is presented then. Mr. Whymper refers to a case which occurred in Iceland in 1721: ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... villain, gave him a suit of his own clothes, and L50, and saw him put off to sea. Sandy promised to keep well out in the bay, until some vessel going North to Zetland or Iceland, or some Dutch skipper bound for Amsterdam, took him up. All the next day Ragon was in misery, but nightfall came and he had heard nothing of Sandy, though several craft had come into port. If another day got over ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... of the nobler and prouder sort grew discontented and straightway abandoned Norway to seek new homes across the sea. Many were content to roam upon the waters as vikings; others sailed west to the Faroe Isles, some settled in Shetland and the Orkneys, while others went far north into Iceland—a country so rich that, as I have heard, every blade of grass drips with butter. But Harald followed these adventurous men who had thus sought to escape his rule, with the result that he reduced all these ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton

... the East, by way of Iceland, Greenland, and Baffinland; from the Eastern continent, and about the vicinity of the Caspian sea, and so kept on South on this continent as the climate grew colder. But we were talking of the people of Mexico. I wanted ...
— Boy Scouts in Mexico; or On Guard with Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson

... three generations, and whose mind was stored with traditions of men and days now long forgotten. This particular saga, she said, had, for instance, never been written in its entirety till she took it down from the old dame's lips, much as in the fifteenth century the Iceland sagas were recorded by Snorro Sturleson and others. Even the traditional music of the songs as they were sung centuries ago she had received from her ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard

... Goethe sang, and Mozart once held the sceptre of harmony! Great names shine there, in science and in art, names that are unknown to us. One day devoted to seeing Germany, and one for the North, the country of Oersted and Linnaeus, and for Norway, the land of the old heroes and the young Normans. Iceland is visited on the journey home: the geysers burn no more, Hecla is an extinct volcano, but the rocky island is still fixed in the midst of the foaming sea, a continual ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen

... dated on the 12th (N.S. 21st) of October 1492, when Christopher Columbus (q.v.), the Genoese, made his landfall on the island of Guanahani, now identified with Watling Island in the Bahamas. In the 10th and 11th centuries Norse sea-rovers, starting from Iceland, had made small settlements in Greenland and had pushed as far as the coast of New England (or possibly Nova Scotia) in transient visits (see VINLAND and LEIF ERICSSON). But the Greenland colony was obscure, the country was believed ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... of Northern Antiquities from the earlier Teutonic and Scandinavian romances, by Robert Jamieson ... with an abstract of the Eyrbyggja-Saga; being the early annals of that district of Iceland lying around the promontory called ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball

... Europe have been proposed, and have been at times quite popular, the most feasible of which are those via Behring's Straits, or the Aleutian Islands, and via Labrador, Greenland, Iceland, and the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various

... exclaimed Lieutenant Wingate. "That breeze must have been born up in Iceland. Talk about your heat on the desert! Perhaps we shall have some cool weather here ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower

... widely distributed in nature and occurs in large quantities in the uncombined form, especially in the neighborhood of volcanoes. Sicily has long been famous for its sulphur mines, and smaller deposits are found in Italy, Iceland, Mexico, and especially in Louisiana, where it is mined extensively. In combination, sulphur occurs abundantly in the form of sulphides and sulphates. In smaller amounts it is found in a great variety of minerals, and ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson

... illustrious citizens, Pytheas and Euthymenes, explored the northern and southern Atlantic. Pytheas was charged to make a voyage of discovery towards the north. He coasted Spain, Portugal, Aquitania, Brittany, discovered Great Britain, coasted it, and reached Thule, which some have supposed to be Iceland, but others the Orkney Isles. In a second voyage he penetrated the Baltic by the Cattegat and Sound, and reached the mouths of the Dwina or the Vistula. On his return he composed two works, records of his discoveries, of which precious fragments ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould

... gentleman at large. Here, however, he did ultimately hit on a pursuit into which he could throw himself with decided energy. The old Norsemen laid their spell upon him; he was bitten with a zeal for saga-hunting, studied vigorously the Northern tongues, went off to Iceland, returned to rummage in the libraries of Copenhagen, began to translate the Heimskringla, planned a History of the Vikings. Emphatically, this kind of thing suited him. No one was less likely to turn out a bookworm, yet in the study of Norse literature ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing

... he held his heritage. Moreover he put hostages within Arthur's power, for surety that he would render a yearly tribute to the king. When Arthur had subdued Ireland, he went further and came even so far as Iceland. He brought the land in subjection to himself, so that the folk thereof owned themselves his men, and granted him the lordship. Now three princes, by name Gonfal, King of the Orkneys, Doldamer, King of Gothland, and Romarec, King of Finland, ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace

