and we shall pass not a few during our journeys. It would be interesting to know if any of them have the long adit, the vestibule, and the separate chambers for the dead, which are characteristic of the Mongolian tomb-temples, and of which a splendid specimen is found at Maes Howe.
CHAPTER X.
NORTHWARDS HO! TO STYKKISHÓLM AND GRAFARÓS.
Part I.—Stykkishólm.
We are very anxious to leave this
“Tivoli del mal conforte,”
where,
“O piove, o tira vento, o suona a morte.”
The “Jón Sigurðsson,” Captain Müller, ran into Reykjavik on June 26, and next day we set out to prospect Hafnafjörð, the Haven Firth, distant two bays south of the capital. Threading the now familiar islets, we doubled the beaconed point of Suðrnes, and passed Bessastaðir, Besse or Bear-stead, a place not undistinguished in island story. It was built by the turbulent and traitorous “Herodotus of the North,” Snorrí Sturluson, grandson of Sæmund the Wise, born at Hvamm, in A.D. 1178, and author of the “prose Edda;” he died “in his shoes”—murdered as was the custom of the day. Long years afterwards the place of “Meister Petz”[56] became the Latin School, and now it belongs to a congenial soul, Hr Grímr Thomsen. Followed Garðar, also on the Alpta-nes (swan-ness) peninsula, where a fringe of farms
