104 LETTERS FROM HIGH LATITUDES. [VIII. 



dwelt the Pagan Pontiff Snorre. The result of this confer- 

 ence was an agreement on the part of Styr to give his 

 daughter to the Berserk, provided he and his brother would 

 cut a road through the lava rocks of Biarnarhaf. Halli- and 

 Leikner immediately set about executing this prodigious 

 task ; while the scornful Asdisa, arrayed in her most splendid 

 attire, came sweeping past in silence, as if to mock their toil. 

 The poetical reproaches addressed to the young lady on this 

 occasion by her sturdy admirer and his mate are still extant. 

 In the meantime, the other servants of the crafty Arngrim 

 had constructed a subterranean bath, so contrived that at a 

 moment's notice it could be flooded with boiling water. 

 Their task at last concluded, the two Berserks returned 

 home to claim their reward ; but Arngrim Styr, as if in the 

 exuberance of his affection, proposed that they should first 

 refresh themselves in the new bath. No sooner had they 

 descended into it, than Arngrim shut down the trap-door, 

 and having ordered a newly-stripped bullock's hide to be 

 stretched before the entrance, gave the signal for the boiling 

 water to be turned on. Fearful were the struggles of the 

 scalded giants : Halli, indeed, succeeded in bursting up the 

 door ; but his foot slipped on the bloody bull's hide, and 

 Arngrim stabbed him to the heart. His brother was then 

 easily forced back into the seething water. 



The effusion composed by the Tumultuous One on the 

 occasion of this exploit is also extant, and does not yield in 

 poetical merit to those which I have already mentioned as 

 having emanated from his victims. 



As soon as the Pontiff Snorre heard of the result of Arn- 

 grim Styr's stratagem, he came over and married the Lady 

 Asdisa. Traces of the road made by the unhappy cham- 

 pions can yet be detected at Biarnarhaf, and tradition still 

 identifies the grave of the Berserks. 



Connected with this same Pontiff Snorre is another of 

 those mysterious notices of a great land in the western ocean 

 which we find in the ancient chronicles, so interwoven with 

 narrative we know to be true, as to make it impossible not 



