130 GUIDE TO ICELAND. proceeding to church. Having got them into the hath, he secured them therein by barring the door, turned on the hot water, and presently one of the brothers was a boiled Berserk! The other, severely scalded, broke through the barred door of the bath-room in naturalibus, hut only to slip on the raw hide of a newly-slain hull, placed there in anticipation of an attempt to escape, and as he lay in that recumbent position a spear was ruthlessly thrust through his back. Two mounds by the wayside will he pointed out by the guide as the graves of the Berserks; and it is said that these were opened by a Dr. Backmann, who really found in each a skeleton. The Holy-fell is situated on a peninsula jutting northward into the Brei‘f>ifjor*&r, which is connected with the mainland by a narrow isthmus between two miniature fjords. In the old heathen days the hill was sacred to the god Thor; and no one was allowed even to gaze on the holy height without having first subjected himself to bodily ablution. The hill itself is curious, being formed of irregular columnar basalt, and from its summit, a fair view over the Broad- fjord and its countless volcanic isles is obtainable. This famous Fell was chosen as a site for one of the earliest Christian churches erected in Iceland. In the Eyrbyggja Saga is a lengthy account of the intrigues, cruelties and murders of Snorri Go^Si, a priest of Thor, who officiated here. A mound is pointed out as the tumulus of Amkell, the ‘ good boy ’ of the story. An excursion will probably be made to J><5rsnes (Thors-ness), a headland about three miles N.E. of Helgafell church, to see an ancient Thing-stead, where traces of an old heathen Doom-ring and the Sacrificial Stone are still to be seen. There is some dispute, however, as to the exact site. Burton says (vol. ii. p. 104): ‘We found a shepherd lad (at a cottage hard by) who steered us through the swamps to a rise on the west, a site marked hy a YarSa of rock. The “ Stone of Fear ” was a bit of basalt, six feet long by six feet two inches broad, and half-buried in the ground: at least such was the article shown to us. South of it lay the Doom-ring, a circle of rough rocks, twenty-five feet in diameter. Between the two were buried the criminals whose backs had been broken upon the stone. In these forensic and sacrificial circles the judge, still called “Deemster” in the Isle of Man, faced eastwards, with his back to Holy Hill, at which man might not look without ablution.’ Burton adds, in a footnote : ‘ Henderson (ii. 68) places the stone in the swamp, not on the hill-side; Forbes (219) adds that it was in the centre of the Doom-ring. If so,' we did not see it: more-

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