The saga of Vatnsdal tells how Ingimund the Old came out from Norway (a.d. 890) and after naming Hrutafjord and Vididal at last discovered this valley. At his first halting place a daughter, Thordis, was born to him, and so he called that place by her name, and went forward. Finally he settled in a gap between great ancient moraines, long since grassed over, in the higher reach of the dale, where as three wizard Finns in Norway had indicated, he found a silver image of Frey, which he had lost in Norway: the spot is seen in the distance of our sketch, beneath Jorundarfell across the river. There he built a temple 120 feet long, a great work, from which the place was named Hof; and there most of the action of the story centres. One of his daughters, Jorun, was the mother of Kjartan’s wife Hrefna, who wore the coif of gold that was meant for Gudrun, and innocently caused the greatest tragedy of northern story. Thordis, Ingimund’s daughter, on her marriage brought the land of Kornsa or Karnsa to her husband Hallorm. His son Thorgrim, the temple priest at Kornsa, was the father of a child which, according to a right then falling into disuse, he refused to rear and left out in the snow to die. The neighbours thought it a shame, and found the baby: it had scratched the snow away from its face, making a fight for life, and that pleased them. They thought it augured well, and named the lad Thorkel Krafla—“Scratch.” He was bred up by these friends, and became the hero of the valley. During his wandering years, for most young Icelanders went abroad to see the world, he entered the service of Sigurd earl of Orkney. Once, says the saga, they made a raid into Scotland; and when they came back to the ship the earl asked how many men were missing. Thorkel seemed to be the only one.......... The earl bade them go and search for him, and they found him in a glade of the forest with his back to an oak-tree. Two men beset him, and four lay dead at his feet......... The earl asked what he had been doing. Said he, “I heard you say we should run ashore as hard as we could, but not that we were to flee back again like hunted men.” Then the earl asked who were the people he was fighting. He said he had gone to a castle, “and when I got there, a few stones tumbled off the wall, and there I found booty,—a good bit; and then the castle folk saw it and set after me, and there was a bit of a fight.” He seemed rather annoyed at his rescue. Another reckless character sprang from this dale. The saga says “Ottar lived at Grimstunga and married Asdis daughter of Olaf from Haukagil. Their son was Hallfred the troublesome Skald,” who plays a great part in the story of King Olaf Tryggvason: everyone knows his song in Longfellow’s “Saga of King Olaf”:— “ I am called The Unappalled: Nothing- hinders me or daunts me.” At Grimstunga, now a pretty and wealthy farm, the valley forks. To the right a deep gorge goes up, gradually losing itself in the heath or desert uplands over which lies the path to Eiriks-jokul and the south. To the left is a green glen, not made particularly striking by any salient features, but lonely and retired; its depth narrowed by steep and dark hillsides—the Shady vale, Forsaslu-dal, it is called; and drained by a broad and swift river coming down from the wastes. The last outlying site is Thorhalls-stadir, once a rich farmstead with a church, now a group of green mounds by the river. 161

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