Heimaey (or Home Isle), the largest of these Westmen Isles, consists of two great jagged masses of igneous rock, presenting wild cliffs to the ocean and a wild fretted outline to the sky. Between the two mountains is a rolling stretch of grass-land, and upon it stands the scattered little town of Kaupstadr. The cliffs are covered with sea-birds' nests, most of them filthy fulmars. And some of the other islands of the group, among which modern cruising steamers thread their way, are sea-worn into caves and caverns by the much contorted rocks along the shore. At last, in the third winter, Ingwolf's thralls, Weevil and Carle, found the porch-pillars, and at the spot where they came to land he made for himself a homestead. He dwelt in Reek-wick, and the _Land-nama-bok_, or Icelandic _Domesday_, from which nearly all the above facts are taken,[11] says that the pillars are still to be seen in his fire-house, or temple. In the _Eyrbyggja Saga_ we read of the building of another temple that stood on the north side of Faxefjoth. Somewhat similar, no doubt, was the shrine that incorporated the porch-pillars at Reykjavik. "There he let build a temple, and a mighty house it was. There was a door in the side-wall, and nearer to one end thereof. Within the door stood the porch-pillars and nails were therein; they were called the Gods' nails. There within was a great frith-place. But of the inmost house was there another house, of the fashion whereof now is the quire of a church, and there stood a stall in the midst of the floor in the fashion of an altar, and thereon lay a ring without a join that weighed twenty ounces, and on that must men swear all oaths; and that ring must the chief have on his arm at all man-motes." A gold ring that Olaf Tryggvison took from the Temple of Lade (p. 69), and presented to a lady whom he admired, turned out to be only plated copper, and much trouble resulted from that gift. The gods had in all probability never discovered the fraud, for, like the Chinese to-day, the pagan Norse had a most mean opinion of the intelligence of the objects of their worship (p. 106). Some of the temples of Iceland were of considerable dimensions: in the _Vatzdaela Saga_ we read of one at Thordisholt a hundred feet in length. Ingwolf, the founder of Reykjavik, was the most famous of all the fathers of Iceland, for he came to a desolate country, and was the first to build a house and to cultivate the ground. His son "was Thorstan, who let set the Thing at Keel-ness, before the Allthing was established. His son was Thor-kell Moon, the Law-speaker, who was one of the best conversation of any heathen men in Iceland, of those whom men have records of. He had himself carried out into the rays of the sun in his death-sickness, and commended himself to that God which had made the sun. Moreover, he had lived as cleanly as those Christian men who were of the best conversation or way of life." (_Landnama-bok._)