SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

Book Reviews 95
In an ambitiously titled ai ticle, 'Uppsala, Iceland, and the
Orient', Professor Dag Stromback examines the reputation of
Uppsala in mediaeval Scandinavia. He discusses Hroa pattr
heimska, which has analogues in Middle English, mediaeval
French and Eastern tales, and shows how the writer combines
the idea of Uppsala "as a place of. . strange adventures" with
that of the town "as a place with a firmly founded syctem of law
and justice" Finally, Professor Turville-Petre contributes a
short note on the landdisir, connecting them with the spamaorj
armaor of Kooran Eilifsson, with the spirits of natural objects
venerated in early Scandinavia, with the elves, and with the cult
of the dead.
There is much good material in the rest of the book - articles
on Old and Middle English language and literature, and placenames.
Outstanding, perhaps, are Professor H. C. Darby's
consideration of the evidence of place-names for early geography,
and a typically sceptical discussion by Professor R. M. Wilson of
the language of Henry Machyn's diary. The editors are to be
congratulated on producing a worthy Festschrift for a distinguished
scholar.
R. 1. PAGE
HUNDRAD AR f I>j6DMIKjASAF:-II. By KRISTjAN ELDJARN.
Reykjavik: Bokautgdfa Menningarsj60s, 1962.
The National Museum of Iceland celebrates its hundredth
birthday in February 1963. In the introduction to this book the
Director of the Museum, Dr Kristjan Eldjarn, gives a brief
account of its foundation, its subsequent history and its manifold
activities. It is of course primarily an archaeological and folk-life
museum, but it is also responsible for the preservation of ancient
monuments, for the supervision of local museums, for archaeological
field-work, and for the maintenance of various special collections
and archives, notable among them the place-name collection, not
yet complete but offering a vast and practically untouched
material for further investigation, and the recently instituted
register of folk-customs (pj60hlEttir), organised on a systematic
basis but suffering from lack of money and, in consequence,
of archive staff. Dr Eldjarn pavs tribute to the work of his
predecessors, not least to Dr Matthias :Por6arson who was
Director from 1908 to 1947 and who died in 1961. Anyone who
has visited the new Museum building, who has been in personal
touch with its present staff or is familiar with their writings, to be