Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 October 1874 — Icelandic Attire. [ARTICLE]

Icelandic Attire.

A correspondent of the London Standard. who had been assisting at the late festivities in Iceland, saw several ladies dressed in the old Icelandic full dress. One of the ladies and her costume he describes as follows: She was some forty vears of age, tall and stately, and would have commanded attention in any assembly. The bright complexion and abundance of fair hair, as well as the general tone of the features, proclaimed her true Norse blood. Her dress, however, was what most caught my attention. She wore a closefitting bodice and sleeves, made of black woolen material with broad gold embroidery down the front and on the seams, fastened at the throat by a gold button, open after this about half-way down to the waist, so as to show a white chemisette, but with gold buttons on either side, so that it could be closed at will. Such a bodice as this is often laced up in front by a gold or silver chain, passed through a kind of ring on the edge of the buttons, but this lady wore it open. Round the waist was a belt formed of plates of gold linked together and hanging down in front nearly to the knees. Many of these belts in gold or silver are heirlooms and come down from generation to generation—perhaps relics of the time when people carried all their available wealth about with them, as Hindoo women and Shahs of Persia do nowadays. The skirt was of the same material with the bodice, and was perfectly plain, except for a narrowband of gold embroidered round the bottom, which was some two inches from the ground. No flounces or frills and, above all. no abominations in the way of crinoline or dress-improver disfigured the graceful costumes I am trying to describe. I know Ido it very badly, and I dare say the ladies will think I am a dunce, but the task is new and somewhat uncongenial. But the head-dress was the most peculiar part of the whole. I can only describe it as a flattened cornucopia turning over from the back toward the front. The cap was high, covered with white silk or linen, strained over a frame of cardboard, and built up with wadding. This construction I afterward inquired into, so it may be accepted as correct. Round the band of it glittered about a dozen of fold stars, and set in all round was a very eep net fall trimmed with lace. This fall was lifted up in front and turned back over the cap, while the back part of it fell almost to the waist, the whole giving much the effect of a bridal veil. The* hair was worn in several long and very broad plaits, which were turned up in loops, and their ends hidden under the cap. This is the usual Icelandic style of wearing the hair, and, of course, dispenses with all the adornment of frizzles -and false plaits which the belles of our more southern climes find indispensable.

Clumsiness inriiy description may, perhaps. impart am idea of clumsiness to the head-dress, but it is by no means clumsy. On the contrary it is very becoming, and displayed above bright and' (pretty faces, as I afterward saw it, adds a charm to what hardly requires improvement—the features of the better class of Icelandic girls.