Even these northern shores were settled in the Viking Age. It was a grandson of the Orkney Earl Torf-Einar who took Axarfjord : Reist took the land thence as far as Rauda- gnup, says Landnama-book ; and beyond that the Sletta were held by one Arngeir, who, the story tells, was killed by a white bear, and when his son Odd found and killed the creature, he thereupon became a warlock. “ He was so shape-strong that he went home to Hraun- hofn (Lavahaven) in the evening, and next morning was found at Thjorsardal at his sisters house.” The polar bears come occasionally to these shores, carried on the floating drift-ice, and nowadays are not allowed to wander far. They are not usually dangerous to man ; but in ancient times they seem to have strayed over the country, and many an early settler got glory by single-handed encounter with such a monster, which was feared not only for its strength, but for uncanny powers, as the story of Odd Arngeirsson and other tales prove. As we turn southward the coast gradually rises in rocky headlands. Langa-nes is a curious promontory of vertical basalt, like a still more gigantic giant’s causeway, hardly paintable, but a wonder to behold. South of that we reach the inlet of Vopnafjord, named from its first settler, Eyvind Vapni, the weapon-bearer, who fixed his home at Krossavik on the mountainous shore opposite the less accentuated side where the modern village and trading place is situated. The feud between two generations of Eyvind’s house and the men of Hof, the Temple, up the valley, is the subject of a saga not yet translated into English, nor included in the series of popular Icelandic texts published by Sigurd Kristjansson of Reykjavik. Another less known, but more charming story, has its local habitation on this east coast, or rather in a great valley inland from a bay lying a little to the south of Vopnafjord. The saga of Hrafnkel, the priest of Frey—we have the name Ravenkell frequently in the north of England in 12th century documents—tells of a pious heathen who lived at Adalbol in Jokulsdal, the valley of a great glacier river, and built there a temple to the god Frey. He devoted to Frey half of everything, especially a horse which he loved so much that he vowed to slay any man who rode it against his will. At last Einar, one of his men, took the horse Freyfaxi at his need, and the story tells how he paid the penalty, and how Hrafnkel thereby was involved in a vendetta which brought about a long train of adventure and misfortune. But the charm of the saga is in its prettily told descriptions of pastoral life in those heathen days, realizing every detail as brightly as any modern novel. Along this eastern coast we must now pass hastily, seeing its bold and picturesque features only from the steamer, and stopping only at the ports. It is less renowned in saga than the South of Njal, the West of Snorri, or the North of Grettir; though there are many stirring tales, yet untold to the English reader, about its dales and fjords, no less romantic than the grandest in Iceland. 176

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