86 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 



Kiartan, named for his Irish grandfather, is the most splendid figure 

 of the Laxdaela Saga. In the striking hyperbole of the ancient narra 

 tive, the Gudrun who compassed his death in resentful passion and 

 jealousy wept tears in her later days which scalded the dead out of 

 their graves ; for she had &quot; done worst to him I loved best.&quot; 



Queen Aud, the widow of the Conqueror of Dublin, brought 

 adherents from eastern Ireland, also from Gaelic Scotland, her 

 temporary refuge which may possibly thus have given the most 

 remarkable and least Scandinavian of the Eddaic poems to Iceland, 

 as suggested by a writer in the Encyclopedia Brittanica. Vigfusson * 

 takes the same view of their general origin in the eastern islands, 

 but without ascribing their introduction to Queen Aud, 2 and Bugge 

 has presented the hypothesis again slightly modified. Her relatives 

 and followers intermarried with most of the great Icelandic families 

 and occupied the best lands. The names of Icelandic chieftains 

 already given will be readily recognized as Irish. The greatest of 

 the sagas, Nial s, contains a glowing tribute to King Brian Boru, as 

 well as the most vivid account in existence of his victory at Clontarf . 

 The sagas are thickly sown with Irish names and allusions ; the 

 Landnamabook displays them in almost every paragraph of a long 

 succession ; and one is tempted to think that by the opening of the 

 eleventh century a fifth or a quarter of the Icelandic blood in all 

 classes must have been Irish. 



Thorfinn and Gudrid were married at Brattahlid after the Christ 

 mas festivities following the autumn or late summer when they first 

 met; and they sailed for Wineland the next spring probably that 

 of the year 1003. 



Although her influence seems to have been most active in causing 

 and furthering this expedition, she is seldom mentioned in the saga 

 until her return to Iceland once as giving birth to Snorri, again as 

 perhaps left at Straumey, while her husband went back with a party 

 to Hop for three months ; but a woman s part in such achievements 

 could not often be spectacular nor strike a saga-man as demanding 

 record. The Flateybook saga adds a picture of Gudrid beside her 

 infant s cradle in her palisaded Wineland home, entertaining a 

 dubious big-eyed visitor, who bore her own name and announced 

 approaching danger, but was invisible to all other eyes. The Indiai. 

 attack followed immediately. Reeves s index calls this visitor &quot; Gud- 



1 G. Vigfusson : Prolegomena of the Sturlunga Saga, p. 193. 

 2 S. Bugge: The Home of the Eddie Poems. Schofield s transl., Introduc 

 tion, p. xxiii. 



