had been an independent commonwealth for more than three centuries after the establishment of its Parliament in 930; after that, it was ruled first from Norway and then from Denmark until it established full independence in 1944.

ICELAND remained relatively little known in Britain throughout the eighteenth century, although medieval Icelandic literature attracted the attention of at least some British antiquarians from mid-century on. Most of the information available on the country itself came from translations of works by French and Scandinavian travellers. Sir Joseph Banks led the first British ‘scientific’ expedition to Iceland in 1772, to be followed by John Stanley in 1789, William Hooker in 1809, and Sir George Mackenzie in 1810. Observations by these and other travellers attracted the attention of the Edinburgh literati; in particular, samples and descriptions of Icelandic rocks contributed to the impassioned debates about geology then raging between Huttonians and Wernerians.

The Edinburgh reviewed books on Iceland in 1804 (ER 3:334-43) and 1812 (ER 19:416-35). The earlier article, on a French translation of a survey of Iceland by Eggert Olafsen and Bjarni Povelsen, was mildly sceptical about the value of such a detailed study of a remote, impoverished country and complained about the excessive detail provided by the authors. In contrast, the article on Mackenzie’s expedition enthusiastically welcomed an account of ‘the natural history of a country rendered interesting by the very severity with which nature has treated it’ (ER 19:418) and singled out the observations on geology for particular notice.

Pamela Perkins, University of Manitoba