an evil omen, if we may be guided by the proverb: 'Fall er farar heill' [Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar, Flateyjarbók. l. c. vol. i. p. 231]. The complete saying is given by Guðmundr Jónsson [Safn af Íslenzkum Orðskviðum, Copenh. 1830. p. 100]: 'Fall er fararheill, frá garði en ei í garð,'a fall bodes a lucky journey from the house but not toward it.'
(39) The display of an axe seems to have been peculiarly efficacious in laying such fetches. From among numerous similar instances the following incident may be cited: 'Thorgils heard a knocking outside upon the roof; and one night he arose, and taking an axe in his hand, went outside, where he saw a huge malignant spectre standing before the door. Thorgils raised his axe, but the spectre turned away, and directed itself toward the burial-mound, and when they reached it, the spectre turned against him, and they began to wrestle with each other, for Thorgils had dropped his axe[1].'
(40) Thorfinn Karlsefni's ancestral line was of rare excellence; it is given in Landnáma at rather greater length, but otherwise as here: 'Thord was the name of a famous man in Norway, he was a son of Biorn Byrdusmior,' &c. 'Thord went to Iceland and took possession of Höfdaströnd in Skaga-firth,..and dwelt at Höfdi [Headland]. Headland-Thord married Fridgerd,' &c. 'They had nineteen children. Biorn was their son,..Thorgeir was the second son..Snorri was the third, he married Thorhild Ptarmigan, daughter of Thord the Yeller' [Landnáma, pt. iii. ch. x]. Karlsefni's mother is not named in Landnáma. His grandmother's father, Thord the Yeller, was one of the most famous men in the first century of Iceland's history; he it was who established the Quarter-courts.
(41) Álptafjörðr [Swan-firth] is on the southern side of Hvamms-firth, near its junction with Breida-firth, in western Iceland. It is not improbable that the two ships sailed from Breida-firth, the starting-point for so many of the Greenland colonists.
(42) It has been claimed that this Thorhall, Gamli's son, was no other than the Thorhall, Gamli's son, of Grettis Saga. [Cf. Vigfusson and Powell, Icelandic Reader, p. 381; Storm, Studier over Vinlandsreiserne, p. 305. The latter author calls attention, in his treatise, to Vigfusson's confusion of Thorhall the Huntsman with Thorhall, Gamli's son.] In the vellum manuscript AM. 152 fol., Grettis Saga, p. 6 b, col. 23, we read of a Thorvallr [sic] Vindlendingr, and in the same manuscript of a Thorhall, son of Gamli Vinlendingr [p. 17 b, col. 68]. In the Grettis Saga of the vellum AM. 551 a, 4to, in corresponding passages, we read first of a Thoralldr [sic] Vinlendingr, and subsequently of Thorhall, a son of Gamli Vidlendingr. Again, in the parchment manuscript AM. 556 a, 4to, we find mention [p. II, ll. 6–7] of a Thorhalldr Vidlendingr, and in the same manuscript [p. 23, l. II] of Thorhall, a son of Gamli Vidlendingr. From these passages it would appear that both Thorhall and his father Gamli are called Vindlendingr, Vidlendingr, and, once, Vinlendingr. This, in itself, would appear to preclude the conjecture that this Thorhall received the appellation, Vínlendingr [Winelander], because of his visit to Wineland, for his father had possessed the same title before him; moreover the Thorhall, Gamli's son, of the Saga of Eric the Red, is said to be an Eastfirth man, while the Thorhall of Grettis Saga belonged to a northern family living at Hrútafirth, in the Húnaflói. We find from the probable chronology of Grettis Saga that Thorhall's son was married, and living at Melar, in Hrútafirth, in 1014. [Cf. Tímatal í Islendínga Sögum, p. 473.] If the
- ↑ Flóamanna Saga, ch. 13, ed. Vigfusson and Möbius, in Fornsögur, Leipsic, 1860.
