[177] Their extensive travels gave them peculiar names for peoples and places, which are often somewhat puzzling. “Thýskr,” a German, and Gerzkr, a Russian, are easy; but Samverskt (a Samaritan) is not so plain. Thus, also, we have “Enea” for Europe; “Hvítármannaland,” or white man’s land, and “Irland et mikla,” Ireland the Great (the Irlanda el Kabíreh of Edrisi in the twelfth century), for South America; “Suðurálfa” (i.e., southern half), for Africa; “Great Sweden” for Eastern Russia; “Svalbarði” (discovered 1194), for Scoresby’s Liverpool Coast (?); “Bjarmaland” for Permia, the land beyond the North Cape; “Sætt” for Sidon; “Njörfa-fjörð “for the Straits of “Gib;” Há-sterun for Hastings; and “Katanes” (boat naze), for Caithness. Some names are of ethnological value; for instance, “Bretland” for Wales; while Vendill or Vandill, the northern part of Jutland, preserves the name of the Vandals and the origin of Andalusia; and Garða-riki or Garða-veldi, the empire of the Garðar or Castella, tells us how the Russian empire was founded. So Suðr-menn (Germans) opposed to Northmen (Norðmenn), preserves the tradition of original consanguinity. Others are useless complications, as Engils-nes, the Morea, and Ægisif (Ἁγία Σοφία). The travestied names of persons are sometimes interesting, e.g., Elli-Sif (Scot. Elspeth) is Elizabeth, probably confounded like Ægisif, with Sif, the golden-haired wife of Thor, who lives in our gos-sip. Icelanders are not answerable for the mistake so general amongst foreigners which makes Níðar-óss (Oyce or ostium of the Nið River) an alias of Throndhjem, of old Thrándheimr, when it is the name of the ancient city occupying the position of the present town. The “Antiquités de l’Orient” (par C. C. Rafn, Copenhagen, 1856) well shows how Icelandic names were applied to the Byzantine empire, e.g., Ἐσσουπῆ (ei sofa, not to sleep), given to the first bar of the Dnieper; Οὐλξορσὶ (Hólm-fors or islet-force) to the second, and so forth.
[178] “This assertion of travellers never had any foundation in fact,” says Mr Jón A. Hjaltalín, yet it is quoted by Henderson, the least imaginative, and, in such matters, the most trustworthy of men; and the Icelandic proverb says, “One’s own home is the best home.”
[179] As every traveller, from Uno Von Troil downwards, has given a plan and sketch of the Bær, the reader need not be troubled with them. The group of buildings composing the actual homestead is invariably built in a row: the front (Hús-bust) faces south, towards the sea or the river, if in a valley, and the back is turned to the sheltering mountain. The strip of flagged pavement along the front is called “Stétt;” the open space before it, “Hlað;” the buildings are parted by a lane (Sund); the approach is termed “Geilar” or “Tröð,” and the whole is surrounded by the Húsa-garðr, a dry-stone dyke.
The Norse Skáli, or Hall of classical days, whose rude and barbarous magnificence was the result of successful piracy tempered by traffic, has clean vanished—there is not a trace of one upon the island. A ground-plan, section, and elevation, are given in Mr Dasent’s “Burnt Njal,” but it is hard to say how much of it came from the fertile brain of the artist, Mr Sigurðr Guðmundsson. It was probably about as “desirable” a “residence” as the old Welsh manor-house, with its stagnant moat and its banks or walls of earth.
[180] The author well remembers that at Hyderabad, in Sind, only one palace had the luxury of glass, when we first occupied the city.
[181] Sótt is applied to physical, Sút to mental, sickness.
[182] More will be said concerning the several varieties of oxalis, which the people now seem to despise. Both wood-sorrel and meadow-sweet (Spiræa) were used by the poor of Ireland to heal ulcers (Beddoes, p. 47, on the Medical Use and Production of Factitious Airs), Uno Von Troil (p. 108) gives a long list of the popular anti-scorbutics.
[183] Of course the first sibilant, the sign of possession, is not used when the noun is otherwise declined. For instance, Jón Arason, often written by foreigners Aræson, is the son of Are, whose oblique case is Ara; yet there are popular exceptions, e.g., Bjarnarson (pron. Bjatnarsonj, son of Björn, is vulgarly pronounced, and even written, Björnsson.
[184] Thus the islanders preserve the memory of a “beautiful fiend,” one amongst many, who, after a very human fashion, began life as a coquette, and ended it as a dévote, being the first to learn psalm-singing, and to take the veil in the new convent. This hyperborean Ninon de L’Enclos deserves forgiveness for one of the cleverest sayings uttered by woman—a revelation of its kind. When asked which of her half-a-dozen lovers and husbands she preferred, her wise and witty answer was, “Theim var ek verst, er ek unnti mest”—“Whom I treated worst, him I loved most;” alluding to Kjartan Olafsson, murdered by her behest. In old days, Gudrún and John answered to the “M. or N.” of our Catechism, and to “those famous fictions of English law, John Doe and Richard Roe.”
[185] This is probably a relic of early ages, when “Maria” was a name too much revered for general use.