Rensselaer Union, Volume 6, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 August 1874 — Iceland’s Great Festival. [ARTICLE]

Iceland’s Great Festival.

The festival which the people of isolated and barren Iceland were to celebrate'Saturday is an event worthy of attention from the more busy and social nations of the earth. It is their millenary of existence; for in 874 A. I). Ingolf sailed thither, with other pagan chiefs of Norway, to escape the restraints of the centralized sovereignty built up by Harold, the Fair-liaired, and the mightier influences of Christianity encouraged by St. Olaf, his successor. These Norse vikings were thus, however diflerent in nature and tendency, the prototypes of the Plymouth pilgrims in that they sought in exile civil and religious freedom denied them at home. There, out of the beaten track of the world, they made a Republic; tlieir Althing embodied popular government, and their laws first instituted trial by jury. For four centuries this lasted; an age during which a great literature was made, distinguished by epic poets, philosophers and historians; in which commerce and exploration gave the nation fame. Then at last the religion that Ingolf and his fellows fled from sought ard conquered their posterity; envies and jealousies rent the fabric of liberty, and. tlie government the fathers rebelled against stretched its power over the unresisting children. Their literature died, and tlieir once-cherislied rights vanished one by one. And so since the dark ages of Europe, which were their light ages, Iceland has been but a tradition of history and poetry. > Now dawns a new day; or rather now a slow dawn bursts into full light. Thirty years ago the spirit of the Icelandic people was so well revived that once again they got their Althing; in ten years more they gained free trade, and one by one, as they went, the privileges of freedom return. Tlieir festival thus celebrates also a renewed as well as commemorates a historic national life, and King Christian of Denmark, the firsT, of their sovereigns to visit them, comes with a free constitution in his hand for largesse to Iris distant subjects. He finds a revived nation in every point; tlieir culture betokened by newspapers and libraries, and rising men in many walks, from poetry and criticism to science and politics; finds too a sense of entity so strong that eyeh the shadow of dependence galls and the popular ambition reaches beyond the concessions of the King to an absolute cutting loose from his dominion.

To us this millennial festival bears a double interest; a republican sympathy and an intellectual gratitude. Iceland is a land of marvels, an abode of poetic meaning that adheres in tlje tremendous throes of nature, and is interpreted in the wild and stern imaginations of northern mythology. From the crowding volcanoes, the devastating lava, the treeless and desert surface,.with scarce patches of soil and scanty herbage for tlocks'imd herds, the great rivers, the broad fjords, from the whole weird scenery of a land that fire and frost continually quarrel over—there has come an influence that nearly all modern literatures have felt; that molded all Scandinavian life, inspired the German thought, and has its share in English letters to this day. We owe the Icelanders a hearty fellowship for these things,- and, besides, there is that casual tie of Leif Ericson’s early visit to our shores. It is well that we were represented at Reykjavik on this rare festal anniversary. It is a courtesy that Iceland will perhaps repay to our now young Republic 900 years hence; we trust, at all events, that Bayard Taylor, Mr. Halsted and Mr. Field will not fail to invite a delegation of her journal ißte and notables to our nearing centennial.—Springfield (Maes) Republican. As affecting eight—Barrels in tiers.