Literary Society and Mechanics' Institute

The Literary Society and Mechanics' Institute embodies a civic ideal of education for ordinary people: its books circulate rather than remain locked away, and its publications are intended to educate the Icelandic population. Introduced during the expedition’s stay in Reykjavik, the institution offers a striking contrast to Professor Hardwigg’s search for knowledge beneath the surface of the island, while drawing him into the local scholarly community.

Founding and Educational Purpose

The Society was founded in 1816. M. Fridriksson, a professor of natural science at the college in Reykjavik, describes its work as serving a country where farmers, laborers, and fishermen can read and write. Rather than reserving books for a small scholarly class or keeping them safely on library shelves, Icelanders pass books from hand to hand; a volume may remain in circulation for years without returning to the library.

Fridriksson makes the Society’s priorities explicit when Professor Hardwigg asks whether foreign visitors have anything to see. The answer is that the first consideration is the education of the humbler classes, not providing attractions for outsiders. The Society publishes books intended to educate the people, and Fridriksson says those publications have rendered valuable services to the country. The account thus connects literacy, circulation, and publishing in a single public mission.

Membership and the Expedition

The Society includes honorary members from among eminent foreign scholars. During the expedition’s visit, Fridriksson offers to enroll Professor Hardwigg as an honorary member. Hardwigg, who already belongs to nearly every literary and scientific institution in Europe, accepts immediately, yielding to Fridriksson’s request. The exchange gives the Society a place in the expedition’s network of scientific and scholarly affiliations, while showing its host extending local hospitality through institutional membership.

The meeting takes place within a broader effort to establish relations with Icelandic authorities and scholars. On landing, Hardwigg presents letters from Copenhagen to Baron Trampe, the island’s governor, who puts himself at the professor’s service. The party is received by the mayor, M. Finsen, and encounters Fridriksson, whose Icelandic and Latin are the languages he speaks. His scholarly standing and the Society’s invitation make the Reykjavik visit more than a logistical stop: it is also an encounter with a local culture of learning.

Knowledge, Place, and the Journey

The Society’s educational ideal contrasts with Hardwigg’s immediate purpose in Iceland. When Henry Lawson goes out to see Reykjavik, Hardwigg dismisses interest in what lies above the surface as irrelevant to him; what matters is what lies below. The town Lawson observes occupies a flat, marshy plain between two hills, with lava terraces on one side and Faxa Bay on the other. Its two streets, wooden merchant huts, small gardens, and modest scale register the surface world that Hardwigg is eager to leave behind.

Yet the expedition’s underground progress repeatedly turns travel into a practice of observing, recording, and interpreting. Hardwigg keeps a notebook for memoranda, while Henry reads the changing rock strata and the fossil traces revealed by the expedition’s electric light. In Silurian rocks he recognizes a geological transition; later, the illuminated calcareous rock and marble display marks of more developed ancient life, including remains associated with Devonian seas. These observations belong to the travelers’ scientific narrative, not to the Society’s stated activities, but they illuminate the wider value placed on learning that frames the Reykjavik encounter.

Public Learning and Scientific Debate

The book also sets the expedition’s observations against contemporary disputes over the antiquity of humanity. It recounts the discovery in 1863 of a human jawbone at Moulin-Quignon, buried fourteen feet below the surface, together with stone hatchets and carved flints. Scientists argued over whether the find established the presence of humans in the Quaternary period; Professor Hardwigg supported its authenticity, while Elie de Beaumont disputed the geological dating. Further finds and interpretations extended the period assigned to human history, including evidence discussed as placing human activity before the Mastodon.

This account makes knowledge a matter of evidence, interpretation, and debate rather than a settled store of facts. Read alongside Fridriksson’s description of books circulating among Icelanders and the Society publishing for public education, the institution stands for the social distribution of learning, while the expedition dramatizes its production through observation and argument. Its appearance is brief, but it supplies a civic counterpoint to the adventure: knowledge is not only something the explorers seek in remote strata; it is also something a community can make accessible and share.