Eider duck

Eider duck is the source of Iceland’s most valuable down in the account of the expedition’s preparations, and its nesting habits explain how Hans Bjelke earns his living as a hunter. The bird’s soft breast down becomes a harvest, but the trade depends on a recurring natural cycle: hunters remove the female’s nest lining, she begins again, and the male eventually completes a nest whose less valuable down is left alone. That pattern makes the Eider duck more than a passing detail of local life; it links animal behavior, human labor, commerce, and the expedition’s choice of guide.

The bird and its economic importance

The narrator first learns that the grave, motionless hunter Hans Bjelke is an eider hunter, not a pursuer of game in the usual sense. The distinction matters because the down of the Eider duck is described as the greatest source of Icelanders’ wealth. Hans’s apparent stillness and solemnity therefore conceal a practical expertise rooted in the island’s coastal wildlife and in a trade that depends on collecting nests rather than killing birds.

The setting makes that work possible. The island’s shores are indented with fjords, narrow gulfs where the birds build their nests. In the broader portrait of Icelandic life, codfish is identified as the principal export, while eider down is singled out as a major source of wealth. These details place the bird within a material economy in which local livelihoods depend on harvesting what the landscape and its animals provide.

Nesting and the harvest cycle

In the early days of summer, the female Eider duck builds her nest among the fjord rocks and lines it with the softest down from her breast. The hunter or trader then takes the nest. The female begins the work again, and collection continues for as long as down remains available. The account emphasizes repetition: the harvest is not a single taking but a sequence of removals and renewed nest-building.

When the female has no more down to give, the male begins to line the nest. His down is not as soft and has no commercial value, so the hunter leaves that lining untouched. The nest can then be completed, eggs are laid, and young birds are born; the next year, the down harvest begins again. The description presents the trade as dependent on a distinction in the value assigned to the birds’ different contributions, and on leaving the male’s lining in place so that nesting can proceed.

Landscape, labor, and method

The Eider duck’s choice of nesting site shapes the hunter’s work. It does not choose steep rocks or exposed aspects, but instead nests on low, sloping cliffs near the sea. That preference allows Icelandic hunters to reach the nests without great difficulty. The narrator compares the work to farming, except that the hunter need not plow, sow, or harrow: he collects a harvest that the birds have already prepared.

This comparison casts the trade as both a form of local knowledge and an unusually direct use of the environment. The harvest depends on knowing where the birds nest, when they begin, how the female replaces the taken lining, and when the male’s less valuable down completes the nest. The account gives no further detail about regulation or the effects of collection on bird populations; its emphasis is on the practical rhythm that makes the work possible.

Hans Bjelke and the expedition

Hans’s livelihood provides the explanation for the narrator’s surprise at finding a hunter in so tranquil and solemn a man. Introduced to the travelers through M. Fridriksson’s recommendation, Hans is appointed their future guide. His understanding with Professor Hardwigg is quickly reached: neither is preoccupied with money, one willing to accept what is offered and the other ready to offer what is asked. Hans agrees to take the party to Stapi, on the southern slope of Sneffels, a journey estimated at about twenty-two miles.

The Eider duck thus has a narrative consequence beyond the description of a trade. The bird’s down sustains the hunter whose coastal knowledge and services help carry the expedition toward the volcano. The narrator sets Hans’s economical movements and quiet manner against Professor Hardwigg’s impulsiveness, yet the two reach an understanding readily. A local livelihood founded on collecting the Eider duck’s nests becomes the point of entry through which the travelers secure their guide.