[41] The Sel, which often occurs in Icelandic names, is the German Senn-hütte, a shed, or little farm-house, in a mountain-pasture. The A.S. Sele probably reappears in our north-country “Shiel,” a small shooting farm. In Norway such huts are called Setr, or Sætr, the A.S. Sætar: hence Sumur Sætas (dwellers in summer huts) became our Somerset. Iceland wants the cold arbour (Ceald here-berga = Kaltern herberg of old Germany), the bare-walled lodge, or “Traveller’s bungalow.”
[42] The North Atlantic Telegraph viâ the Færoe Islands, Iceland, and Greenland. London: Stanford, 1861.
[43] At the farm-house the mean of three observations taken before setting out, and after return, gave 29·60, th. (F.) 71°; summit of first ridge, 27·65, th. 87°; top of mountain, 26·60, th. 77°.
[44] From að stilla, to fix a position.
[45] In the Shetlands called Smora, from Dan. Smör, butter, because it gives an abundance of cream.
[46] Hooker, ii. 325.
[47] The Mexicans also had a “Fair God,” Quetzel, beautiful as Baldur, and, better still, averse to human sacrifices. The popular tradition, that some day he would return from the east and rule the land, made Montezuma recognise him in the blond-haired Cortez: the great explorer and conqueror, however, did not prove a satisfactory Quetzel. Of these white gods and foreigners from the east, even in South America, I have treated fully in my notes to Hans Stade (Hakluyt Soc.), part ii., chap. xv.
[48] The word was taken from Chamounix by De Saussure. It is not, as Petermann says, the detritus or rubbish heaps from the bottom and sides of the glacier or ice-fall, but the débris of the rock above it.
[49] This is the popular form of Or-usta, battle.
[50] Melr, a sandy hill, and especially a bare bank of sand and stone, familiar to Iceland travellers, has been explained in the Introduction (Sect. VII.). Baring-Gould (p. 284) would derive it from a root signifying to grind; Holmboe from Myldja, to dig, or from Mold, loose earth. Bakki is a bank or ridge, opposed to Brekka (brink), a slope, a hill.