poetical descriptions of the
northern romancers, who grow enthusiastic in praise of ideal "angels'
heads with golden tresses." The hair is certainly worn in this manner
here, and our poets may have borrowed their descriptions from the
Scandinavians. But the beautiful faces which are said to beam forth from
among those golden locks exist only in the poet's vivid imagination.

Ornamental additions to the costume are very rare. In the whole assembly
I only noticed four women who were dressed differently from the others.
The cords which fastened their spencers, and also their girdles, were
ornamented with a garland worked in silver thread. Their skirts were of
fine black cloth, and decorated with a border of coloured silk a few
inches broad. Round their necks they wore a kind of stiff collar of
black velvet with a border of silver thread, and on their heads a black
silk handkerchief with a very strange addition. This appendage consisted
of a half-moon fastened to the back of the head, and extending five or
six inches above the forehead. It was covered with white lawn arranged
in folds; its breadth at the back of the head did not exceed an inch and
a half, but in front it widened to five or six inches.

The men, I found, were clothed almost like our peasants. They wore
small-clothes of dark cloth, jackets and waistcoats, felt hats, or fur
caps; and instead of boots a kind of shoe of ox-hide, sheep, or
seal-skin, bound to the feet by a leather strap. The women, and even the
children of the officials, all wear shoes of this description.

It was very seldom that I met people so wretchedly and poorly clad as we
find them but too often in the large continental towns. I never saw any
one without good warm shoes and stockings.

The better classes, such as merchants, officials, &c. are dressed in the
French style, and rather fashionably. There is no lack of silk and other
costly stuffs. Some of these are brought from England, but the greater
part come from Denmark.

On the king's birthday, which is kept every year at the house of the
Stiftsamtmann, the festivities are said to be very grand; on this
occasion the matrons appear arrayed in silk, and the maidens in white
jaconet; the rooms are lighted with wax tapers.

Some speculative genius or other has also established a sort of club in
Reikjavik. He has, namely, hired a couple of rooms, where the
townspeople meet of an evening to discuss "tea-water," bread and but