Leprosy in Iceland

Leprosy in Iceland enters the narrative through the expedition’s overland journey from Gardar: the travelers see afflicted people beside the route, and Professor Hardwigg identifies the disease as hereditary, not contagious, with marriage prohibited to those who suffer from it. The episode registers both the narrator’s repulsion and the people’s flight, making leprosy part of the human desolation he encounters on the way toward Sneffels.

Encounter on the road

A hundred yards beyond Gardar, the landscape changes to marsh and bog. The travelers ford streams, pass through increasingly deserted country, and catch sight of human figures at a distance. When the track brings them nearer, the narrator describes a swollen, hairless head, shining skin, and wounds visible through rags. The people do not approach to beg; they run away. Hans greets them with the Icelandic salutation saellvertu, then identifies them with the word for leprosy, which Professor Hardwigg explains to the narrator.

Disease and social consequence

The explanation distinguishes the affliction from contagion: the narrator is told that leprosy is hereditary, not contagious, and that marriage is strictly forbidden to those affected. The passage offers this prohibition as a condition of their lives, without further explaining its enforcement or the people’s own experience of it. The distinction between the narrator’s fear of the disease and the stated absence of contagion is especially sharp: the word alone provokes repulsion, although the account says transmission is not the danger.

Landscape and narrative perspective

The encounter is framed by a country the narrator experiences as increasingly desolate. After seeing the afflicted people, he describes dying grass, an absence of trees apart from a few stunted willows, and a falcon flying through grey, misty air toward warmer regions. He says the sight does not enliven the journey and that melancholy overtakes him; he longs for his native land and Gretchen. The leprosy episode thus belongs to his personal response to the route as well as to the expedition’s observations: the afflicted are glimpsed briefly, while the narrator’s account emphasizes their appearance, his recoil, and the surrounding loneliness.