The Government House which contains the executive offices is older and much more simple in design. There are two banks in the city and one of them is housed in its own building, which was the finest in Iceland until the completion of the _Safnahüs_.
This building houses over 80,000 bound volumes besides 6,000 manuscripts, many of them priceless. For a city of less than 12,000 people this is a good sized library. A thorough examination of the bookshelves and the lists of the book charges yields abundant evidence of the inborn aptness of this people for education. Mind culture reaches a high level. It is pleasing to an American to note Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary in a prominent position and a well used set of the works of the Sage of Concord, Ralph Waldo Emerson. The library contains a well balanced collection of history, literature, science, philosophy, poetry and economics, not only in the native language but in all the spoken tongues of Europe. For the benefit of those who do not read English there are translations of our masterpieces of drama, poetry and romance. I was pleased to note the evidence of much use of the American classics and almost the entire absence of that great class of light reading which lumbers our bookstalls, follows us on the train and burdens the card catalogs of the American libraries.
The basement shelters the collections of natural history and that portion devoted to Icelandic birds is practically complete. The botanical collection is far from complete and awaits the labor of some enthusiastic collector. I have seen in an isolated home far from the influence of the University a collection made by a boy that surpasses this one in the National Library. The collection of the minerals and lavas of the country forms a good nucleus and that is all. It seems strange with all the opportunities for work that some Icelandic geologist does not complete the work so well begun by Thorvaldur Thoroddsen. This man has produced an excellent geological map, as nearly complete as one man could possibly make it, considering the difficulties of travel and the miscellaneous character of the lavas. Most of the work on this topic has been done by Danes and Germans.