... Elfinstone, And more than I can mention here. They caused to be built so stout a ship, And unto Iceland they ...
— The Mermaid's Prophecy - and Other Songs Relating to Queen Dagmar • Anonymous

... from Spain northward to France, Germany, England, Scandinavia and Iceland. It became known with extraordinary rapidity, although at first it was confined to the upper classes, the courts of the Kings and the nobility. In the course of time, when the dominance of the nobility declined and the inhabitants of the cities assumed the ...
— Chess and Checkers: The Way to Mastership • Edward Lasker

... or traits of civility; and temperate climate is an important influence, though not quite indispensable, for there have been learning, philosophy, and art in Iceland, and in the tropics. But one condition is essential to the social education of man,—namely, morality. There can be no high civility without a deep morality, though it may not always call itself by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various

... had written "Hans of Iceland" and no "Les Miserables," as if Napoleon, the Lieutenant of Artillery, had but stopped the mobs in the streets of Paris, and Austerlitz and ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... death was only the beginning of the final catastrophe. "All gods must die." Such is the last word of that religion which had grown up in the forests of Germany, and found a last refuge among the glaciers and volcanoes of Iceland. The death of Sigurd, the descendant of Odin, could not avert the death of Balder, the son of Odin; and the death of Balder was soon to be followed by the death of Odin himself, and of all the ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller

... giving a view of the broken country and the mountains with their snow-covered tops, immense, wrapped in distance under the dull grey day, remote, yet clearly defined in that air, crystal clear as the air of Iceland. ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... younger friends who read the name which heads this essay may incline to think that it ought to be very short indeed, nay, be limited to a single remark; and, like the famous chapter on the snakes in Iceland, it should simply run—that Anthony Trollope has no place at all in Victorian literature. We did not think so in England in the fifties, the sixties, and the seventies, in the heyday of Victorian romance; and I do not think we ought to pass ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison

... trade by the introduction of some kind of currency, we find that the measures of worth, constituting this currency, are organic bodies; in some cases cowries, in others cocoa-nuts, in others cattle, in others pigs; among the American Indians peltry or skins, and in Iceland dried fish. ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... been reading in Landnama Book the records of the settlement of Iceland and can now realise how lately in our history it is that the world has become small. At the beginning of the last century it was roughly of the size which it had been at the end of the last millennium. It then took seven days to sail from Norway to Iceland, ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett

... you the good fortune to become acquainted with "Moule, Mr, his Bibliotheca Heraldica." The name Hooker will be found, not to guide the reader to the Ecclesiastical Polity, but to Dr Jackson Hooker's Tour in Iceland. Lastly, if any one shall search for Hartley on Man, he will find in the place it might occupy, or has reference to, the editorial services ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... England, had united their warring tribes, and developed a somewhat centralised government, their whole national existence was imperilled by the incursions of the Danes. Kindred folk to the Anglo-Saxons were these Danes, these Vikings from Christiania Wik, these Northmen from Norway or Iceland, whose fame went before them, and the dread of whom inspired the petition in the old Litany of the Church, "From the fury of the Northmen, good Lord, deliver us!" Their fair hair and blue or grey eyes, their tall and muscular frames, bore testimony to their ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt

... miles further we reached Paimpol, where we remained the night, at a nice hotel. Paimpol is a seaport town prettily situated in a cultivated country on the bay that bears its name. Its inhabitants are employed in the mackerel and Iceland fisheries. The women about here wear close straw-bonnets. They all, in this department, ride on horseback, "a ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser

... Forest Lodge, we sometimes had occasion to wear our bravery, for now and again we went forth to hunt with my uncle or with the Junker, on foot or on horseback, or hawking with a falcon on the wrist. There was no lack of these noble birds, and the bravest of them all, a falcon from Iceland beyond seas, had been brought thence by Seyfried Kubbeling of Brunswick. That same strange man, who was my right good friend, had ere now taught me to handle a falcon, and I could help my uncle to teach my ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... Thus, in 1910 the Gaekwar of Baroda in India allowed the women of his dominions a vote in municipal elections, and Bosnia bestowed the parliamentary suffrage on women who owned a certain amount of real estate; Norway in 1913 and Iceland in 1914 were won to full suffrage. The following table presents a convenient historical summary of the progress in ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker

... consists of two Nicol prisms of Iceland spar and balsam, arranged in such a way that under ordinary conditions the light coming from the spark is stopped by polarization and prevented from reaching the camera. Between these two prisms, however, is a solution of chemicals which ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various

