door opposite to that at which the judicial assembly was constituted. Each of the spectres, as they heard their individual sentence, left the place, saying something which indicated their unwillingness to depart, until Thorodd himself was solemnly appointed to depart. "We have here no longer," said he, "a peaceful dwelling, therefore will we remove." Kiartan then entered the hall with his followers, and the priest, with holy water, and celebration of a solemn mass, completed the conquest over the goblins, which had been commenced by the power and authority of the Icelandic law. We have perhaps dwelt too long on this legend, but it is the only instance in which the ordinary administration of justice has been supposed to extend over the inhabitants of another world, and in which the business of exorcising spirits is transferred from the priest to the judge. Joined to the various instances in the Eyrbyggja-Saga of a certain regard to the forms of jurisprudence, even amid the wildest of their feuds, it seems to argue the extraordinary influence ascribed to municipal law by this singular people, even in the very earliest state of society.

Snorro, who upon the whole may be considered as the hero of the history, was led into fresh turmoils and litigation by the death of his brotherin-law, Styr, slain by the inhabitants of a neighbouring district, for which slaughter neither Snorro's eloquence in the popular assembly, nor his power in the field, were able to procure adequate vengeance. He came off with more credit in his feud with Ospakar.

This Ospakar, a man of huge stature and great personal strength, surrounded always by satellites of the same description, differed from the other Icelandic chiefs in the open disregard which he professed for the laws of property. He kept a stout vessel, always ready for piratical excursions, and surrounded his house with a mound so as to convert it into a kind of citadel. It happened that a whale had been cast ashore upon a part of the island, where the law assigned a part of it in property to the pontiff Snorro, and part to his neighbour Thorer. While, however, Thorer, and Alfar, called the Little, steward of the pontiff, were engaged in making the partition, Ospakar appeared at the head of his armed followers, and, after stunning Thorer with a blow of his war-axe, appropriated the whole whale to himself. Skirmish followed skirmish, and blood was spilled on both sides, until Snorro bestirred himself in invoking the justice of the Comitia against the lawless Ospakar, and obtained a sentence condemning him and his followers to banishment. They submitted to this doom for a time, and Snorro caused the effects of Ospakar to be divided amongst those who had sustained the greatest losses by his rapine, of which spoil Thorer and Alfar obtained the larger share. It was, however, a gift fatal to the former. Ospakar, who still followed his piratical profession, made a sudden descent on the coast, and, seizing Thorer, put him to death before his own door. Alfar, escaping with difficulty, fled to the protection of Snorro; and Ospakar, in defiance of the sentence pronounced against him, resumed possession of his fortified mansion, and furnished it with provisions to stand a siege. Snorro preceeded on this occasion with his characteristic caution. It has been seen that an ordinary haystack was accounted a strong post in Icelandic tactics, but a house surrounded with a bank of earth was a much more serious fortification; nor did Snorro deem it safe to attempt storming the pirate's stronghold till he had assembled his most chosen friends and satellites.

Amongst these was Thrandar, who, before assuming the Christian faith, had been a Berserkar, and although he had lost the supernatural strength exer cised by such persons, which the author states to have been the usual consequence of baptism, he nevertheless retained his natural vigour and prowess, which were very formidable. On the slightest hint from Snorro's messenger, he attended the pontiff, armed as one who has a dangerous task in hand. Snorro's other allies being assembled, they made a hasty march to the fortress of Ospakar, and summoned him to surrender at discretion. The robber having refused compliance, the mound was valiantly assaulted on the one part, and stoutly defended on the other. Thrandar, by striking the steel of his battle-axe into the top of the rampart, actually scaled it, raising himself by the handle, and slew Rafen, a pirate of great fame, who assaulted him upon his ascent. Ospakar himself fell by a stroke of a lance, and his followers surrendered upon the sole condition of escaping with life and limb. On this conflict, the Skald Thormodar composed his poem called Rafn-maal, or the Death of Rafen.

The birds of Odin found their prey,

When slaughter raged in Bitra's bay;
There lay extended on the vale

The three fierce plunderers of the whale,
And, all his toils of rapine past,

Grim Rafen found repose at last.

The annals proceed to detail the remarkable legend concerning the death of Thorodd by the bull called Glæsir; and, finally, they inform us of the death of Snorro, during the winter after the death of St. Olave, leaving a powerful and flourishing family to support the fame which he had acquired. He was buried in the church at Tunga, which he himself had founded, but when it was removed his bones were transported to its new site. From these relics the celebrated Snorro seemed to have been a man of ordinary stature; nor, indeed, does it any where appear that he attained the ascendancy which he possessed in the island by personal strength, but rather by that subtlety of spirit which he displayed in conducting his enterprizes, and by his address and eloquence in the popular assembly. Although often engaged in feuds, his valour seems to have been duly mingled with discretion, and the deeds of war, for which he was celebrated in poetry, were usually achieved by the strong arm of some ally or satellite. He was so equal in his demeanour, that it was difficult to observe what pleased or displeased him; slow and cautious in taking revenge, but tenacious and implacable in pursuing it; an excellent counsellor to his friends, but skilful in inducing his enemies to take measures which afterwards proved fatal to them. In fine, as the ecclesiastical historian of Iceland sums up his attributes, if Snorro were not a good and pious man, he was to be esteemed wise, prudent, and sagacious, beyond the usual pitch of humanity. This pontiff, or prefect, is mentioned with great distinction in other Icelandic chronicles, as well as in the Eyrbyggja-Saga. In the Landnama Bok, part ii. chap. 13, many of the foregoing incidents are alluded to, and also in the LaxdælaSaga, and the Saga of Oluf Tryggason.

