Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/283

262 through which Eastern Rangriver winds; the hills under Three-corner, and the long stretch of Fleetlithe gradually leading into the terrible gorges of the ice-mountains, girdle in these grey-green flats: it is a noteworthy place historically, for in fact the men who died here or hereabout still live in people's minds as the writers of most of the great stories and both the Eddas: I don't know if they actually wrote them; it was a mere guess (or tradition perhaps) of the seventeenth century that Saemund the Learned collected the poetic Edda: but at any rate these three men, who all lived here at one time or another of their lives, Saemund, Ari, and Snorri Sturluson, must certainly have been the great guardians of the body of Icelandic lore." Thence the next day they reached Bergthorsknoll, the home of Njal. Here Morris made one of his few and unsuccessful attempts to sketch. It was a thing he could not do. The sketch-book was soon put up again and the scene photographed in words instead.

"Pastures thick with a bright blue gentian, and other flowers (principally white clover) more familiar to me: I turned back once or twice to fix the place in my memory; and here I will recapitulate and tell what Bergthorsknoll looks like to-day, so as to have the matter off my conscience:

"Three mounds something the shape of limpets rising from a bright green home-mead with a smooth turf wall all round it, but divided by a lane river-ward of the stead, which is pitched on the middle mound; a wide shallow 'white' river with black sands sweeping in a curve by the last of the mounds, with a strip of smooth and flowery turf running along its banks: marshy land all round about, for the rest, all channelled with innumerable ruts, getting greyer and