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It is the story of the development of a writer who leaves home in order to seek the world. The present version, with slight changes, is that found in the author's collected works, Rit XI, 1951. Most Icelandic writers have, of course, written in the vernacular only, in spite of longer or shorter stay abroad.
An Icelandic farmer has thus given an accurate and reliable description of Grettir's lair: 'In the summer of 1850, when I came north to Axefirth, I heard talk of a Grettir's lair upon Axefirth-peak.... Many who had seen it made a slight matter of it, which brought me to think it must have few peculiarities of antiquarian interest to show.
How many centuries have passed away since all this happened the first man who "gazed through the rent of ruin" has failed to leave on record if he ever knew it. The great walls of the fissure stood grim and black before the old Icelandic Sagas, just as they now stand before the astonished eyes of the tourist. History records no material change in its aspect.
As a means of travel it has been replaced by a host of motorcars, and by aeroplanes, which in Iceland are as commonly used in going from one part of the country to another as railway trains in other countries. In fact, it has not been found feasible to build railways in Iceland. Besides this, a large number of airliners make daily use of Icelandic airfields on transatlantic flights.
The linguistic basis of mediaeval civilization was thus Latin, either in its classical or in its vulgar form. There were of course other languages, and some of these had no small vogue. Just before the period of which we are treating the period which extends from 1050 to 1300 Icelandic had a wide scope.
Speaking of the better classes of the inhabitants of the Icelandic capital, our traveller says: "Nothing struck me so much as the great dignity of carriage at which the Icelandic ladies aim, and which is so apt to degenerate into stiffness when it is not perfectly natural, or has not become a second nature by habit.
They did not call it a Sending because Icelandic magic was not in their programme.
The Icelandic Sagas possess a basis of historical truth, and there is reason to believe that Leif Ericson discovered three countries. The first land he made after leaving Greenland he named Helluland on account of its slaty rocks. Then he came to a flat country with white beaches of sand, which he called Markland because it was so well wooded.
Later it was thought to be Icelandic, and it was Haigh who first thought that Caedmon and no other was the author of the runic verses which he deciphered, considering that there was no one living at the period to which he assigned the monument, who could have composed such a poem but the first of all the English nation to express in verse the beginning of created things.
Behold, it is not a mask, but the head of Crassus, and thus conveys the first news of the Roman defeat. Obviously, this is a novel that needs a great deal of preliminary study, as much, indeed, as "Salammbo." Another story will deal with the Icelandic discoverers of America. Mr. Kipling, however, has taken the wind out of its sails with his sketch, "The Finest Story in the World."
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