At six in the afternoon we were welcomed in the guest room of the pastor’s home. Kjartan Helgason, farmer and minister, labors six days upon his large farm and on the seventh preaches in two different churches, riding several miles to meet his distant parishioners. He came soon after our arrival and welcomed us with a cordial, honest welcome. That Icelandic welcome! It comes from the heart and the handshake conveys more than words can express. Hospitality was a sacred word in ancient Scandinavia and though but a filmy covering for hypocrisy in many more favored lands, in Iceland the essence is maintained. Welcome! How often we say it and hear it and do not know the meaning. We welcome some long absent loved one. Is it the same when we welcome a neighbor or a frequent visitor? What about the welcome accorded to a total stranger who brings us nothing but extra work, who calls us from our necessary task, who eats our choicest viands, who uses our guest chamber, consumes our time with questions that pry into our very secrets? Would you know the meaning of this ancient word you must see it exemplified as a dependent stranger in a strange land. _Vel-kominn_, well-come, it is good that you have come. Unless this meaning rings in the sound and bristles in our every act it is better that we drop from our vocabulary this word which we have borrowed from an ancient race. Not alone at _Hruni_ did we hear and feel _Vel-kominn_ but in every household from the humblest peasant on the borders of the desert to the homes of the highest in the land, even the professors at the University, the venerable poet of the north and the Prime Minister in his mansion.