Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/568

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562
POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
The Oxaia Foss, Thingvallir.

latter over the bank. Both contain admirable specimens and both, it is projected, will be housed with the library in a new public building, where room will be provided ample enough to make these three "foundations" an ornament to the city.

The museum of antiquities has unquestionable importance. Here are very old altar pieces (Christianity was introduced into Iceland in 1000), old vestments and church paintings, with strange archaic buckles, girdles of brass, silver and gold, rugs, carved boxes, old cabinets, swords (many of them strips of iron rust), poignards, stone pestles and mortars, saddles, bits and bridles, lamps and chairs.

The crowning group of objects is a collection of most curious hand mangles, or rollers, for linen fabrics. These "rullur" are made of wood and most elaborately carved, having one uniform form but differing in size and in ornamentation. Some, two and a half feet long, are covered from end to end with carvings, not grotesque, but simple, and rudely or quaintly symbolic and decorative. Glyptic skill has been characteristic in Iceland. I saw some excellent modern examples in snuff horns made from ivory, with carved motifs taken from the Icelandic mythology. It seems probable that this ability prevailed more