The weather was cloudy but calm when we finally began our dangerous journey. There was no blazing heat and no heavy rain. It was perfect weather for traveling.
I had always loved riding horses, so crossing an unfamiliar country on horseback was much more enjoyable than I had expected.
Before long, I began to feel excited about the journey. The freedom of traveling made my spirits rise, and the expedition no longer seemed as frightening as it had before.
After all, I thought, what am I really risking? I only have to travel through a strange country, climb an unusual mountain, and, at worst, go down into the crater of an extinct volcano.
That was all Saknussemm had supposedly done.
As for the underground passage leading into the center of the earth, that was clearly nonsense. It must have been nothing more than the fantasy of a disturbed mind.
So I decided that whatever my uncle asked me to do, I would do it without complaining.
I reached this conclusion just before we left Reykjavik.
Hans, our remarkable guide, led the way. He walked quickly and steadily, always keeping exactly the same pace.
Our two packhorses followed him on their own. We did not need to use the whip or even pull on the reins.
My uncle and I rode behind them on two small but strong Icelandic horses.
Iceland is one of the largest islands in Europe. It covers about thirty thousand square miles and has roughly seventy thousand inhabitants.
Geographers divide the island into four regions. We had to cross the southwestern region, known in Icelandic as Sudvestr Fjordungr.
When Hans left Reykjavik, he followed the coastline.
We passed through poor, thin meadows that struggled every year to produce even a little grass. They rarely managed to show much more than yellow.
In the distance, the rough peaks of rocky hills could barely be seen through the mist.
From time to time, large snowflakes appeared in the morning light.
Some tall, sharp rocks disappeared into the low gray clouds, while their peaks remained visible above them, like jagged reefs rising from a stormy sea.
Occasionally, a rocky ridge pushed down across the dry ground, leaving us barely enough space to get through.
Our horses, however, seemed completely familiar with the land.
They somehow knew the safest path without any help from us.
My uncle could not even force his horse to move faster by using his whip, his spurs, or his voice.
Nothing worked.
I could not help laughing when I saw how enormous my uncle looked on his tiny horse. His long legs sometimes touched the ground, making him look like a six-legged centaur.
“Good horse! Good horse!” he shouted.
“I am beginning to think there is no animal more intelligent than an Icelandic horse.”
“Snow, storms, terrible roads, rocks, even icebergs—nothing seems to stop him.”
“He is brave, calm, and reliable. He never takes a wrong step, and he never slips.”
“I would not be surprised if we had to cross a river or a fjord and he simply walked straight into the water like an amphibious animal.”
“We must not try to hurry him. Let him choose his own pace, and I am sure we can cover ten Danish miles a day between us.”
“We may be able to do that,” I replied, “but what about Hans?”
“I am not worried about him at all. People like him can keep going without even thinking about whether they are tired.”
“Look at Hans. He hardly seems to move, so he could walk all day without getting tired.”
“And if he does become tired, he can use my horse.”
“As for me, I would suffer terribly if I could not get some exercise. My arms are fine, but my legs are beginning to stiffen.”
Meanwhile, we continued moving at a good pace.
The land had already begun to look almost deserted.
Here and there stood a lonely farm or an isolated Icelandic house made from wood, earth, and pieces of lava.
They looked like poor beggars standing beside the road of life.
The miserable little huts made us feel so sorry for their inhabitants that we almost wanted to leave money at every door.
There were no real roads in this country. Even paths were rare.
The little vegetation that existed grew so slowly that it quickly covered whatever traces the few travelers had left behind.
And yet, this area was only a short distance from Reykjavik and was considered one of the best cultivated and most populated parts of Iceland.
I could not help wondering what the more remote parts of the island must be like.
We had already traveled half a Danish mile without seeing a farmer standing outside his house or even a shepherd wandering across the land with his wild flock.
We occasionally saw a cow or a few sheep, but that was all.
What would we find when we reached the regions shaped and broken by volcanic eruptions and underground movements?
We would find out soon enough.
When I studied the map, however, I realized that we would avoid much of the worst country by following the winding and lonely coastline.
Most of Iceland’s volcanic activity was concentrated farther inland.
There, layer upon layer of rock had been thrown together by nature. Basalt formations and enormous lava flows had created a landscape that seemed almost supernatural.
But I had no idea what kind of sight awaited us when we reached the Sneffels Peninsula, where nature’s destruction had piled itself into a terrifying chaos.