That such a character, partaking more of the jurisconsult or statesman than of the warrior, should have risen so high in such an early period,

argues the preference which the Icelanders already assigned to mental superiority over the rude attributes of strength and courage, and furnishes another proof of the early civilization of this extraordinary commonwealth. In other respects the character of Snorro was altogether unamiable, and blended with strong traits of the savage. Cunning and subtlety supplied the place of wisdom, and an earnest and uniform attention to his own interests often, as in the dispute between Arnkill and his father, superseded the ties of blood and friendship. Still, however, his selfish conduct seems to have been of more service to the settlement in which he swayed, than would have been that of a generous and high-spirited warrior who acted from the impulse of momentary passion. His ascendancy, though acquired by means equally unworthy of praise, seems, in his petty canton, to have had the effect produced by that of Augustus in the Roman Empire; although, more guiltless than the emperor of the world, the pontiff of Helgafels neither subverted the liberties of his country, nor bequeathed the domination he had acquired to a tyrannical successor. His sons succeeded to the paternal property, but not to the political power of their father, and, his possessions being equally divided amongst them, they founded several families, long respected in Iceland as descendants of the pontiff Snorro.

ABBOTSFORD, OCTOBER, 1813.

W. S.

GLOSSARY TO THE PROSE EDDA.

BY THE EDITOR.

WISHING to render this work as complete as possible, we undertook the laborious task of searching for the etymologies of all the proper names (upwards of 400) that occur in the Prose Edda. We intended at first to have copied the etymologies given in the Glossaries to the Poetical Edda, but we soon found that in numerous instances they could not be relied on, were in fact merely conjectural. We had, therefore, recourse to that truly admirable work, the "Deutsche Mythologie," in which Jacob Grimm has shown, as he had previously done in his Deutsche Grammatik, such a profound knowledge of the Teutonic languages, that he may be safely followed as an unerring guide in such inquiries. Grimm, however, had not occasion to mention above half of the words whose etymology we were in search of; we therefore consulted, for the remaining ones, the Glossaries of the Poetical Edda †, as well as Finn Magnusen's Lexicon Mythologicum, and his Eddalæren ‡, and several glossaries appended to the editions of various Sagas, making our selection, however, with due precaution, omitting from forty to fifty names, the derivations given of which appeared to us to be quite undeserving of attention, and qualifying those of several others, regarded by the learned editors of the Edda as undoubted, with the words perhaps and probably, words which cannot be too frequently made use of, when etymology is not founded on scientific principles.

Conjectural etymology, that is to say, etymology grounded on mere similarity of sound, or of orthography, was formerly quite in vogue, and is in fact still indulged in by several of our own writers, as well as by Finn Magnusen, to a degree which often borders on the ludicrous. The philologists of the German school have however done away with this futile method; and at the pre

*

"Deutsche Mythologie von Jacob Grimm," German, or more properly speaking, Teutonic Mythology by Jacob Grimm, is the simple title of this excellent work; we have made use of the second edition, published at Göttingen in 1844.

†The edition published by the Arni-Magnæan Commission, (see page 363,) of which Finn Magnusen's "Lexicon Mythologicum in vetusta septentrionalium carmina quæ in Edda Sæmundina continentur," fills nearly the whole of the third volume.

"Eddalæren og dens Oprindelse," 4 vols. 12mo, Copenh. 1825.

sent day, when a Grimm and a Bopp wish to show that words are cognate, they trace them through all their grammatical variations, in order to arrive at their radical affinities. This of course presupposes an intimate knowledge of languages, of the principles that regulate the permutation of consonants and vowels, of analogical glossology in a word, which few possess and which can only be acquired by years of intense study. Derivations established in this manner may be regarded as demonstrated facts; all others either as more or less plausible conjectures, or as amusing instances of learned aberration.

It may not be irrelevant here to say a few words respecting the orthography we have adopted for the proper names that occur in this work. As it was our intention to give the correct orthography of these names in the following Glossary, we purposely abstained from accenting the vowels in several of them, and in most instances substituted d for *. Not wishing to depart too much from established usage, we also retained the common orthography of names, such as Odin, Thor, &c., which have long been familiar to the public, taking care, however, to avoid falling into the error of giving the Danish terminations in e and er (as Loke, Brage, Diser, Niflunger, for instance), instead of the Old Norse in i, ir, and ar (Loki, Bragi, Dísir, Niflúngar). We also omitted, as a matter of course, the final r which is frequently found in Norse proper names, this r being merely the sign of the nominative case sing. masculine, (Rask's second declension,) and as Leif, for instance, is pronounced the same, whether written Leif or Leifr, and as the latter would only be strictly correct when in the nominative case, the r, when such words are used in English, or any other language than Old Norse, is superfluous. In order that the reader may form some idea of the Old Norse language in this respect, we give the declension of the masculine noun, brandr, (a brand, either a firebrand, or poetically a sword,) and the feminine noun, strönd, strand, shore.

SINGULAR.

Nom. brandr strönd
Accus. brand strönd
Dat. brandi ströndu

Gen. brands strandar

PLURAL.

brandar strandir.
branda strandir.
bröndum ströndum.
branda stranda.

As Scandinavian words may not be familiar to the generality of our readers, it will be necessary to say something respecting their pronunciation. Were we, however, to attempt to give the correct pronunciation of all the words that occur in this Glossary, we should have to write a treatise on the orthoepy of the Teutonic languages. We shall therefore merely lay down a few general rules, which will enable the English reader to pronounce most of

*Or, more properly speaking, retained the d-this letter having been re placed by only in editions of recent date.