[31] We have Lax rivers in England. Some books translate Lax “trout” as well as salmon. This is a mistake, the former is always known as Sílungr or Forelle (Dan.): as may be expected, there are numerous terms for the fish at different ages and in several conditions.
[32] This suffixed article, which has died out of so many northern tongues, appears to be comparatively modern, only once showing in the Voluspa (e.g., Goðin, v. 117). It is found in Coptic, e.g., Mau-t, the mother, for Ti-mau; and in Wallach (Daco-Roman): the latter, for instance, says Frate-le (in Italian, Il fratello), and Dinte-le for Il Dente (dens).
[33] Skarð, common in local names, is the English Shard, a notch, chink, an open place in a bank, a mountain-pass, the Cumbrian Scarf-gap (Cleasby). Henderson gives Kampe as the popular name of a col; he probably means Kambi, a comb or ridge.
[34] Meaning a mane, hair, and still preserved in such names as Fairfax.
[35] The word often occurs in Iceland; it is applied to a lady’s bower or a dungeon, both being secluded chambers, to a heap of refuse (Cleasby), and to conspicuous warts and peaks of rock.
[36] At sea-level the compensated aneroid (Casella, 1182) showed 30·05, the thermometer (F.) 66°. Here it was 27·10 in the open air, with the thermometer at 40° (F.), and in the pocket 26·90, with the thermometer at 80° (F.). The instrument, despite compensation, must always be cooled in the shade before use.
[37] “The whole formation of the mountain (Büdös) and the surrounding cones, the sharp-edged blocks and masses of rock, heaped up one on the other, of which these consist, the apparently molten surface of the trachyte—all seems plainly to prove that it was only after the formation of these masses, and when they were in a rigid state, that a grand upheaval took place here; during which, the powerful gases from below, raising, and straining, and tearing the masses, piled them up in mighty domes and mountain-tops, tossing them about till, here and there, they had found permanent canals leading to the surface of the earth.” (Frederic Fronius, quoted by Mr Bonar).
[38] It is noticed in the “Mémoires de la S. R. des Antiquaires du Nord” (p. 9, vol. of 1845-49). The writer assigns it to A.D. 1143, in the days of “Are Frode” (Ari hinn Fróði).
[39] Múli (pron. mule) is the Germ. Maul, a muzzle, and the Scotch Mull (e.g., of Galloway), the Shetland and Orkney “Mule.” It means a buttress, with bluff head, a tongue of high land, bounded on three sides by slopes or precipices, and the word should be adopted into general geography. The Arabs would call this favourite site for old towns, “Zahr et Taur”—the bull’s back.
[40] The late Mr Piddington tells us that the Hvalfjörð district is “called by the neighbouring inhabitants Veðra-Kista, that is, box or chest of winds, which implies that this inlet is, as it were, the abode of violent storms.” He gives cyclones to Iceland, where there are none, and he corrects Uno Von Troil (p. 41) who rightly makes the name “Storm-coast (Veðra-kista) to be given to some places in Iceland.”