Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1893 Excerpt:...quite as promptly the priest of Oddi plugged him in, and kept him captive till he promised evermore to do his bidding. Oftentimes he struggled for his freedom from the service, but in vain. Once he jumped into a bowl of milk, hoping that the priest would swallow him, and open up a chance of ransom, but Ssmundr spied him there, tied him up in a calf-skin, and carried him off to church, where he made him stay while he said mass. The story of the rhyming contest is well known; how the parson bet the black man his soul that he would find a rhyme to any line in Latin or Icelandic. Said he, Nunc tibi deest gramen, to which Saemundr answered, Digito tu tergc foramen. From the church roof shouted Satan, Hcec domus est alia, capped at once by the priest with Si vis descendere salta. The contest ended with a mixture of languages; Vidisti quomodo f6r ml, as a retort to Nunc bibis ex cornu. The devil asserted that he had won over the latter, but the priest maintained that f6r nu was good Latin! Other stories may be seen in Forbes. Oddi takes its name 'point,' i.e. of land, from its position between the two Rangds, or 'wrong,' that is, crooked waters, which fall into the Thvera within a few miles of each other. At first the land is flat and fertile, like Landeyjar. We stayed at a farm here one night, and next morning I experienced for the first time the common fate of travellers in this land of queer reverses. My horses had decamped, and though many a mile of the tussocky fenceless plain was visible, the ponies were nowhere to be seen. My friend the Sysselman, however, promptly set out in chase, while I strolled up to the top of a little rising ground behind the farm, to look at the far-famed Hekla, the Cloak, or, strictly speaking, Heklufjall, the cloaked mountain, a r...