The Icelandic Neck, Kelpie, or Water-Spirit, is called Nickur, Ninnir, and Hnikur, one of the Eddaic names of Odin. He appears always in the form of a fine _apple-grey_ horse on the sea-shore; but he may be distinguished from ordinary horses by the circumstance of his hoofs being reversed. If any one is so foolish as to mount him, he gallops off, and plunges into the sea with his burden. He can, however, be caught in a particular manner, tamed, and made to work.[223]
The Icelanders have the same notions respecting the seals which we shall find in the Feroes and Shetland. It is a common opinion with them that King Pharaoh and his army were changed into these animals.
[218] This was plainly a theory of the monks. It greatly resembles the Rabbinical account of the origin of the Mazckeen, which the reader will meet in the sequel.
Some Icelanders of the present day say, that one day, when Eve was washing her children at the running water, God suddenly called her. She was frightened, and thrust aside such of them as were not clean. God asked her if all her children were there, and she said, Yes; but got for answer, that what she tried to hide from God should be hidden from man. These children became instantly invisible and distinct from the rest. Before the flood came on, God put them into a cave and closed up the entrance. From them are descended all the underground-people.--Magnussen, _Eddalære_.
[219] This was one Janus Gudmund, who wrote several treatises on this and similar subjects, particularly one "De Alfis et Alfheimum," which the learned bishop characterises as a work "nullins pretii, et meras nugas continens." We might, if we were to see it, be of a different opinion. Of Janus Gudmund Brynj Svenonius thus expresses himself to Wormius: _Janus Gudmundius, ære dirutus verius quam rude donatus, sibi et aliis inutilis in angulo consenuit_. Worm., Epist., 970.
[220] The Icelandic dwarfs, it would appear, wore red clothes. In Nial's Saga (p. 70), a person gaily dressed (_i litklædum_) is jocularly called Red-elf (_raud-álfr_).
[221] There was a book of prophecies called the _Kruckspá_, or Prophecy of Kruck, a man who was said to have lived in the 15th century. It treated of the change of religion and other matters said to have been revealed to him by the Dwarfs. Johannæus says it was forged by Brynjalf Svenonius in or about the year 1660.