PAIJKULL, Carl Wilhelm.
A summer in Iceland ... Translated by Rev. M.R. Barnard ... London, Chapman and Hall, 1868.
8vo, pp. ix, [3], 364; with frontispiece, 5 plates, and several illustrations in the text; very occasional small marginal tears or chips, upper corner of last leaf repaired; very good in recent half calf, marbled boards, spine lettered and decorated in gilt with lettering-piece; embossed blind stamp of ‘Nahant Public Library 1872’ to pp. 9-16.
First edition in English of this account of Iceland by the Swedish geologist Paijkull (1836-1869), translated by the Scandinavian scholar and clergyman Mordaunt Barnard (1828-1906). ‘Iceland is a country abounding with legends and myths, which tradition and the hand of nature have each done their part in recording. Her people ... though few in number, occupy a place among the enlightened families of the world; while her Jökulls, or ice mountains, her warm springs, her volcanoes and streams of lava, her sandy plains and rapid rivers ... afford an inexhaustible field for wonderment and for investigation’ (pp. 1-2).