Note 177 — SECTION V. ANTHROPOLOGY.

Their extensive travels gave them peculiar names for peoples and places, which are often somewhat puzzling. “Thýskr,” a German, and Gerzkr, a Russian, are easy; but Samverskt (a Samaritan) is not so plain. Thus, also, we have “Enea” for Europe; “Hvítármannaland,” or white man’s land, and “Irland et mikla,” Ireland the Great (the Irlanda el Kabíreh of Edrisi in the twelfth century), for South America; “Suðurálfa” (i.e., southern half), for Africa; “Great Sweden” for Eastern Russia; “Svalbarði” (discovered 1194), for Scoresby’s Liverpool Coast (?); “Bjarmaland” for Permia, the land beyond the North Cape; “Sætt” for Sidon; “Njörfa-fjörð “for the Straits of “Gib;” Há-sterun for Hastings; and “Katanes” (boat naze), for Caithness. Some names are of ethnological value; for instance, “Bretland” for Wales; while Vendill or Vandill, the northern part of Jutland, preserves the name of the Vandals and the origin of Andalusia; and Garða-riki or Garða-veldi, the empire of the Garðar or Castella, tells us how the Russian empire was founded. So Suðr-menn (Germans) opposed to Northmen (Norðmenn), preserves the tradition of original consanguinity. Others are useless complications, as Engils-nes, the Morea, and Ægisif (Ἁγία Σοφία). The travestied names of persons are sometimes interesting, e.g., Elli-Sif (Scot. Elspeth) is Elizabeth, probably confounded like Ægisif, with Sif, the golden-haired wife of Thor, who lives in our gos-sip. Icelanders are not answerable for the mistake so general amongst foreigners which makes Níðar-óss (Oyce or ostium of the Nið River) an alias of Throndhjem, of old Thrándheimr, when it is the name of the ancient city occupying the position of the present town. The “Antiquités de l’Orient” (par C. C. Rafn, Copenhagen, 1856) well shows how Icelandic names were applied to the Byzantine empire, e.g., Ἐσσουπῆ (ei sofa, not to sleep), given to the first bar of the Dnieper; Οὐλξορσὶ (Hólm-fors or islet-force) to the second, and so forth.