ing the wild beauty of colouring. I invariably subinitted them to my guide, and found that he at once recognized the spots, so that I am satisfied with their fidelity. Some of the panoramic views have unavoidably suffered in being contracted to the compass of the book, but if the reader will imagine them to be pulled out like bits of india-rubber he will obtain a correct notion of the scenes. I refer to the panoramas on

Plates I. and XIV.

My specimens of the Sagas have been selected with a view towards illustrating the voyages, quarrels, litigations, and superstitions of the ancient Icelanders.

It must be remembered that the Sagas from which I draw my extracts are not mere popular tales; they are downright history. To quote the words of our highest English authority on the subject when speaking of the Njala, but which apply equally to the Gretla, Aigla, Bandamanna Saga, Vatnsdæla Saga, &c. :-" We may be sure that as soon as each event recorded in the Saga occurred it was told and talked about as matter of history; and when at last the whole story was unfolded and took shape, and centred round Njal, that it was handed down from father to son as truthfully and faithfully as could ever be the case with any public or notorious matter in local history. But it is not on Njala alone that we have

verse.

There

to rely for our evidence of its genuineness. are many other Sagas relating to the same period, and handed down in like manner, in which the actors in our Saga are incidentally mentioned by name, and in which the deeds recorded of them are corroborated. They are mentioned also in songs and annals, the latter being the earliest written records which belong to the history of the island, while the former were more easily remembered, from the construction of the Much passes for history in other lands on far slighter grounds, and many a story in Thucydides or Tacitus, or even in Clarendon or Hume, is believed on evidence not one-tenth part so trustworthy as that which supports the narratives of these Icelandic story-tellers of the eleventh century. That with occurrences of undoubted truth, and minute particularity as to time and place, as to dates and distance, are intermingled wild superstitions on several occasions, will startle no reader of the smallest judgment. All ages, our own not excepted, have their superstitions; and to suppose that a story told in the eleventh century, when phantoms, and ghosts, and wraiths, were implicitly believed in, and when dreams, and warnings, and tokens, were part of every man's creed, should be wanting in these marks of genuineness, is simply to require that one great proof of its truthfulness should be wanting, and that, in order to suit the spirit of our age, it should lack something

which was part and parcel of popular belief in the age to which it belonged."

I do not mean to say that all Sagas are of equal authority; some are mythological, others fabulous or romantic; but there is no difficulty whatever in distinguishing fact from fiction in these works of a bygone age.

I give these specimens of the Sagas to the world with great diffidence, as I am by no means a proficient in the Icelandic tongue. I have worked at it for three or four years, and have arrived at the conclusion that both language and literature require the devotion of a lifetime for their proper mastery. The language is full of obscure idioms, and to these there is no tolerable dictionary. That of Bjorn Haldorson, which is the only lexicon, is out of print and rare, so that I had considerable difficulty in procuring a copy.

I have not hesitated to make a few very trifling alterations in the stories (they consist chiefly in names) for the advantage of the reader.

I have used a few antiquated and provincial words in my versions of the Sagas, where such words closely resembled the Icelandic. The principal of these

* Burnt Njal, vol. i. 6.

are:

Chapman, a good English word, signifying merchant; gill, a narrow glen; fell, a mountain ; byre, a farm; bonder, a farmer; to busk, with its past participle, boune, to make ready; hight, called.

With regard to my fellow-travellers, I have so altered their names and the incidents related of them, as to prevent the possibility of their identification.

Finally, my thanks are due to my friend, Mr. G. G. Fowler, for much information with regard to Icelandic birds, and especially to Mr. Alfred Newton for his invaluable paper on the ornithology of the island, inserted in my Appendix; also to Mr. W. Boyd and Mr. W. Ardley for their harmonies to the Icelandic melodies I brought home with me.

SABINE BARING-GOULD.

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