It is in vain that we look into the works of travellers for information on the subject of popular belief in Iceland. Their attention was too much occupied by Geysers, volcanoes, agriculture, and religion, to allow them to devote any part of it to this, in their eyes, unimportant subject. So that, were it not for some short but curious notices given by natives of the island, we should be quite ignorant of the fate of the subordinate classes of the old religion in Iceland. Torfæus, who wrote in the latter end of the seventeenth century, gives, in his preface to his edition of Hrolf Krakas Saga, the opinion of a venerable Icelandic pastor, named Einar Gudmund, respecting the Dwarfs. This opinion Torfæus heard when a boy from the lips of the old man. "I believe, and am fully persuaded," said he, "that this people are the creatures of God, consisting of a body and a rational spirit; that they are of both sexes; marry, and have children; and that all human acts take place among them as with us: that they are possessed of cattle, and of many other kinds of property; have poverty and riches, weeping and laughter, sleep and wake, and have all other affections belonging to human nature; and that they enjoy a longer or a shorter term of life according to the will and pleasure of God. Their power of having children," he adds, "appears from this, that some of their women have had children by men, and were very anxious to have their offspring dipped in the sacred font, and initiated into Christianity; but they, in general, sought in vain. Thorkatla Mari, the wife of Kari, was pregnant by a Hill-man, but she did not bring the child Aresus into the world, as appears from the poems made on this fatal occasion.