Note 179 — SECTION V. ANTHROPOLOGY.

As every traveller, from Uno Von Troil downwards, has given a plan and sketch of the Bær, the reader need not be troubled with them. The group of buildings composing the actual homestead is invariably built in a row: the front (Hús-bust) faces south, towards the sea or the river, if in a valley, and the back is turned to the sheltering mountain. The strip of flagged pavement along the front is called “Stétt;” the open space before it, “Hlað;” the buildings are parted by a lane (Sund); the approach is termed “Geilar” or “Tröð,” and the whole is surrounded by the Húsa-garðr, a dry-stone dyke.

The Norse Skáli, or Hall of classical days, whose rude and barbarous magnificence was the result of successful piracy tempered by traffic, has clean vanished—there is not a trace of one upon the island. A ground-plan, section, and elevation, are given in Mr Dasent’s “Burnt Njal,” but it is hard to say how much of it came from the fertile brain of the artist, Mr Sigurðr Guðmundsson. It was probably about as “desirable” a “residence” as the old Welsh manor-house, with its stagnant moat and its banks or walls of earth.