Birds. 



8113 



appearance is grotesquely like that of a monstrous half-filled bag of 

 flour, the resemblance, too, being heightened by its prevailing whitish 

 colour. Not very far from Eldey lies a small low rock, over which it 

 seems that the sea sometimes breaks. This is known as Eldeyjardr- 

 angr (Eldey's Attendant). Some ten or fifteen miles further out are 

 the remains of the rock formerly known to Icelanders as the Geirfug- 

 lasker proper, and to Danes as Ladegaarden (the Barn-building), in 

 former times the most considerable of the chain, but which, after 

 a series of submarine disturbances, beginning on the 6th or 7th of 

 March, 1830, and continuing at intervals for about a twelvemonth, 

 disappeared completely below the surface ; so that now no part of it 

 is visible, though it is said that its situation is occasionally revealed 

 by breakers. Further out again, perhaps some six-and-twenty Eng- 

 lish miles from Reykjanes, rises another tall stack, called, by Ice- 

 landers, Geirfugladrangr, and by Dutch sailors Greenadeerhuen (the 

 Grenadier's Cap). All these rocks have been long remarkable for the 

 furious surf which boils round them, except in the very calmest 

 weather. Still more distant is a rock to which the names Eldeyja- 

 bodi or Blinde-fuglasker have been applied by Icelanders. This is 

 supposed to have risen from the sea in 1783, the year of the disas- 

 trous volcanic eruption in Skaptafellssysla, and soon after to have 

 sunk beneath the waves.* 



Icelandic records show that, at the beginning of the thirteenth cen- 

 tury, various changes took place among the islands off Reykjanes just 

 enumerated. It is stated that a rock, then known as Eldey, disap- 

 peared ; but another being thrust up close by, the old name w T as 

 transferred to the new-comer, and has since been borne by it. No 

 notice is taken, in manuscripts of that remote time, of the birds found 

 on these islands ; but doubtless they were even then, weather permit- 

 ting, visited by the inhabitants of the adjoining coast. Indeed, it is 

 asserted in Wilchin's * Maldagabok ? (which dates from 1397, and has 

 not, I believe, been printed), that half the Geirfuglasker belonged to 

 Mary Church in Vogr, now represented by Kyrkjuvogr, and one- 

 fourth to St. Peter's, Kyrkjubolu, of which the church at Utskala is 

 the modern equivalent, — claims which were still looked upon as 

 extant until the submergence of the skerry put an end to them. It 



* I should have wished to have given, in explanation of the above description, a 

 sketch map of these localities, but I have not the means of doing so accurately. From 

 our own observations, Mr. Wolley and I had reason to doubt whether the bearings of 

 these islands have been correctly laid down either in Gunnlaugsson's map or the 

 Danish Admiralty chart. 



VOL. XX. 2 P 