... is explained by the slow carbonization of the anhydrous lime under the influence of the air; the external layers passing to the state of carbonate of lime or Iceland spar, which, as well known, has great influence on polarized light. This transformation, which takes place without disturbing the crystalline state, does not lead to any general modification of the form ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various

... to Russian nurseries; the Servians are responsible for some; a rather peculiarly fanciful set of stories are adapted from the Roumanians; others are from the Baltic shores; others from sunny Sicily; a few are from Finland, and Iceland, and Japan, and Tunis, and Portugal. No doubt many children will like to look out these places on the map, and study their mountains, rivers, soil, products, and fiscal policies, in the geography books. The peoples who tell the stories differ in colour; language, religion, ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various

... right to be proud, for in our veins flows the blood of many brave races who fought as the lion fights, for lordship. Here, in the whirlpool of European races, the Ugric tribe bore down from Iceland the fighting spirit which Thor and Wodin gave them, which their Berserkers displayed to such fell intent on the seaboards of Europe, aye, and of Asia and Africa too, till the peoples thought that the werewolves themselves had come. Here, too, when they came, they found the Huns, whose warlike fury ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker

... has complimented the French by illustrating a couple of Lives of Napoleon, and the "Life in Paris" before mentioned. He has also made designs for Victor Hugo's "Hans of Iceland." Strange, wild etchings were those, on a strange, mad subject; not so good in our notion as the designs for the German books, the peculiar humor of which latter seemed to suit the artist exactly. There ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray

... vessel of any sort or kind, or even the smoke of one (with the single exception to be mentioned later), although during that time we travelled from Ceylon to the Cape, and the whole length of the Atlantic Ocean from below 40 deg. S. to the shores of Iceland, and thence across to the shores of Norway and Denmark. But notwithstanding the Captain's assurance, we still felt it possible that on the Wolf we might be fired on by an Allied cruiser, and some of us set about settling up our ...
— Five Months on a German Raider - Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf' • Frederic George Trayes

... Middleton or Middleton to Shakespeare, the imaginary relations of "The Witch" to "Macbeth" or "Macbeth" to "The Witch," I can only say that the investigation of this subject seems to me as profitable as a research into the natural history of snakes in Iceland. That the editors to whom we owe the miserably defaced and villanously garbled text which is all that has reached us of "Macbeth," not content with the mutilation of the greater poet, had recourse to the interpolation of a few superfluous and ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... island in their small craft. Thus the Celts of Erin frequently crossed over to Scotland, to the Hebrides, from rock to rock, and in Christian times they went as far as the Faroe group, even as far as Iceland, which some of them appear to have attempted to colonize long before the Norwegian outlaws went there; and some even say that from Erin came the first Europeans who landed on frozen Greenland years before the Icelandic Northmen planted ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... motor to Lairg; it was to return for Merton, who had business enough on hand in sending the despatches. He was thinking over 'The Seven Hunters.' It might be, probably was, a blind, or the kidnappers, having touched there, might have departed in any direction—to Iceland, for what he knew. But the name, 'the Seven Hunters,' was not likely to have been invented by a practical joker in London. If not, the conspirators had really captured and kept to themselves Mr. Macrae's line of wireless communications. How could that have been done? Merton ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang

... of the great German family. Their language, the old Norse, was distinguished from the Alemannic, or High German tongue, and from the Saxonic, or Low German tongue. From the Norse have been derived the languages of Iceland, of the Ferroe Isles, of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. From the Germanic branch have come German, Dutch, Anglo-Saxon, Maeso-Gothic, and English. It was in Scandinavia that the Teutonic race developed its special ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... The travelling in Iceland is sometimes exceedingly dangerous at the beginning of the winter. A thin layer of snow covers and conceals some of the chasms with which that region abounds. Should the traveller fall into one of them, the dog proves a ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... heat of the East she next betook herself to the sullen cold of the North; and the result of her wanderings in 1846 was a lively book upon Scandinavia and Iceland, describing perils which few men would care to confront, with evidently ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams

... hospitality, industry, intellectual cultivation, morality, and habitual piety of the Icelanders, without a grateful sense of the adaptation of Christianity to the wants of our race, and of its ability to purify, elevate, and transform the worst elements of human character. In Iceland Christianity has performed its work of civilization, unobstructed by that commercial cupidity which has caused nations more favored in respect to soil and climate to lapse into an idolatry scarcely less debasing and cruel ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... was not only to exhaust the material resources of the people, but to drive a large proportion of the population to make viking excursions to win land elsewhere, and also to make peaceable settlements in other countries. Iceland was settled by the leading men of Norway in Harald the Fairhaired's reign because they would not submit to his rule and therefore emigrated to a land where they could rule. In 912 Duke Rollo with a large following conquered Normandy ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough

