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It might seem to be beyond the plans of the wildest canal
pioneers to build a canal across Iceland, but Thomas Dadford Tertius, on a
Grand Tour financed by his famous father and grandfather, took up Icelandic
citizenship as the walruses reminded him of the natives of the frigid wastes of
Essington and Perry Barr. He noted that both Reykjavik and Akureyri enjoy
central heating from the hot springs and geysirs of the central volcanic belt,
and this offered a solution to the apparently insoluble climatic problems.
Careful surveying ensured that as far as possible, all feeders were warm on
entry to the canal. This offered the prospect of an uninterrupted water
transport during winter, when coastal shipping was impossible on account of the
sea ice. At both ends, cargo was transhipped to reindeer sleds for transport
the short distance across the sea ice in winter; these sled-to-water
transhipment wharves were of course unique in canal practice. During the summer
the boats were moved down the fjords in tow from whaleboats. The boats were, of
course, towed by reindeer teams on the canal itself; boatmen wore a distinctive
red costume, trimmed with white fox fur, for visibility against the desolate
landscape, so that boats travelling in opposite directions became aware of each
other in good time. The consequences of an unexpected meeting could be hours of
delay while the tow-ropes of one team were untangled from the antlers of the
other. Some boatmen painted their team's noses red for further visibility.
Unfortunately, since reindeer are colour-blind and of a dashing and thunderous
disposition, these precautions had little effect. Not even the boatmen's
desperate cries of 'Ho-ho-HO!!!' were able to check their headlong pace.
Strictly, the route started from Akranes Fjord adjacent to
Reykjavik, so the canal could climb over the low saddle to Thing Valley.
Uniquely, back-pumping was handled by beam engines powered by thermal steam,
both at this summit and on the central plateau. After crossing Thing lake, the
route crossed the Hvita on a basalt aqueduct, before turning up the Thjorsa
Valley for the climb up to the central plateau. Hot water supplies were
plentiful in the Hekla area, and on the central plateau the summit level was
warmed by feeders from another volcano, Trofladyngia. The descent from the
summit level followed the Skalfandafliot Valley, before crossing to a hanging
valley leading to Eyja Fjord on which Akureyri lies.
Initially the canal was highly successful, with a brisk
southward trade in eider down, whalebone and narwhal ivory. The northward trade
consisted mainly of imported goods, among which magazines with pictures of
whalebone corsets caused particular interest in Akureyri, where it was
generally believed that a woman could not safely wear less than twenty-six
layers of furs without freezing to death. However a shift in the pattern of
volcanic activity in the central plateau (which some years later led to the
formation of the new volcanic island of Surtsey) interfered with the vital hot
water feeders to he canal, and in 1881 the entire length froze completely
solid. Some of the boatmen thus precipitately thrown out of work travelled to
the United States with their teams, looking for employment, only to find that
the railroads had replaced the American canal system. The romantic image of
teams of reindeer delivering goods appealed the American newspapers, which made
great play with the speed with which they galloped through the December nights.
However, given the chronic American inability to understand geography, they
were reported as coming from Lapland rather than Iceland. Few know that Thomas
Dadford Tertius was responsible for the origin of a modern myth, a myth made in
Birmingham.
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