The Channels of Iceland Run Deep - Iceland

 

Once there was a Troll-wife, who wished to wade to Iceland from Norway. She had learned that on the way there were many deep channels, and it is said that she told another Troll-wife: "The channels of Iceland run deep, yet they can be crossed." Yet she added that there was a narrow channel out in the middle of the ocean, which was so deep that even her head would get wet in the crossing. Then the Troll-wife set out, and as she came to the channel that she feared the most; she tried to catch a hold of a ship that was sailing by, so as to use it as a lift over the channel. But the Troll-wife missed catching hold of the ship and her feet slipped, so she fell into the deep channel and thus she was drowned. Her body was washed ashore at Raušisandur (Red Beach), and, laying dead and stiff on the beach, this corpse was so big that a man seated on horseback still could not reach up to the back of her bent knee, even using his whip,

Source : An Icelandic folk story, freely retold here by Shaun D. L. Brassfield-Thorpe