... that her seafaring annals may possibly go back to the Vikings of the tenth century, a thousand years ago. Long before William the Conqueror crossed over from France to England the Vikings had been scouring the seas, north, south, east, and west. They reached Constantinople; they colonized Iceland; they discovered Greenland; and there are grounds for suspecting that the 'White Eskimos' whom the Canadian Arctic expedition of 1913 noted down for report are some of their descendants. However this ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood

... New Zealand Australia Norway Austria Persia Bermuda Poland Bohemia Roumania China Russia Denmark Scotland England Asia Finland South Africa France South America Germany Sweden Holland Switzerland Hungary Wales Iceland Dutch East Indies India West ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Look Forward and Back at the Woman's Journal, the Organ of the - Woman's Movement • Agnes E. Ryan

... forty-five in number, of all sorts and sizes, counting seventeen marionettes such as the poor children in Venice play with, half a dozen Chinese actors, and nine brightly colored Russian peasants in wood. The others are Tairo, a very old Japanese doll in the costume of the feudal warriors, Thora from Iceland, Marit the Norwegian bride, Erik and Brita from Sweden, Giuseppe and Marietta from Rome, Heidi and Peter from the Alps, Gisela from Thuringia, Cecilia from Hungary, Annetje from Holland, Lewie Gordon from Edinburgh, Christie ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine

... Islands to be meant here by Thule; others imagine it to have been one of the Hebrides. Pliny, iv. 16, mentions Thule as the most remote of all known islands; and, by placing it but one day's sail from the Frozen Ocean, renders it probable that Iceland was intended. Procopius (Bell. Goth, ii. 15) speaks of another Thule, which must have been Norway, which many of the ancients thought to be an island. Mr. Pennant supposes that the Thule here meant was Foula, a very lofty ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus

... worthy a more attentive survey—What say you to Miss Vernon? Does not she form an interesting object in the landscape, were all round as rude as Iceland's coast?" ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... arbitrary character is too peculiar, apparently, to admit of any other explanation.1 But the germs of thought and imagination transplanted thus from the warm and gorgeous climes of the East to the snowy mountains of Norway and the howling ridges of Iceland, obtained a fresh development, with numerous modifications and strange additions, from the new life, climate, scenery, and customs to which they were there exposed. The temptation to predatory habits and strife, the necessity for an intense though fitful activity arising from ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... voluntarily contributed for the colonisation of Darien a larger proportion of their substance than any other people ever, in the same space of time, voluntarily contributed to any commercial undertaking. A great part of Scotland was then as poor and rude as Iceland now is. There were five or six shires which did not altogether contain so many guineas and crowns as were tossed about every day by the shovels of a single goldsmith in Lombard Street. Even the nobles had very little ready money. They generally ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... not as clear as could be wished. It is probable that g is a preliminary to m. N. Annandale mentions that he obtained in the Faroes a beater-in made of a whale's jaw or rib; while in Iceland he saw some of the perforated stones to which the warp threads were attached (The Faroes and Iceland, Oxford, 1905, ...
— Ancient Egyptian and Greek Looms • H. Ling Roth

... ICELAND AND GREENLAND.—Iceland was settled by the Northmen in the ninth century, [Footnote: Iceland became the literary centre of the Scandinavian world. There grew up here a class of scalds, or bards, who, before the introduction of writing, preserved and transmitted orally the sagas, or legends, ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... bird; which for the rest is almost a central type of all bird power with elf gifts added: it flies like a lark, trips on water-lily leaves like a fairy, swims like a duck, and roves like a sea-gull, having been seen sixty miles from land: and, finally, though living chiefly in Lapland and Iceland, and other such northern countries, it has been seen serenely swimming and catching flies in the hot water of the geysers, in which a man ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin

... into which a pencil of light divides itself in passing through a doubly refracting crystal, it could not have been foreseen that, a century and a half later, the great philosopher Arago would, by his discovery of 'chromatic polarization', be led to discern, by means of a small fragment of Iceland spar, whether solar light emanates from a solid body or a gaseous covering, or p 53 whether comets transmit light directly ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... recent action of King Christian of Denmark, in conferring the right of municipal suffrage upon the women in Iceland, and the similar enlargement of woman's political freedom in Scotland, India and Russia, are all encouraging evidences of the progress of self-government even in monarchical countries. And farther, that while the possession of these privileges by our foreign sisters is an occasion of rejoicing ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... situation in the Homeric poems—the free equality of the women, the military conditions, the life of the chiefs and retainers—closely resembles, allowing for differences of climate, that of the rich landowners of early Iceland as described in the sagas. There can be no doubt that the house of the Icelandic chief was analogous to the house of the Homeric prince. Societies remarkably similar in mode of life were accommodated in dwellings similarly arranged. Though the Icelanders ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang

