Author: PFEIFFER, IDA.
Title: Visit to Iceland and the Scandinavian north. Translated from the German. 2nd edition.
Description: London, Ingram, Cooke, and Co., 1853. Original embossed brown cloth, spine lettered in gilt. With tinted wood-engraved title-page with vignette, frontispiece and 6 tinted wood-engraved plates. 353 pp. First published in 1846 Reise nach dem Scandinavischen Norden und der Insel Island. - On her second trip Ida Pfeiffer (1797-1858) set out from Reykjavik for the Geiser and Mount Hecla, travelling alone and on a tight budget, and making her way on pony carts and living like the Icelanders. Having visited every part of Iceland of interest, she embarked for Copenhagen, and after travelling through parts of Norway and Sweden returned to Vienna after an absence of about six months (Howgego II, p. 475). Including An essay on Icelandic poetry, from the French of M. Bergmann; A translation of the Icelandic poem the Voluspa; and a brief sketch of Icelandic history. Ida Pfeiffer was ‘the first full-time woman traveller of all, and one of the very few who never felt the need to qualify her impulse: she travelled because she wanted to see the world, and saw no reason why she shouln’t’ (Robinson, Wayward women, p.25). Abbey, Travel, 161; Theakstone, Vicorian & Edwardian women travellers, p.214.

Keywords: Arctic Europe Iceland Norway Pole Sweden