lace where the pillars
were. The land there was low and green. On both sides were low hills. A
little lake glistened back from shore. In the valley were hot springs,
with steam rising from them.

"It looks like smoke," the men said. "It is very strange to see hot
water and smoke come out of the ground."

In front of this green land was a good harbor with islands in it. Far
over the sea toward the north shone a great ice-mountain.

"I like the place," Ingolf said. "I will make this land mine."

So he built fires at the mouth of the river near there, and stood by
them and called out loudly:

"I have put my fire at the mouth of these rivers. All the land that they
drain is mine, and no man shall claim it but me. I will call this place
Reykjavik."[13]

Then Ingolf built his feast hall. He himself carved the beams and the
door-posts. Gaily painted dragons leaned out from the doors and stood up
from the gables. Men and animals fought on the door-posts. For the doors
he made at the forge great iron hinges. Their ends curved and spread all
over the door. Near his feast hall he built a storehouse and a kitchen
and a smithy and a stable and a bower for the women.

"We do not need a sleeping-house for guests," he said. "Who would be our
guests?"

He roofed all his buildings with turf. It made them look like green
mounds with gay carved and painted walls under them. He built also a
temple, and on that was beautiful carving. In this he set up those
statues that had been in his old temple. He put up, too, those pillars
of his high seat that had been drifting about so long. Under them he
laid the soil of Norway that he had brought in the little bronze chest.

"I have kept my vow, O Thor!" he cried.

Then he sacrificed three horses that he had promised to Thor. After that
was over, he said:

"Here is a good field for sport. Let us have some of the old games that
we used to play at home. Who will wrestle with me?"

So they wrestled there and ran races and swam in the water. The women
sat and looked on.

"Oh, this is good to see!" Helga cried. "We are as gay as we used to be
in old Norway."

But it was not many weeks before Ingolf said:

"I wish that I might sometime see sails in that harbor. I wish that I
might think, 'Around this point of land is another farm, and across the
bay is another. I can go there when I am very lonely.' I wish that I
might sometime be invited to a feast. I wish that I might sometimes hear
t