This was the book which Snorri had brought to Brattahlid, and which the
Bishop of Garda read aloud to him that same afternoon, translating as he
went; the ink being fresh, the writing clerkly, and scarcely a page
damaged by the weather. It bore no title; but the Bishop, who
afterwards caused his secretary to take a copy of the tale, gave it a
very long one, beginning: "God's mercy shown in a Miracle upon certain
castaways from Jutland, at the Feast of the Nativity of His Blessed Son,
our Lord, in the year MCCCLVII., whereby He made dead trees to put forth
in leaf, and comforted desperate men with summer in the midst of the
Frozen Sea" . . . with much beside. But all this appears in the tale,
which I will head only with the name of the writer.



II.--PETER KURT'S MANUSCRIPT [1]

Now that our troubles are over, and I sit by the mast of our late
unhappy ship, not knowing if I am on earth or in paradise, but full-fed
and warm in all my limbs, yea pierced and glowing with the love of
Almighty God, I am resolved to take pen and use my unfrozen ink in
telling out of what misery His hand hath led us to this present Eden.

I who write this am Peter Kurt, and I was the steward of my master Ebbe
while he dwelt in his own castle of Nebbegaard. Poor he was then, and
poor, I suppose, he is still in all but love and the favour of God; but
in those days the love was but an old servant's (to wit, my own), and
the favour of God not evident, but the poverty, on the other hand,
bitterly apparent in all our housekeeping. We lived alone, with a
handful of servants--sometimes as few as three--in the castle which