THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN

523

manded by the so-called “ Mountain-Kings.” The sheep are driven into large folds, kept up at public expense, and by the mark cut in their ears are sorted by their respective owners. These sheep-gathering days, called Rcttir may be said to be the last outdoor dissipation of the year, and everybody who can manage it tries to join at the large common sheep-folds, where they meet friends not seen for months, and not likely to see tor many more months.

After this sets in the long, and in many places dreary, winter. All life in the country seems to crouch despondingly under roof and thatch. The animals are now attended to in their stalls, or huts, by the men, and the women set to work in earnest at what may be properly called the domestic industry of the country. During the day various acts of routine work disturb, to a certain degree, the industry proper of some of the women; but toward dusk everybody has settled down, and this is the appear­ance of an Icelandic household generally during the long winter evenings: At the upper end of a long room, the so-called badstofa , the sitting-room of the family, which in most cases also serves as a dormitory for the women, sits the mistress of the house at her spinning-wheel, surrounded by her children, the master often also by her side, carding the wool for her, or perhaps making some utensils required for the house. Next, in a row down the room on either side sit the hand-maidens, all at their spin­ning-wheels. Then the men are seated next, at the lower end of the room, carding the wool for the women, or some may be exercising their skill at wood-carving, making ornamental horn spoons or other things required for the house. For the most part, the whole company sits in silence, because one of the party, generally a youth, or one of the better readers among the men, is sitting in a central position in the room read­ing an Icelandic Saga to the company, an act that no one disturbs for a moment until the end of a chapter gives the reader an opportunity for a pause. Then there is a lively interchange of opinion between both sexes as to the merits and demerits of the actors of the Saga (drama), and it is striking to hear how intensely the girls realize, and how intelligently they rush with a freshman’s boldness into a discussion of the subject. This kind of life accounts for our language being kept pure, and prac­tically unaltered, for over a thousand years—the whole of the people working together, indoors and out of doors.

The weaver, however, is, as a rule, separated from the rest of the household, the hand-loom being generally down-stairs, in the men’s dormitory. The whole winter is spent in the way described, with a very few variations. Every garment of woolen fabric used in the household is spun, woven and knitted by hand by the inmates. They all work it and share it; each servant gets a certain number of garments as part of his wages. They all get as much skin as they require for shoes. Women make the shoes; not only their own, but the men’s shoes, too. They often have to sit up at night, after the men have gone to bed, and make their shoes or mend them. The mistress generally makes her husband’s shoes, and the children’s till they are old enough to do it themselves. That is in addition to her many other duties, too numerous to count.

In spring, when all the vadmal, or cloth, is finished, ready to make up, the mistress generally cuts out all the garments and then teaches the servant girls, as well as her daughters (if she has any), to make them up. I think you will agree with me that the work must be good when I tell you that Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, has been wear­ing the Icelandic gloves for years, the only “woolen” gloves she wears, I am told; also that the work got the highest possible award at the International Health Exhi­bition in London, 1884, namely, “The Diploma of Honor,” and the gold medal in the Anglo-Danish Exhibition in 1887.

Among many other questions about Iceland which I have been asked here at the World’s Fair is, how many policemen we have in the country; the people seem much amused when I tell them that we have only two, and that both, of course, are in Reyk­javik, the capital. They were still more amused when I told them how little, really, they were needed, except in summer, when foreign sailors are there. The senior policeman, Jon Borgfjord, is quite a literary character, self-taught, and the one before