"We Gave A Ball To The Ladies Of Reikjavik And The Neighbourhood.
The Company Began To Assemble About Nine O'clock.
We were shewn
into a small low-roofed room, in which were a number of men, but to
my surprise I saw no females.
We soon found them, however, in one
adjoining, where it is the custom for them to wait till their
partners go to hand them out. On entering this apartment, I felt
considerable disappointment at not observing a single woman dressed
in the Icelandic costume. The dresses had some resemblance to those
of English chambermaids, but were not so smart. An old lady, the
wife of the man who kept the tavern, was habited like the pictures
of our great-grandmothers. Some time after the dancing commenced,
the bishop's lady, and two others, appeared in the proper dress of
the country.
"We found ourselves extremely awkward in dancing what the ladies
were pleased to call English country dances. The music, which came
from a solitary ill-scraped fiddle, accompanied by the rumbling of
the same half-rotten drum that had summoned the high court of
justice, and by the jingling of a rusty triangle, was to me utterly
unintelligible. The extreme rapidity with which it was necessary to
go through many complicated evolutions in proper time, completely
bewildered us; and our mistakes, and frequent collisions with our
neighbours, afforded much amusement to our fair partners, who found
it for a long time impracticable to keep us in the right track.
When allowed to breathe a little, we had an opportunity of remarking
some singularities in the state of society and manners among the
Danes of Reikjavik.
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