Stoves are considered unnecessary; for as the space is very confined, and the house densely populated, the atmosphere is naturally warm.
Rods are also placed round the fireplace, and on these the wet clothes and fishes are hung up in company to dry.

The smoke completely fills the room, and slowly finds its way through a few breathing-holes into the open air.
Fire-wood there is none throughout the whole island.

The rich inhabitants have it brought from Norway or Denmark; the poor burn turf, to which they frequently add bones and other offal of fish, which naturally engender a most disagreeable smoke.
On entering one of these cottages, the visitor is at a loss to determine which of the two is the more obnoxious--the suffocating smoke in the passage or the poisoned air of the dwelling-room, rendered almost insufferable by the crowding together of so many persons.

I could almost venture to assert, that the dreadful eruption called Lepra, which is universal throughout Iceland, owes its existence rather to the total want of cleanliness than to the climate of the country or to the food.
Throughout my subsequent journeys into the interior, I found the cottages of the peasants every where alike squalid and filthy.

Of course I speak of the majority, and not of the exceptions; for here I found a few rich peasants, whose dwellings looked cleaner and more habitable, in proportion to the superior wealth or sense of decency of the owners.