Torfæus, who wrote in the latter end of the seventeenth century, gives, in his preface to his edition of Hrolf Krakas Saga, the opinion of a venerable Icelandic pastor, named Einar Gudmund, respecting the Dwarfs. This opinion Torfæus heard when a boy from the lips of the old man.
"I believe, and am fully persuaded," said he, "that this people are the creatures of God, consisting of a body and a rational spirit; that they are of both sexes; marry, and have children; and that all human acts take place among them as with us: that they are possessed of cattle, and of many other kinds of property; have poverty and riches, weeping and laughter, sleep and wake, and have all other affections belonging to human nature; and that they enjoy a longer or a shorter term of life according to the will and pleasure of God. Their power of having children," he adds, "appears from this, that some of their women have had children by men, and were very anxious to have their offspring dipped in the sacred font, and initiated into Christianity; but they, in general, sought in vain. Thorkatla Mari, the wife of Kari, was pregnant by a Hill-man, but she did not bring the child Aresus into the world, as appears from the poems made on this fatal occasion.
"There was formerly on the lands of Haga a nobleman named Sigvard Fostre, who had to do with a Hill-woman. He promised her faithfully that he would take care to have the child received into the bosom of the church. In due time the woman came with her child and laid it on the churchyard wall, and along with it a gilded cup and a holy robe (presents she intended making to the church for the baptism of her child), and then retired a little way. The pastor inquired who acknowledged himself the father of the child. Sigvard, perhaps, out of shame, did not venture to acknowledge himself. The clerk now asked him if it should be baptised or not. Sigvard said 'No,' lest by assenting he should be proved to be the father. The infant then was left where it was, untouched and unbaptised. The mother, filled with rage, snatched up her babe and the cup, but left the vestment, the remains of which may still be seen in Haga. That woman foretold and inflicted a singular disease on Sigvard and his posterity till the ninth generation, and several of his descendants are to this day afflicted with it. Andrew Gudmund (from which I am the seventh in descent) had an affair of the same kind. He also refused to have the child baptised, and he and his posterity have suffered a remarkable disease, of which very many of them have died; but some, by the interposition of good men, have escaped the deserved punishment."