SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

Saga-Book of the Viking Society
Criticai" described a note on 'Berserkagseng' from the
Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Stockholm
for 1785. The author imputed the fury not to the
devil but to some "inebriating decoction" - agaricus
muscarius for preference. More comfortably, one could
read about chess-playing in Iceland in the same Review. 33
In 1771 The Gentleman's Magazine": had an item of
interest to sporting readers - an account of the Icelandic
falcon held in such "high esteem among the northern
princes". It is a "noble and stately bird" which the
article describes in full detail, so that we can hardly regret
that the accompanying plate is not coloured. We are
told, on the authority of Mr Brunnich in his Ornithologia
Borealis, how the Icelanders, authorized so to do, capture
the falcons with bait and net, and then bring them to
'Bessested'. They arrive there about midsummer on
horseback, with ten or twelve birds perched on a cross,
which they hold rested on the stirrup. The best birds
are selected and sent to Copenhagen.
The Critical'" also brought home the fact that the
Norsemen reached America, Forster's History of Discoveries
and Voyages affording a description of Iceland,
Greenland and probably of Newfoundland and the
Labrador coast. The Review quotes the account of
'Winland' and introduces its readers to Herjolfr, Bjorn
(i.e. Bjarni) and Leifr, and holds that some parts of
the American coast had been seen by the Normans before
the reputed discovery - this raises startling ethnological
and chronological problems until we recall that the
eighteenth century meant Norsemen sometimes when it
said Normans.
Nearer home, The Gentleman's Ma{!,azine 3 6 points out
to English readers that Yule celebrations still indulged
32 op. cit. 64. 67. Art. 12 of the j[emairs.
33 Critical Review 68 (I78q), 284.
34 Gentleman's Magazine XLI (1771), 297.
35 Critical Review 62 (I786j, 335-7.
3(; Gentleman's Magazine LXV Pt. I (1795). 295.