Half Hours in the Far North Author:North General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1875 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: ICELAND. CHAPTER III. THE PEOPLE. is no hotel in Iceland, always excepting the -- miserable pot-house which does duty at the capital. The churches are the hostelries, and the clergy, miserably poor though they be, are the public exponents of a hospitality which is a national virtue. You sleep and eat, and may even smoke at your ease, in the churches. The clergy join you, if you wish it, at such festivity, and frequently the meal, or its choicest portion, is their contribution. The churches are ridiculously small buildings. The one which formerly stood at Tingvalla -- one of the great sights of the island, from being the seat of the old Athling or open-air Parliament -- was only twenty-five feet by ten, and when the clergyman was in the pulpit hishead was above the rafters ! The new church at the place mentioned is on a somewhat larger scale than its predecessor; but many sacred edifices, I was informed, still exist in th'e island, not larger than the old church referred to. The people are so widely scattered, that it is difficult in stormy weather to fill even these diminutive buildings. The clergy possess incomes varying generally from 6/. to 101. a year, exclusive of a few trifling fees, and they have a house and farm besides. They work at their farms as hard as the meanest of their parishioners ; and, as a rule, are not very much elevated above them in intelligence or learning. To this remark, however, there have been, and still are, many notable exceptions. It is not an uncommon thing for the traveller to find an entertainment set out for his acceptance on the altar of the church in which ...« less