left their infant daughter Groa on the ship. Geirmund cursed the sword, and on his return to Norway he and all of his shipmates, including little Groa, were drowned. Characterization Thorstein Veblen finds certain religious references in the story to be intrusive. He notes that Kjartan "comes to be depicted as a sanctimonious acolyte given to prayer, fasting and pious verbiage; instead of being a wilful spoiled child, vain and sulky, of a romantic temper and endowed with exceptional physical beauty, such as the run of the story proclaims him". Similarly, he finds it jarring that Guðrún, "a beautiful vixen, passionate, headstrong, self-seeking and mendacious, is dutifully crowned with the distinction of having been the first nun and anchorite in Iceland, having meritoriously carried penance and abnegation to the outer limit of endurance". Ármann Jakobsson objects to interpretations that focus on Guðrún's good looks and glamour, and instead he draws attention to the emphasis that the saga places on her intellect. He points out that in the account of her dream interpretation when she is fourteen years old she carries on a lengthy conversation with a sage. Reception Laxdæla saga appears to have been held in high regard in medieval Iceland, as evidenced by the number of extant manuscripts — only Njáls saga is preserved in a greater number of vellum fragments. The saga's reception in modern times has also been enthusiastic. Guðbrandur Vigfússon writes that "This, the second only in size of the Icelandic Sagas, is perhaps also the second in beauty. It is the most romantic of all, full of pathetic sentiment". Similarly, Thorstein Veblen writes that the saga is conventionally regarded as "a thing of poetic beauty and of high literary merit". There are writings from the 17th and 18th centuries "inspired by the content and characters of Laxdæla saga". One 18th-century poet, Tyrfingur Finnsson, has been described as having "an extraordinarily good grasp of dróttkvætt poetics". Editions and translations The first edition of the saga appeared in Copenhagen in 1826, along with a Latin translation. An important critical edition by Kristian Kålund was published in 1891. The 1934 edition by Einar Ól. Sveinsson in the Íslenzk fornrit series is regarded as standard and usually used by translators. The saga has been translated into Latin, English, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, Danish, Swedish, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Czech, Finnish, Faroese, Japanese and Russian. There have been six