Note 102 — SECTION II. PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF ICELAND.

The way of counting amongst the old Scandinavians and Teutons was complex and curious, as they had no indeclinable numeral adjectives from twenty to a hundred (i.e., 120): the word “tigr,” a ten or decade, was a noun like Hundrað and Thúsund. Thus 41 was called 4 tens and 1, or “1 of the fifth decade;” 45 was “half the fifth tenth;” and 48 was “4 tens and 8;” or going back (like the Lat. un-de-viginti and duo-de-triginta) “5 tens short of 2.” In the fourteenth century “tigr” began to lose its character as a substantive (Cleasby).