[152] In other MSS. Scridowinni and Scritofinni, etc.
[153] According to the “Grottasǫngr,” Mysing carried off the quern and the two female thralls, Fenja and Menja, on his ship and bade them grind salt, and they ground until the ship sank (according to some MSS. it was in the Pentland Firth), and there was afterwards a whirlpool in the sea, where the water falls into the hole in the quern. Thus the sea became salt. This is the same legend which is repeated in the tale of the mill which grinds at the bottom of the sea.
[154] As will be mentioned later, the islands were possibly inhabited by Celts before the arrival of the monks. In that case the latter must doubtless have visited them with the additional object of spreading Christianity.
[155] It has also been translated: “two rows of oars,” which is improbable.
[156] Some writers have thought that they might be the Shetlands; but this seems less probable.
[157] Cf. A. Bugge, 1905, pp. 55 f. Several names of fishing-banks, which A. Bugge gives from Dr. Jakobsen, are also of interest. Off Sandey is a fishing-bank called “Knokkur” (or “á Knokki”), and one of the same name lies west of Syd-Straumsey. West of Sudrey is a fishing-place called “Knokkarnir.” The fishing-banks are called after the landmarks; “cnoc” is Celtic for hill, and must have been the name of the heights that formed landmarks for the fishing-places in question; on land these names have given way to more modern Norse ones, but have held their own out to sea. A. Bugge thinks that the Celtic place-names may be due to Norwegians who before they came to the Faroes had lived with Irish-speaking people in the Scottish islands or in Ireland; but it nevertheless seems very improbable that they should have used a foreign language to give names to their new home. A more natural explanation is that they had the names from the earlier Celtic inhabitants, whether these were only the Irish monks, or whether there were others. Names of islands and hills are usually among the most ancient of place-names.
[158] Cf. Landnáma, Prologue. Further on in the Landnáma places are frequently mentioned where priests had formerly lived, and where in consequence heathens dared not settle.
[159] It is explicable that places and estates may be called after the personal names of Irish land-takers; but it is more difficult to understand how the Norwegians should have come by Celtic names, derived from appellatives, for mountains, fjords, and rivers—which are everywhere among the earliest of place-names—if the Celts had not been there before they came. Among such place-names of Celtic origin, or which indicate a Celtic population, may be mentioned: “Dímunarvág, Dimunar-klakkar” (an inlet and two rocky islets in Breidifjord); “Dímon,” in many places as the name of a ridge, a mountain, and an islet; “Katanes”; “Katadalr”; “Kúðafljót,” the name of a confluence of several rivers into a large piece of water, in Vester-Skaftarfells district, from Irish “cud” (== head). “Minþakseyrr” is mentioned above. Further, there are many names after Irishmen: a river “Irá,” two places “Iragerði,” a channel into Hvammsfjord “Irska leið,” “Irsku búðir,” a hill “Irski hóll,” besides “Vestmanna-eyjar,” etc.
[160] The “Ost-sæ̂” is the southern and western part of the Baltic with the Cattegat and a part of the Skagerak, as distinguished from the sea to the west of Jutland (the land of the South Danes), which is “the arm of the sea which lies round the country of Britain.” The sea west of Norway he also calls the “West-sæ̂.” As the Ost-sæ̂ is called an arm of the sea, it might be urged that King Alfred therefore regarded Scandinavia as a peninsula; but we see that he also calls the sea round Britain, which he knew better, an arm of the sea.
[161] In another passage somewhat later he says that “no men [i.e., Norsemen, Norwegian chiefs] lived to the north of him.” This may have been somewhere about Malangen or Senjen, which archæological remains show to have formed the approximate northern boundary of fixed Norwegian habitation at that time. Norwegians may have lived here and there farther north to about Loppen [cf. A. Bugge, 1908, pp. 407 ff.]; but Ottar doubtless means that no nobles or people of importance lived to the north of him.