[37]. Should be Kötlugjá. A.J.S.
[38]. At night it sunk to 50°.
[39]. See [illustration D] at p. 53.
[40]. Compare illustrations pp. [202], [206], and [207].
[41]. See [illustration] p. 197.
[42]. Sæmund Frodi, like other learned men of those days, was supposed to be in possession of magic powers. He was the Friar Bacon of Iceland; and these stories in which his name figures, handed down by tradition, are still often told in Iceland by the fireside on the long winter evenings. Curious to observe, that, in most mediæval stories of this kind, Satan is always outwitted and gets the worst of it. A.J.S.
[43]. This story may explain the origin of the Scotch proverb, “Deil tak’ the hindmost.”—There is another version of Sæmund’s mode of escape; viz.: That when he was about to be seized, pointing to his shadow on the wall, he said, “I am not the hindmost, don’t you see him that is coming behind me!” Old Nick then caught at the shadow, and thought it was a man; but Sæmund got out, and the door was slammed on his heels. But after that time, it is added, Sæmund was always without a shadow, for Old Nick would not let his shadow free again. Here, in this old-world story, we have the germ of Chamisso’s “Shadowless Man.” A.J.S.
[44]. The reader will here be reminded of Aladdin’s Lamp, Genii, and of the East, from whence these Stories also originally came in the days of Odin.
[45]. To the right understanding of the story of “Biarni Sveinsson,” it must be remembered that a superstition prevailed amongst the Icelanders regarding the central deserts. These, they believed, were inhabited by a strange mysterious race of men who held no intercourse with the other inhabitants, and were said to be in the habit of kidnapping women from the country. This belief may have had its origin in the fact, that, in former days, some few outlaws and their families took refuge in the deserts, and lived there for a time in order to escape the hands of justice. A.J.S.
[46]. In Iceland vegetation is late.