A Journey to Iceland

Earlier this fall, a man called me - Vilhjálmur Örn Vilhjálmsson, an Icelandic archaeologist and blogger, living in Denmark. The conversation was very interesting and we mostly talked about that remarkable man Mark Watson.

Vilhjálmur had met Watson during his childhood: "He once came home to my father and bought an old map of Iceland from him. Watson was offered coffee and cake. He was among the taller men and had a particularly tall head compared to my father, and men with such heads often had to be searched for extensively in Iceland," he writes in one blog post.

Then Vilhjálmur told me about buying a box on eBay because its contents aroused his curiosity: "...it contained a complete series of images and accompanying notes for stereoscopic photographs, 8x8 cm in size." The series was titled A Journey to Iceland. The box contained 35 stereoscopic images from the 1930s. It turned out that the images had belonged to Mark Watson and had been shown at the World's Fair in New York in 1939.

Vilhjálmur assembled the images into a video and uploaded it to YouTube so that you can watch the images as they were shown at the time during a lecture in New York. See here.

It is also interesting to read Watson's notes for the lecture that came with the box. The notes are typed but Watson also handwrote additions on them.

Image no. 29 (shown above) is of an Icelandic dog. About the dog he writes: "A dog more famous than the english sheepdog. Came with first settlers? Will work a mile from master, by signals. Though part of the family never sleeps indoors; below window even in snow. Even Shakespeare mentions it in Henry V, Act2 Sc.1 "The Iceland Cur". Friendly to foreigners, proves well treated. Size of Foxterrier, generally cream, or black and white." Watson's interest in the dog was already sparked during these years, though he did not undertake the rescue efforts until 1955.

More about the origin of the images that Watson took mainly in 1937 can be read in an article by Anna Snorradóttir published (in Icelandic) in Lésbók Morgunblaðsins in 1988.

Vilhjálmur's phone call was truly interesting and gave me even more knowledge about Watson and his love for Iceland and the Icelandic dog. I thank Vilhjálmur warmly for getting in touch and telling me about the stereoscopic image box and especially for the opportunity to see the images in the YouTube video that he put together.