Reykjavik

Reykjavik is the expedition’s point of arrival in Iceland and its final settled point of departure before the journey beneath Sneffels. The town gives the travelers a brief foothold in the inhabited world: Professor Hardwigg secures local assistance and seeks Saknussemm’s manuscripts, while Henry Lawson takes in the streets and harbor. Later, Reykjavik becomes a fixed point against which the increasingly extraordinary underground distances are calculated.

Arrival and Setting

After a storm drove the schooner far out to sea, a pilot brought it safely into Faxa Bay, before Reykjavik. Professor Hardwigg had been too seasick to come on deck for the first sight of Iceland, but on arrival he emerged pale and exhausted, then pointed inland toward the snow-covered, twin-peaked mountain of Sneffels. The destination was visible from the bay even before the expedition had set foot on shore.

The landing was a public occasion: nearly the whole town was out to watch, partly because residents expected goods from the periodic vessel. The schooner, the Valkyrie, had arrived alone in the harbor; the English and French gunboats normally seen there to protect the fisheries were away on duty. Thus the travelers entered not a bustling port but a small settlement whose connection to the outside world depended on occasional shipping.

The town occupied a flat, marshy plain between two hills. A broad field of lava edged one side, descending in terraces toward the sea; on the other lay Faxa Bay, bordered to the north by the immense glacier of Sneffels. Its two principal streets gave Henry Lawson little scope for getting lost. The longer ran parallel to the shore, among red-painted wooden huts where merchants and traders lived; the western street led toward a small lake and the residences of the bishop and other non-commercial figures. Discolored turf and diminutive kitchen gardens, where potatoes, cabbage, and lettuce grew, completed his impression of a spare, subdued town.

Local Assistance and Departure Preparations

On landing, Professor Hardwigg presented letters from Copenhagen to Baron Trampe, the island’s governor and a civil magistrate. Their brief conversation took place in Danish, which Henry did not understand; he later learned that Trampe had placed himself entirely at the Professor’s disposal. The mayor, M. Finsen, also received Hardwigg graciously. M. Pictursson, an ecclesiastical official, was away on a visit to the northern part of the diocese, but the travelers met M. Fridriksson, a natural-science professor at the college. Fridriksson spoke Icelandic and Latin, and his Latin gave Henry and him a shared means of communication.

Fridriksson’s recommendation brought Hans Bjelke to the travelers as their future guide. Their practical arrangement was to go with him to Stapi, on the southern slope of the Sneffels peninsula, at the foot of the volcano. Hans estimated the distance at about twenty-two Danish miles, each eight thousand yards; once Hardwigg understood the length of those miles and the condition of the roads, he allowed eight or ten days for the overland journey. Four horses were prepared, two for baggage and two for the travelers, although Hans refused to ride an animal and promised to lead them by the shortest way he knew.

The party lodged in two of the three rooms in Fridriksson’s house, and the quantity of their baggage astonished the town’s residents. Reykjavik was therefore more than a point on a map: it was where official introductions, scholarly contact, a guide, lodging, and transport turned Hardwigg’s plan into an expedition capable of leaving for the volcano.

A Threshold Viewed from Above and Below

Hardwigg treated the surface town as a temporary stop. As soon as the party was settled, he announced that he would visit the public library, where he hoped to find manuscripts written by Saknussemm. Henry proposed walking through the town; his uncle showed little interest, explaining that what mattered to him in Iceland lay below the surface. The contrast defines Reykjavik’s role in the journey: Henry observes its streets and daily environment, while Hardwigg reads the settlement chiefly as a staging ground for the descent.

That difference also gives the town a double geographical position. From Faxa Bay, Sneffels appears beyond the settlement as a conspicuous, snowbound destination. Yet once the party descends, Reykjavik recedes into a coordinate rather than a lived place. On 10 July, according to their estimate, they believed themselves thirty leagues southeast of the town and about two and a half leagues underground. Hardwigg later used his calculations to place the party 250 miles from their starting point, sixteen leagues—about fifty miles—below the surface. These figures transform the harbor town into a measure of separation: the deeper the expedition goes, the more the familiar settlement survives as a number in a notebook and a point on an uncertain route.

The Expedition’s Measure of Distance

Reykjavik remains a reference as the travelers cross the subterranean sea. After leaving Port Gretchen, they recorded a sea journey of 270 leagues, more than 800 miles, and placed themselves 620 leagues from Iceland, directly beneath England by their reckoning. Later, Henry reasoned that they must be beneath the Mediterranean because they were 900 leagues from Reykjavik. Hardwigg accepted the distance but cautioned that, without knowing whether the raft had deviated from its course, the travelers could not be sure what lay overhead.

The repeated calculations show both the ambition and the limits of the expedition’s geographical knowledge. Instruments, notes, and estimated direction allow the travelers to extend their map far beyond the familiar surface, but distance from Reykjavik cannot by itself settle their position. The town marks the beginning of the route and gives the underground journey a scale; it cannot guarantee that the explorers have followed a straight line. In this way, Reykjavik remains present through absence: a real harbor and settlement left behind, and an increasingly remote origin against which each new claim about the world below must be tested.