[304] Meaning that an attack by the evil beings would at least break the monotony.
[305] A passage (gǫng) had to be traversed between the door of the room (stufa) and the porch (anddyri).
[306] MSS bælt. Boer reads bolat "hewn down."
[307] A night troll, if caught by the sunrise, was supposed to turn into stone.
[308] Skúta may be acc. of the noun skúti, "overhanging precipice, cave"; or it may be the verb, "hang over." Grettir and his companion see that the sides of the ravine are precipitous (skúta upp) and so clean-cut (meitil-berg: meitill, "a chisel") that they give no hold to the climber. Hence the need for the rope. The translators all take skúta as acc. of skúti, which is quite possible: but they are surely wrong when they proceed to identify the skúti with the hellir behind the waterfall. For this cave behind the waterfall is introduced in the saga as something which Grettir discovers after he has dived beneath the fall, the fall in front naturally hiding it till then.
The verb skúta occurs elsewhere in Grettis saga, of the glaciers overhanging a valley. Boer's attempt to reconstruct the scene appears to me wrong: cf. Ranisch in A.f.d.A. XXVIII, 217.
[309] The old editions read fimm tigir faðma "fifty fathoms": but according to Boer's collation the best MS (A) read X, whilst four of the five others collated give XV (fimtán). The editors seem dissatisfied with this: yet sixty to ninety feet seems a good enough height for a dive.
[310] ok sat þar hjá, not in MS A, nor in Boer's edition.
[311] The two poems are given according to the version of William Morris.
[312] On his first arrival at Leire, Bjarki had been attacked by, and had slain, the watch-dogs (Rímur, IV, 41): this naturally brings him now into disfavour, and he has to dispute with men.