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According to 'Landnáma,' this Gamli of Meals, Asmund's son-in, law, was son of Thord, and great-great-grandson of Thorhrolf or Thorolf Fastholding (Fasthadi), who settled lands on the north coast of Icefirthdeep (Isafjarðarjúp), and farmed at Snowfells (Snæfjöll). We have given Thorhall in our translation in both places as the man's name. Perhaps Þóraldr is nothing but a corruption of Thorólfr fasthaldi; and Thorhalli again a corruption of the first. But Gamli the Vendlander or Widelander, we have no means of identifying.


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which, sometimes at least, seems to have been portioned off into an inner room (klefi), or bay, and the vestibule proper. In the bay were kept victuals, such as dried fish, flour, and sometimes, no doubt, beer, Within, the hall fell into three main portions: the main hall, or the nave, and the aisles on either side thereof (skot). The plan of the hall was much like that of one of our regular-built churches without chancel, say like a Suffolk Church of the fifteenth century, the nave being lighted by a clerestory, and the aisles running the whole way along the nave, and communicating behind the dais. These aisles were used for sleeping-places; so that along the whole length of the hall, and behind the dais, all was partitioned into bedsteads, open or locked,--open, that is to say, communicating with the nave by a doorless aperture,--locked, that is, shut out of view from the nave (lok-rekkja, lokhvíla).

On the wall between nave and aisles which was covered with a panelling on its inside at least, were bung the shields and weapons of the chief and his retainers, or home-men. Sometimes it was painted with mythic subject, and adorned with fantastic carvings; on great occasions it was covered with hangings. Along both side-walls ran a row of seats, called benches (bekkr), the north-mot of which, or the one which faced the sun, was called the nobler bench (aðri bekkr), the south-most one, the less noble bench, úœðri bekkr. In the middle of either bench was a seat, called the high seat (öndvegi); that of the nobler bench being occupied by the chief or head of the house, unless he had for his guest a man nobler than himself, in which case the latter took it; that of the less noble bench being allotted to the noblest among the guests. The nobler bench was on ordinary occasions the bench for the chief and the household. The less noble for the guests. In front of the chief's high-seat were the high-seat-poles which in the early ages of Paganism in the North were objects of much veneration, and must always accompany the chief if he moved his abode, and point out his new homestead, if he fared for it over sea, by the spot where they drifted ashore, as, when land was sighted, they were thrown overboard. In front of the seat-rows just described were placed the tables whereon the meals were put forth. And when the number of people exceeded the capacity of the ordinary benches, a new row of benches was placed in front of the tables, so that there were two rows of benches down along either side of the hall with the tables between them. The last-named rows of benches were called (forsæti); and their occupiers, when seated at table, faced those of the upper and lower bench. In the centre of the hall, if of the fashion, as it probably was in early times, of a fire-hall, was a narrow oblong stone-pavement, probably as long as the rows of the benches, whereon fires were lit

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for heating of the room, for cooking of food in some cases, and for the purpose of lighting up the hall. The smoke that rose from the burning fuel found its way out through the luffer or louvre, in the middle of the ridge of the roof (ljójri); the reyk-beri, reek-bearer, seems to have been a contrivance for creating draught to carry the smoke out through the ljójri. In that end of the hall which was opposite to the entrance was the cross-bench, dais (pallr), occupied by the women. Here was also a high seat (öndvegi á palli), which was generally taken by the mistress of the house, In our saga it seems that the hall of Sandheaps made an exception to this general rule, as it apparently had the dais immediately within the doorway.

P. 77 (cpr. 110). It is worth observing here, that Thorvald, son of Asgeir Madpate the younger, dwells at As in Waterdale, about 1013, when Thorgils Makson was slain. When Grettir played, as a youth, on Midfirth-water (or cca. 1010), he dwelt at Asgeirsriver. We mention this, because there has been some confusion about the matter. On the slight authority of the 'Þáttur af Isleifi biskupi,' Biskupa Sögur I. 54, it has been maintained that he dwelt at Asgeirsriver even as late as cca. 1035, when his daughter, Dalla, was wooed by Isleif the Bishop. G. Vigfússon, 'Safn til Sögu Islands,' I. 337. On the other hand, the statement of Hungrvaka that he farmed at As (i.e., at the Ridge), at the time aforesaid, has given rise to the conjecture that thereby must be meant Valdar-As, a farm in Willowdale, near Asgeirsriver, the manor of the Madpate family. G. Vigfússon, in Biskupa Sögur, I. 61, note 2. It seems there is no need of setting aside the clear statement of our saga, that the As was As in Waterdale (see Index), and not Valdarás in Willowdale at all, or that Thorvald had, by 1013, moved up to the neighbouring country-side of Waterdale, and settled among the kin of his great-grand mother.

P. 114, l. 1. 'The men of Meals,' would be a close translation of the original; but it is incorrect; for the men of Meals were Grettir's kin -in-law, and natural allies. The saga means the men of Meal, Kormak and his followers, and the original should be either 'Þeir Mel-menn,' or 'Mels-menn,' or 'Þeir Kormakr frá Mel.'

