ABSTRACT
And when I came there, in autumn time, I was ordered A to stand guard in the King’s navy the following winter, and there a trial came upon me from a certain circumstance, as follows. When the four worthy Icelanders travelled out to Denmark, namely Jón Magnússon, Henrik Gíslason, Thorsteinn Magnússon and Daði Jónsson 1 , it so chanced that I was asked and requested of them in a kindly manner, to obtain of my captain Adolph Frederik Grabow, that he should let them know (but yet privily) when His Majesty was alone at the Castle in Copenhagen, in order that they might speak secretly with him at his good leisure about the need of this country, but so that the ship-owners should not hear of it, and they promised to remember him favourably in return. At first he received my overtures with a bad grace, saying that I was involving him in difficulties and that his life would be at stake if they (the ship-owners) got wind of it, and he said that he would hold me responsible if the thing turned out otherwise than well.