... of the Njals Saga, under the title The Story of Burnt Njal, which is reprinted in this volume, was published by Messrs. Edmonston & Douglas in 1861. That edition was in two volumes, and was furnished by the author with maps and plans; with a lengthy introduction dealing with Iceland's history, religion and social life; with an appendix and an exhaustive index. Copies of this edition can still be obtained from ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous

... irritated at not getting my coffee, "if you were to carry your kettle and spirits of wine up a mountain of a morning, your water would boil there sooner." "I should say, sir." "Or, there are boiling springs in Iceland. Better go to Iceland." "That's what ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot

... roving pirates on their expeditions. Before a start was made a raven was let loose, and the direction of his flight gave the Viking ships their course. In this manner, according to the old Norse legends, did Floki discover Iceland; and many other extraordinary things happened under the auspices ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman

... of fire, clouds of dust, brimstone, and poisonous vapour, destroying for miles around the woods and crops, farms and cities, and burying them deep in ashes, as they have done again and again, both in Italy and Iceland, and in South America, even during the last few years. How can man stand against them? What greater warning or lesson to him than they, that God is stronger than man; that the earth is not man's property, and will ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley

... places inaccessible to vehicular conveyances. On the coast we shall hire a vessel, and visit the most remarkable of the Hebrides; and, if we have time and favourable weather, mean to sail as far as Iceland, only 300 miles from the northern extremity of Caledonia, to peep at Hecla. This last intention you will keep a secret, as my nice mamma would imagine I was on a Voyage of Discovery, and raised the ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero

... I took command, she was fit only for the junk pile; but the world-old parsimony of government retained her in active service, and sent two hundred men to sea in her, with myself, a mere boy, in command of her, to patrol thirty from Iceland to the Azores. ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... which increase thirty-five miles farther inland, as we have just seen, to 322 feet. The least inclination given by M. E. de Beaumont of the upper surface of a lava-stream, namely 0 degrees 30 minutes, is that of the great subaerial eruption in 1783 from Skaptar Jukul in Iceland; and M. E. de Beaumont shows that it must have flowed down a mean inclination of less than 0 degrees 20 minutes. ("Memoires pour servir" etc. pages 178 and 217.) But we now see that under the pressure of the sea, successive streams have flowed over a smooth bottom with a mean inclination ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin

... Library" all that remains of the ancient literature of England; Powell and Vigfusson have comprised in their "Corpus Poeticum Boreale" all we possess in the way of poems in the Scandinavian tongue, formerly composed in Denmark, Norway, the Orkneys, Iceland, and even Greenland, within the Arctic circle.[43] The resemblances between the two collections are striking, the differences are few. In both series it seems as if the same people were revealing its ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... number of casks in the cellars of the Tomati Palace at Rome, filled with letters, addressed to Thorwaldsen, and among them a long and constant correspondence between him and his mother, who lived part of the time in Denmark and part of the time in Iceland, her native country. It seems that Thorwaldsen had the habit of preserving his papers, even to the most trifling, by flinging them confusedly into a cedar box in his room; when that was full they were emptied into the casks where ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... scrub: so, in ancient time, instead of calling Regner the great conqueror, the Nation Tamer, they surnamed him Lodbrog, which signifies Rough or Hairy Breeks—lod or loddin signifying rough or hairy; and instead of complimenting Halgerdr, the wife of Gunnar of Hlitharend, the great champion of Iceland, upon her majestic presence, by calling her Halgerdr, the stately or tall, what must they do but term her Ha-brokr, or High-breeks, it being the fashion in old times for Northern ladies to wear breeks, or breeches, which English ladies of the present day never think of doing; ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow

... Islands:—we were walking the deck, watching a whale which was gamboling at some distance, throwing up his huge side to the sun, and sending ever and anon a sheet of water and foam from his nostrils. Our thoughts were on Hecla and on the icebergs of the Pole, on the Scalds of Iceland and the sea-kings of Norway, when a sail hove in sight: we asked what craft it was—and were answered, "a Gravesend brig dredging for lobsters." Never was enchantment so effectually broken—never ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 342, November 22, 1828 • Various



Words linked to "Iceland" :   Europe, European nation, European country, Reykjavik, Atlantic, island, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, Republic of Iceland, Atlantic Ocean



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