Conference turris::scandia

64.0. "Reykjavik" by BLITZN::PALO (Rik @(oo)@ Palo) Sat Mar 08 1986 23:22

    When the first settler of Iceland, sailing his Viking ship across
    the turbulent ocean, saw the peaks of the virgin country rise above
    the waters, he threw overboard the pillars of his high seat, which
    he had brought with him from his ancestral home in Norway, and pledged
    to break land wherever the pillars might drift ashore.  It was his
    way of submitting to the auspices of the old gods, asking their
    guidance, doing their will.  Landing on the southern coast, he soon
    began a two-year trek through terrain never before seen by human
    eyes -- lush-looking woodlands, verdant pastures, grass-grown plains,
    sheltered valleys where streams and lakes teemed with fish,
    shrub-covered heaths, and untouched expanses whose herbage had
    flourished without interference since time began.  True, this first
    of all Icelanders rested winter-long on his extended journey, but
    he never lost sight of his original goal; to find the place where
    the gods had chosen him a residence.  And it finally happened. 
    His thralls, searching the coastline, found his sea-scoured pillars
    washed up on a low spit of land in the south-western corner of the
    country, where barren moors and rocky hills no doubt caused the
    long-tired livestock disappointment equal to that of the thrall,
    who blurted out, "Ill luck took us through fertile regions if we
    are now to inhabit this miserable spit of land."  But the gods
    inevitably prevailed, and the man who had left his estate in a distant
    land rather than bow to the king's oppression, he now bent to the
    stony earth, selecting the rocks on which to found a hall befitting
    a chieftain.
    
    Thus it was by divine counsel that Ingolfur Arnarson became the
    first inhabitant of Reykjavik -- .....
                                          
    
    extracted from "Reykjavik - A Panorama in Four Seasons", by Gunnar
    Hannesson.