A little more than two hours after leaving Reykjavik, we reached a small place called Aoalkirkja, meaning “the principal church.”
It consisted of only a few houses. In England or Germany, we would hardly have called it a village.
Hans stopped there for half an hour.
He shared our simple breakfast and answered my uncle’s questions about the road ahead with nothing more than “yes” and “no.”
Finally, my uncle asked where we would spend the night.
“Gardar,” Hans replied.
That was all.
I took out the map to find Gardar.
After studying it carefully, I found a small town with that name on the shore of the Hvalfjord, about four miles from Reykjavik.
I pointed it out to my uncle.
He made a very unhappy face.
“Only four miles out of twenty-two? That’s barely a walk!”
He was about to complain to Hans, but the guide completely ignored him.
Instead, Hans simply walked ahead of the horses with the same calm, expressionless manner he had shown all day.
Three hours later, we were still crossing those seemingly endless sandy plains.
We had to go around the Kollafjord because it was easier and shorter than crossing its inlets.
Soon afterward, we entered a district called Ejulberg.
If there had been a church clock there, it would have been noon.
But Icelandic churches were not wealthy enough to own such useful luxuries.
In fact, the people themselves had little use for watches, so perhaps they did not miss clocks either.
We let the horses rest and eat for a while.
Then we continued along a narrow strip of land between the high rocks and the sea.
Without stopping again, the horses carried us to the Aoalkirkja of Brantar.
Another mile brought us to Saurboer Annexia, a small chapel on the southern shore of the Hvalfjord.
By four in the afternoon, we had traveled four Danish miles, or about twenty English miles.
The fjord was about half a mile wide at this point.
Waves crashed against the sharp rocks along the shore.
Towering cliffs surrounded the water. One enormous cliff rose nearly three thousand feet above us, its brown layers of rock broken here and there by reddish beds of volcanic tufa.
Whatever confidence I had in our horses, I certainly did not trust them to carry us across a stormy stretch of seawater.
Riding through salt water on the back of a tiny horse seemed ridiculous.
If these horses were really intelligent, I thought, they would surely refuse to do it.
And if there was a choice between trusting their intelligence and my own, I would choose mine.
But my uncle had no intention of waiting.
He drove his heels into his horse’s sides and headed straight for the shore.
The horse walked right up to the edge of the water.
It sniffed at an approaching wave.
Then it backed away.
My uncle was just as stubborn as the animal he was riding.
He insisted that the horse move forward.
The horse refused again and calmly shook its head.
My uncle became furious.
He shouted at the animal and struck it with the whip.
The horse responded by kicking wildly and throwing its head and heels into the air, nearly throwing my uncle off.
Finally, the stubborn little pony spread its legs, twisted itself out from beneath my uncle, and left him standing on two separate rocks with one foot on each.
He looked like the Colossus of Rhodes.
“Wretched animal!” my uncle shouted.
He had suddenly become a man on foot, looking as angry and humiliated as a cavalry officer thrown from his horse in the middle of a battle.
Hans walked over and calmly tapped him on the shoulder.
“Farja,” he said.
“What? A ferry?”
Hans pointed toward a boat lying on the shore.
“Der.”
“There!”
I was delighted.
“So there is a ferry!”
“Why didn’t you tell us that before?” my uncle demanded. “Why don’t we cross immediately?”
“Tidvatten,” Hans replied.
“What is he saying?” I asked, confused by their strange conversation.
“He says we have to wait for the tide,” my uncle explained.
“Of course. Then we have to wait until the tide is right.”
“For bida?” my uncle asked.
“Ja,” Hans replied.
My uncle frowned and stamped his feet.
Then he followed the horses toward the ferry.
I understood perfectly why we had to wait.
We needed to cross when the tide was at its highest and the water was temporarily still.
At that moment, neither the incoming nor outgoing current would be strong enough to carry the ferry out toward the open sea or smash it against the rocky shore.
The right moment finally came at six in the evening.
My uncle, Hans, I, two boatmen, and our four horses climbed into a very awkward flat-bottomed boat.
I was used to the powerful steam ferries on the Elbe, so the long oars used by these boatmen seemed like a very poor way to travel.
It took us more than an hour to cross the fjord.
Fortunately, we reached the other side without an accident.
Half an hour later, we arrived at Gardar.