P. 129, l. 10, 11. We have purposely altered the text from: en Þú öruggr í einangri, i.e., 'but thou stout in danger,' into: en Þó, i.e., 'but stout in danger none-the-less.' The former reading seems barely to give any sense, the last a natural and the required one.


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are the representatives of these powers in our saga. Of these Hallmund is the more interesting of the two, both for his human sympathies, his tragic end, and the poetry ascribed to him. At one time or other he has had a great name in the Icelandic folk-lore among the spirits of the land, the so-called land wights (land-vættir), and there is still existing a poem of ancient type, the refrain of which is closely similar to that of Grettir's song on Hallmund, but which is stated to be by some cave-wight that lived in a deep and gloomy cavern somewhere in Deepfirth, on the north side of Broadfirth. In the so-called Bergbúa-Þáttr or cave-dweller's tale (Edited by G. Vigfússon in Nordiske Oldskrifter, xxvii., pp. 123-128, and 140-43, Copenhagen, 1860), this song is said to have been heard by two men, who, on their way to church, had lost their road, and were overtaken by the darkness of night, and, in order to escape straying too far out of their way, sought shelter under the lee of a sheer rock which chanced to be on their way. They soon found a mouth of a cave where they knew not that any cave was to be looked for, whereupon one of the wayfarers set up a cross-mark in the door of the cave, and then with his fellow-traveller sat down on two stones at the mouth of the cave, as they did not dare to risk themselves too far in the gloomy abode away from the cross. When the first third part of the night was spent they heard something come along from within the cave doorwards out to them. * They signed themselves with the sign of the cross, and prayed God's mercy to be on them, for they thought the doings within the deep of the cavern now grew big enough. On looking into the darkness they saw a sight like unto two full-moons, or huge targets, with some monstrous figure (unreadable in the MS.) between them. They thought this was nothing but two eyes, and that nowise narrow of face might he be who bore such torches. Next they heard a chanting of a monstrous kind and in a big voice, A lay there was sung of twelve staves, with the final refrain of each twice repeated.



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on these vast eastern wildernesses, but tradition has preserved the name for the place, and it shows by its construction and position that it must have been constructed by one skilled in choosing a good fighting stand, and a good and wide view at the same time. An Icelandic farmer has thus given an accurate and reliable description of Grettir's lair:


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might at a moment's notice take his stand in the rock above his bead, where one side only gives the chance of an onset, and where there is an ample supply of loose stones, large and small, on the Peak side of the rock to defend oneself; on three sides sheer rocks hem in the position, and those overhead are many times the height of a man's.'


P. 240. Pied-belly we call the Ram, although the saga seems to mean that he was called 'Autumn-belly,' which is a name of little, if of any, sense at all. We suppose that haus-mögóttr, p. 16q, and haust-magi p. 184, is one and the same thing, the I having spuriously crept into the text from a scribe's inadvertence.



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this talk befell in 1031, consequently he had been full fifteen year, and no fraction of a year in outlawry. The story, therefore, of the twenty years, or nineteen years and a fraction, of outlawry falls utterly to the ground when brought to the test of the actual facts as recorded in the saga.


Nevertheless, it is worth observing that blunders of scribes may have in a measure been at work here. If we are not mistaken most of the existing MSS. of our saga state that when he fell (p. 243) I he was one winter short of--var hánum vetri fátt á--whatever number of years they give as his age. And we venture the suggestion that originally the passage ran thus: var hánum vetri fátt ivtugum* i.e., he lacked one winter of thirty-five years, when he was slain, If a subsequent scribe committed the easy blunder of dropping I before V, the reading of our original (Edition, 53) would be the natural result, and an offspring of that same blunder would also as easily be the other reading, common to one class of the Grettir MSS., var hánum vetri fátt í vtugum or í hinum v. tug, by dropping the syllable 'hálf.'

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If the whole passage on page 243, beginning with the words quoted in the commencement of this note be not indeed a later interpolation, we believe that all that follows the words, 'till the time when he dealt with Glam, the Thrall,' must, indeed, be taken as an interpolation of later commentators.


P. 251, l. 12. The original makes Asdis daughter of Skeggi the Shorthanded. This is here corrected agreeably to Landnáma, and other records of her family.

P. 253, l. 8. 'Katalak,' corruption of 'Calaphates,' the surname of Michael V., Emperor of Constantinople from 1041-1042.


276:* Innan eptir, as here rendered, is the reading of the MS. from which Bergbúa Þáttr is edited. Innar eptir, as the aforesaid edition or the tale has it, is wrong.

279:* A man of twenty, thirty, I forty, &c., is in the Icelandic expressed by the adjective tvítugr, Þrítugr, fertugr, a man twenty-five, thirty-five, &c, is hálf-Þrítugr, hálf-fertugr, &c.; the units beyond the tens are expressed by the particle um, a man of twenty-one, thirty-seven, or forty-nine, is said to have einn, (i.e., vetr. winter) um = beyond, tvítugt, sjö um Þrítugt, níu um fertugt, &c.