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The men were allowed to come in and talk to them, also beggar-women and other vagabonds, who brought them the news from other places. Towards evening and for meals all assembled together in the hall." In the Eyrbyggja Saga we have descriptions of the "fire-hall," skali or eldhus. "The fire-hall was the common sleeping-room in Icelandic homesteads."
What was that voice she caught above them all there without the hall? Holding the cup in her hand, Gudruda bent forward, staring down the skali. Then she cried aloud, pointing to the door, and the cup fell clattering from her hand and rolled along the ground. Men turned and looked.
'Now in those times there were wont to be large fire-halls at the homesteads. The hall, <i>holl, skáli, stofa</i>, was the principal room in every home. <i>Elda-skáli</i>, or fire-hall, as the one alluded to at Biarg, was so called from its serving as a cooking-hall and a sitting-hall at once.
In Iceland the skali or farm-house of the Norseman was built with some stone and turf below, and a superstructure of wood which has long ago perished, and but slight traces of foundations are visible on the surface there. From the frequent burnings in the Saga we know that such houses were of highly inflammable materials which would soon perish.
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