Standing on the grassy mound the great wall of _Almannajgá_ reaches its black mass from the border of the lake to _Armansfell_, the _Öxerá_ plunges in one long white curve over the brink, boils musically within its distant canyon and reappears through the rent in the side of the inner wall flecked with foam. Beyond the moorland _Súlur_, Stone-Pillars, rears his pinnacles of basalt. _Thingvallavatn_ smiles at our feet. No sail dots its brilliant surface, no houses border its precipitous shore. It is the same as when the _Saga_ heroes fished in its bright depths and these graceful swan and busy ducks enjoy the same tranquility as their remote ancestors. Around the lake a ring of red and purple peaks, robed in transparent atmosphere and embellished with hues unknown in lower latitudes, peep into this molten glimmerglass to behold each others image, while, amid the distance-softened ridges, _Hengill_ sends upward its “columns of white vapor like altar smoke” towards the softened sky. The embosomed isles are skirted with green and at the waters edge are fringed with the aromatic _Angelica_. Uncounted peaks are around us surpliced with white raiment as though assembled to raise one grand anthem to Nature’s God. Let us turn back the pages of time 800 years. We stand upon the upper portion of the _Lögberg_, upon the bloodstone, where the backs of criminals were broken before they were hurled into the abyss at our feet. The Thingmen are in solemn assembly a little lower down the incline. Along the brink of _Almannajgá_ throng the populace in assembled thousands in their annual August festival, gathered from every portion of the island. They await the issue of some vital subject under discussion on the mound. It is the year 1112 and the trial for the Burning of Njal is well under way. That old man with the quiet mien and full flowing beard is Mord. He rises, faces the Court and says,— “I take witness to this, that I take a Fifth Court oath. I pray God so to help me in this light and in the next, as I shall plead this suit as I know to be most truthful, and just, and lawful. I believe with all my heart that Flosi is truly guilty in this suit, if I may bring forward my proofs; and I have not brought money into this court in this suit, and I will not bring it. I have not taken money and I will not take it, neither for a lawful nor for an unlawful end.”