6 DANIEL BRUUN. 
slaughter, Erie went with him. They steered for Iceland to find a refuge. 
But this island was already a generation past “fully inhabited” as is 
clearly related in the Landnämab6k (accounts of the colonization of Ice- 
land) and in other Saga. On that account it was no longer easy for 
a stranger to find a place, not too remote, where he could settle down 
under good conditions of livelihood. It was therefore not astonishing 
that Thorvald settled on the inhospitable Hornstrands, as here he could 
still annex land which up to now nobody had laid a claim to. Of this 
we find an account in Landnämabök (II, 31): 
“Thorvald took possession of Drangaland and Dranga-bay up to 
Enginess and Пуе on Drangar the rest of his life”. 
The Hornstrands lie on the big, deeply branched peninsula, that 
Iceland has to the Northwest. The northeast branch, which ends in 
the high, steep headland, Horn or North Cape, is a high mountainous 
country, the interior of which ıs covered by a coat of ice the socalled 
Dranga-Jökull (Glacier), whose white dome lies as inland-ice behind 
the coast’s mountainous edge. Below the glacier on the coast nearest 
the Arctie Ocean one sees one of the highest, and wildest mountains. 
It is called Drangafjall after Drangarnir, seven small mountain-peaks, 
whose pointed tops form a row of rocks projecting out into the sea, 
which accordingly has given name to mountain, glacier, and farm. 
The sea is full of islands and rocks. The coast seen from the sea, 
seems wild and desolate, and it is excessively difficult to land here, even 
during the summer, but during the winter all navigation is often im- 
possible on account of polar-ice, and even in the summer the ice can every 
now and then bar all access to the Hornstrand’s. To this very day only 
few farms are to be found there, far apart, and mostly without any direet 
communication over land. Here it was that Thorvald settled, under 
eircumstances very different from those he was used to at home in Jæderen. 
The place he chose lay to the Northwest of Drangafjall (mountain), 
and he called the farm Drangar. It was terribly lonely, and is still so. 
The elimate was severe, the struggle for existance was at times very hard 
whether it took place on the sea or on land. It was only with difficulty, 
that one could obtain communication with the inhabited parts over the 
high and precipitous mountains. A mile towards the northwest was a 
little narrow fiord, Biarnarfiord, where a powerful Viking named Hellu- 
Biörn landed, with a ship completely shield-hung, on account of 
which he has since been called Skialda-Biörn. He settled in Skialda- 
biarnarvik a little further north, and the Saga relates, that he, his ship, 
and all his property lie buried on a tongue of land in Biarnarfiord. 
He was a worthy pioneer on that barren coast, for people like Thor- 
vald and Erie the Red. From their farm, in the summer going west- 
ward, they could obtain communication with the farms at the head 
of Icefiord, but they had to go up over the high mountains, even pass 
the east end of Dranga-Jökull (glacier), which however in our days 
seems to have become less extensive. 
