P. 189.  ’Grettir lay out that summer on Madderdale-heath, and in sundry places, and at whiles he was at Reek-heath.’  A corroboration of the saga has been clearly set forth by the discovery of a Grettir’s-lair, in Axefirth-peak, in 1862.  True the saga passes over Grettir’s doings on these vast eastern wildernesses, but tradition has preserved the name for the place, and it shows by its construction and position that it must have been constructed by one skilled in choosing a good fighting stand, and a good and wide view at the same time.  An Icelandic farmer has thus given an accurate and reliable description of Grettir’s lair: 

’In the summer of 1850, when I came north to Axefirth, I heard talk of a Grettir’s lair upon Axefirth-peak....  Many who had seen it made a slight matter of it, which brought me to think it must have few peculiarities of antiquarian interest to show.  But on the 7th of September, this summer (1862), I went with the rape-ruler Arni Jonsson of Wood-stead to inspect the lair.  Walking up to it from the level ground below took us three minutes.  The lair stands in the lower part of a slip of stones beneath some sheer rocks between a sandstone rock, called the carline, and the stone slip from the peak.  It is built up of stones, straight as a line, and runs, 4-3/4 ells in length, 10 inches broad, and is, within walls, 7/8 of an ell deep.  The half of it is deftly covered in with flat stones, the longest of which are 2 ells 9 inches long, and about half an ell in thickness, and a little more in breadth.  Small thin fragments of stone are wedged in between these where their junctures do not close tight, and so firmly are they fixed, that without instruments they may not be removed.  One stone in the south wall is so large that we deemed it fully the task of from four to six men to move it when loose.  The north side wall is beginning to give way, where the room is covered in.  On the outside it is overgrown with black scurf and grey moss.  The head end we deemed was the one which is turned to the rock and is not covered in, and evidently has been open from the beginning.  Here the floor is overgrown with moss, grass, thyme, ferns, crow-foot, and lady’s-mantle.  In all likelihood the inmate has closed that part of the room in with hides, when needful.  On sitting up, all who went to and fro on the road below, must have been within view; not only those who came from the north of Foxplain (Melrakkasletta) and Nupa-sveit, but also far toward the north he had a view even unto the open sea, nay, even unto Budluga-haven.  Looking southwards, he must have seen all who came up from the outer firth; for from the lair there is a clear view even unto Burn-river, past which the high-road goes.  A popular tradition says, too, that all who must needs pass this way, when Grettir was in the Peak, had taken at last to going over the top of the Peak, where there was no road, but the sheep-wilds of the Axefirthers.  The lair-bider, even if he