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Skalhot (Scalhot): 21 July, 1873 ‘. . . I slept well but woke up every now and then to hear the rain pouring down on the tent and the wind flapping it, but while we were at breakfast (chocolate and cold bacon) it cleared up for a little and we got away dry: we skirted the plain still by the mountain slopes and saw presently Miodal and its little church, the stead we ought to have made last night; here the drizzling rain came down on us again and hid everything distant: it was charged too with fine dust that half blinded us and we seemed to be riding through a middling London fog’ (IJ p 191).

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Skalhot (Scalhot): 21 July, 1873 ‘Thence we got into another bog and over a ridge into a long valley all pure bog between two straight hillsides, along one of which we floundered till Jon showed us a mound on the other hillside which was Scalhot, so thither we turned by the least impassable way across the bogs, when lo, when we were halfway across, it cleared a bit and we could see the stead clear, a blue mountain rising in the distance over it, and below it a great bight of White-water, with a fine swelling mountain on the other side of it’ (IJ p 192).

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Sprengisandur: 4 August, 1873 ‘. . . we were on the bare sand and stones again and mounting somewhat saw several peaks rising over the flatter ground which seemed very wide indeed’ (IJ p 216).

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Sprengisandur: 4 August, 1873 ‘The raven flies about here making noises like winding up a big clock – and we have to go up it a good way to get across – which done we are still on the same black plain and ride over slope after slope of it’ (IJ p 216).

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Sprengisandur: 6 August, 1873 ‘Sometimes there were big stones and rocks even strewed about the pebble-covered sand: and these sometimes ran together into boulders and shaly flags heaped up together . . .’ (IJ p 220)

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Lake Myvatn: 9 August, 1873 ‘So on and over some frightful bogs and round a little tarn at the end of which our guide leaves us, and after one or two ups and downs the lake of Myvatn with its many islands lies before us underneath long grey brents broken by strange shaped cones . . .’ (IJ p 226)

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Lake Myvatn: 9 August, 1873 ‘So on and over some frightful bogs and round a little tarn at the end of which our guide leaves us, and after one or two ups and downs the lake of Myvatn with its many islands lies before us underneath long grey brents broken by strange shaped cones . . .’ (IJ p 226)

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Steaming mudpots near Dettifoss: 11 August, 1873 ‘… on the other side of the lake were a small pyramid and teeth of lava, that led up to a great low flat crater of grey sand some mile across; then came more teeth of lava and grey-green slopes that led up to the wretched drab waste of the sulphur fields tossed up into little cones: and so slopes of grey and burnt up to N[amafiall] again’ (IJ p 228)

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Landscape near Dettifoss: 12 August, 1873 ‘Now again on the brow of its slopes a big plain comes into sight, it is faintly green and is bounded by faraway mountains low and ridgy; amidst it a white smoke is seen which the guide points out as the spray of the foss; the whole view dismays one beyond measure for its emptiness and dolefulness’ (IJ p 230)

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Landscape near Dettifoss: 12 August, 1873 ‘Down now over lava stones on to a lumpy heathy ground (of a plain), most troublesome to get the horses over, we keeping the force steam in sight …’ (IJ p 230)

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Dettifoss: 12 August, 1873 ‘Some way down we came on a transverse break crescent-shaped in the river-bed, visibly an old fall, made of the hugest blocks of rock, and then all the rift floor sank into confusion together, and turned into a sharp tumbled heap of slopes that led down to a gully amidst which we could see a black stream running at right angles to the others and seemed small enough for our ideas of Jukulsa. Round this we went to find the force: came across rocks like organ pipes with wool atop at end of rift. Force higher up across rift, down a low rock on to a flat space of wet moss; there foss say, one hundred feet coming down from a channel like the rift, more or less a crescent, into a very deep gully quite wallsided of lightish grey built-up rocks – say one hundred and fifty feet’ (IJ p 231).

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Dettifoss: 12 August, 1873 ‘Some way down we came on a transverse break crescent-shaped in the river-bed, visibly an old fall, made of the hugest blocks of rock, and then all the rift floor sank into confusion together, and turned into a sharp tumbled heap of slopes that led down to a gully amidst which we could see a black stream running at right angles to the others and seemed small enough for our ideas of Jukulsa. Round this we went to find the force: came across rocks like organ pipes with wool atop at end of rift. Force higher up across rift, down a low rock on to a flat space of wet moss; there foss say, one hundred feet coming down from a channel like the rift, more or less a crescent, into a very deep gully quite wallsided of lightish grey built-up rocks – say one hundred and fifty feet’ (IJ p 231).

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Dettifoss: 12 August, 1873 ‘Some way down we came on a transverse break crescent-shaped in the river-bed, visibly an old fall, made of the hugest blocks of rock, and then all the rift floor sank into confusion together, and turned into a sharp tumbled heap of slopes that led down to a gully amidst which we could see a black stream running at right angles to the others and seemed small enough for our ideas of Jukulsa. Round this we went to find the force: came across rocks like organ pipes with wool atop at end of rift. Force higher up across rift, down a low rock on to a flat space of wet moss; there foss say, one hundred feet coming down from a channel like the rift, more or less a crescent, into a very deep gully quite wallsided of lightish grey built-up rocks – say one hundred and fifty feet’ (IJ p 231).

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Dettifoss: 12 August, 1873 ‘Some way down we came on a transverse break crescent-shaped in the river-bed, visibly an old fall, made of the hugest blocks of rock, and then all the rift floor sank into confusion together, and turned into a sharp tumbled heap of slopes that led down to a gully amidst which we could see a black stream running at right angles to the others and seemed small enough for our ideas of Jukulsa. Round this we went to find the force: came across rocks like organ pipes with wool atop at end of rift. Force higher up across rift, down a low rock on to a flat space of wet moss; there foss say, one hundred feet coming down from a channel like the rift, more or less a crescent, into a very deep gully quite wallsided of lightish grey built-up rocks – say one hundred and fifty feet’ (IJ p 231).

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Godafoss: 14 Aug, 1873 ‘Found we had gone wrong – too high up; down again along hillside till this side died away, and a plain before us running up into another valley: high table mountain at the tongue and great screens of mountains pushed out from the other side to meet: other side of Bard[ardalr] steep but green: clouds on very top of it – reek of G[oda] foss a little way over the plain. So past the foss, I just seeing it and a lower one smaller, in deep gorge, strange spiky roofs half pierced with caves all about: across river by a little stead and down it to foss – heathy ground – several streams of river, two hot, coming over foss: foss not high, moonshaped, a big rock splitting into two (Grettir’s-rock) – most character about that – not much just below foss till it got into rapids again, then a very narrow gorge all eddies, below which great rocks stuck out into the stream all mined into caves till it came to the little fall and rocks above-said’ (IJ p 232-33).

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Akureyri: 16 August, 1873 ‘A[Kreyri] – busy – merchant, sorb trees: chaffer – hotel – me like Wapping – dull day, cold, no rain’ (IJ p 234).

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Skagafjordur: 19 Aug, 1873 ‘ . . . beyond the great grass slopes again the west mountains higher running more west into another valley . . .’ (IJ p 236)

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Skagafjordur: 19 August 1873 Icelandic ponies similar to those Morris and his party rode

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Skagafjordur: 19 August 1873 ‘… then we do down hill alongside a tremendous chasm, met by another chasm that cleaves the hills into grim and enormous lumps of sand, and so presently look into north of Sk[agafiordr] …’ (IJ p 236)

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Skagafjordur: 19 August 1873 Drangey Island in the distance, scene of much of Grettisaga