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of Iceland by the Norwegians in the Ninth Century[1].

      [1] Fragm. Vet. Islandic. ap. Langebeck, II. 31.--Forster, Hist. of Voy. and Disc. in the North, p. 50.

      It were foreign to our present object to attempt any delineation of the piratical, and even frequently conquering expeditions of the various nations of Scandinavia, who, under the names of Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes, and Normans, so long harassed the fragments of the Roman empire. About the year 861, one Naddod, a Nordman or Norwegian vikingr, or chief of a band of freebooters, who, during a voyage to the Faro islands, was thrown by a storm upon the eastern coast of an unknown country, considerably beyond the ordinary course of navigation, to which he gave the significant name of Snio-land, or Snow-land, from the immense quantities of snow which every where covered its numerous lofty mountains, even in the height of summer, and filled its many valleys during a long and dreary winter. As Naddod gave a rather favourable account of his discovery on his return to Norway, one Gardar Suafarson, of Swedish origin, who was settled in Norway, determined upon making an expedition to Snow-land in 864; and having circumnavigated the whole extent of this new discovery, he named it from himself, Gardars-holm, or Gardars-island.

      Gardar employed so long a time in this expedition, that, not deeming it safe to navigate the northern ocean during the storms of winter, he remained on the island until the ensuing spring, when he sailed for Norway. He there reported, that though the island was entirely covered with wood, it was, in other respects, a fine country. From the favourable nature of this report, one Flocke, the son of Vigvardar, who had acquired great reputation among the Nordmen or Normans, as an experienced and intrepid vikingr or pirate, resolved to visit the newly-discovered island. Flocke likewise wintered in the northern part of the island, where he met with immense quantities of drift ice, from which circumstance he chose to give it the name of Iceland, which it still bears. He was by no means pleased with the country, influenced, no doubt, by the unfavourable impression he had imbibed by spending a long protracted winter on the dreary northern shore, amid almost ever-during arctic ice, and surrounded by the most unpromising sterility; and though some of his companions represented the land as pleasing and fertile, the desire of visiting Iceland seems, for some time, to have lain dormant among the adventurous Norwegian navigators; probably because neither fame nor riches could be acquired, either by traffic or depredation, in a country which was utterly destitute of inhabitants.

      At length, in 874, two friends, Ingolf and Lief, repaired to Iceland, and were so much satisfied with its appearance, that they formed a resolution of attempting to make a settlement in the country; induced, doubtless, by a desire to withdraw from the continual wars and revolutions which then harassed the north of Europe, and to escape from the thraldom which the incipient monarchies of Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, were then imposing upon the independent chiefs or vikingr of the Normans. In pursuance of this determination, Ingolf transported some people to Iceland, about the year 878, with several cattle, and all kinds of implements, to enable him to commence a colony. At this period his friend Lief was absent in the English wars; but went soon afterwards into Iceland, to which he carried the booty which he had acquired in England.

      The first discoverers of Iceland are said to have found some Irish books, bells, and croziers on the coast; whence it has been imagined, that some people from Ireland had resided there previous to its discovery and settlement by the Normans. But it seems a more probable supposition, to account for these articles having been seen, that a party of Norman pirates or vikingr, who had previously landed in Ireland, or perhaps on Icolmkil, and had carried away the plunder of some abbey or monastery, had been driven to Iceland by a storm, and wrecked upon the coast, where these articles might have been washed on shore: Or they may have attributed the storm, by which they were driven so far beyond their knowledge, to the anger of the God of the Christians, for their sacrilegious robbery of a holy institution, and may have left these articles behind, in hopes of propitiating a more favourable termination to their voyage. The first settlers found extensive forests in the valleys of Iceland; and we know, from authentic documents, that corn was formerly cultivated with decent success in that northern region; whereas, in the present day, not a tree is to be found in the whole island, except some stunted birches, and very low bushes or underwood, in the most sheltered situations, and no corn will now ripen, even in the most favourable years. But the roots and stumps of large firs are still to be seen in various parts; and the injurious alteration of its climate is known to have been occasioned by the straits between old Greenland and Iceland having been many years choked up with ice, which the short summers of that high latitude are not sufficiently powerful to dissolve.

      About the present period, Harold Harfagr, or the fair-haired, one of the petty sovereigns or vikingr of Norway, began to subjugate the other chieftains of the country under his paramount authority, and was so successful as to establish the Norwegian monarchy in 875. Gorm, likewise, about the same time, united the petty states of Jutland and the Danish islands into one kingdom, as Ingiald Illrode had done long before in Sweden. Such independent spirits as found themselves dissatisfied with this new order of affairs, found a sure asylum in Iceland; and the emigrations to this new country became so numerous, that Harold at length deemed it expedient to impose a tax of half a mark of silver, equal to five pounds of our modern money, on every one of his subjects who were desirous of going to settle in that island.

      SECTION II.

       Table of Contents

      Voyages of Ohthere to the White Sea and the Baltic, in the Ninth Century.[1]

      [1] Anglo-Saxon Version of Orosius, by Alfred the Great, translated by Daines Barrington, p. 9.--Langebeck, Script. Dan. II. 106–118.-- Forster, Voy. and Disc. in the North, p. 53.

      Some of the Norwegian chieftains, who were dissatisfied with the usurpation of supreme authority by Harold, took refuge in England, where Alfred had recently settled many of the vanquished Danes and Nordmen in the northern part of his dominions, which had been almost entirely depopulated and laid waste, by their long-continued and destructive ravages. Among these was one Ohthere, who had made himself famous by his voyages to unknown parts of the north, and who was invited to court by Alfred, to give an account of the discoveries and observations he had made during his unusual expeditions. This person had been a chief of some note in his own country, and dwelt at a place which he called Halgoland, supposed by some to have been in Numadalen, while others say in Nordland, the most northerly p province of Norway proper. In the succeeding paragraph, he is said to have dwelt opposite to the West Sea, and as Alfred only uses the word sea to denote a confined expanse or narrow channel, while he calls the ocean Garsecg, it seems highly probable, that, by the West Sea, the west ford was intended,--a channel or strait which divides the Luffoden islands from the coast of Nordland, which would clearly place the residence of Ohthere in this northern province. The account which he gave of his voyages to his royal patron, is as follows.

      Ohthere told his lord King Alfred, that lie lived to the north of all the Nordmen or Norwegians; and that he dwelt in that land to the northward, opposite to the west sea; and that all the land to the north of that sea is waste and uninhabited except in a few places, to which the Finans[2] or Fins repair in winter for hunting and fowling, and for fishing in the summer. Being desirous to ascertain how far this country extended towards the north, and whether there were any inhabitants beyond these wastes, he proceeded by sea due north from his own habitation, leaving the desert land all the way on the starboard or right-hand, and the wide sea on the larboard or left-hand of his course. After three days sail, he was as far north as the whale-hunters ever go[3]; and then proceeded in his course due north for other three days, when he found the land, instead of stretching due north, as hitherto[4], to trend from thence towards the east. Whether the sea there lies within the land, he knew not[5], as he only waited for a west wind, and then sailed near that land eastwards, as far as he could, in four days; as he found the direction of the coast then to change to due south, he waited for a north wind, and then sailed due south as far as be could in five days.

      [2] Ohthere here calls the inhabitants of the desert Fins, and it would appear that the Laplanders are actually Fins, or Finlanders; the name of Laps or Laplanders being of modern origin, and the Danes and Norwegians still call

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