Great Epochs in American History, Vol. I | Page 4

effect....
Leaving the old world by the northern passage, Iceland lies at the
threshold of America. It is nearer to Greenland than to Norway, and
Greenland is but one of the large islands into which the arctic currents
divide the North American continent. Thither, to Iceland, if we identify
the localities in Geoffrey of Monmouth, King Arthur sailed as early as
the beginning of the sixth century, and overcame whatever inhabitants
he may have found there. Here, too, an occasional wandering pirate or
adventurous Dane had glimpsed the coast. Thither, among others, came
the Irish, and in the ninth century we find Irish monks and a small
colony of their countrymen in possession. Thither the Gulf Stream
carries the southern driftwood, suggesting sunnier lands to whatever
race had been allured or driven to its shelter. Here Columbus, when, as
he tells us, he visited the island in 1477, found no ice. So that, if we
may place reliance on the appreciable change of climate by the

precession of the equinoxes, a thousand years ago and more, when the
Norwegians crossed from Scandinavia and found these Christian Irish
there, the island was not the forbidding spot that it seems with the lapse
of centuries to be becoming.
It was in A.D. 875 that Ingolf, a jarl of Norway, came to Iceland with
Norse settlers. They built their habitation at first where a pleasant
headland seemed attractive, the present Ingolfshofdi, and later founded
Reikjavik, where the signs directed them; for certain carved posts,
which they had thrown overboard as they approached the island, were
found to have drifted to that spot. The Christian Irish preferred to leave
their asylum rather than consort with the newcomers, and so the island
was left to be occupied by successive immigrations of the Norse, which
their king could not prevent. In the end, and within half a century, a
hardy little republic--as for a while it was--of near 70,000 inhabitants,
was established almost under the arctic circle.
The very next year (A.D. 876) after Ingolf had come to Iceland, a
sea-rover, Gunnbiorn, driven in his ship westerly, sighted a strange
land, and the report that he made was not forgotten. Fifty years later,
more or less, for we must treat the dates of the Icelandic sagas with
some reservation, we learn that a wind-tossed vessel was thrown upon a
coast far away, which was called Iceland the Great. Then, again, we
read of a young Norwegian, Eric the Red, not apparently averse to a
brawl, who killed his man in Norway and fled to Iceland, where he kept
his dubious character; and again outraging the laws, he was sent into
temporary banishment--this time in a ship which he fitted out for
discovery; and so he sailed away in the direction of Gunnbiorn's land,
and found it. He whiled away three years on its coast, and as soon as he
was allowed, ventured back with the tidings. While, to propitiate
intending settlers, he said he had been to Greenland, and so the land got
a sunny name.
The next year, which seems to have been A.D. 985, he started on his
return with 35 ships, but only fourteen of them reached the land.
Whenever there was a habitable fiord, a settlement grew up, and the
stream of immigrants was for a while constant and considerable. Just at

the end of the century (A.D. 999) Lief, a son of Eric, sailed back to
Norway, and found the country in the early fervor of a new religion; for
King Olaf Tryggvesson had embraced Christianity, and was imposing it
on his people. Leif accepted the new faith, and a priest was assigned to
him to take back to Greenland; and thus Christianity was introduced
into arctic America. So they began to build churches in Greenland, the
considerable ruins of one of which stands to this day. The winning of
Iceland to the Church was accomplished at the same time....
In the next year after the second voyage of Eric the Red, one of the
ships which were sailing from Iceland to the new settlement, was
driven far off her course, according to the sagas, and Bjarni Herjulfson,
who commanded the vessel, reported that he had come upon a land,
away to the southwest, where the coast country was level; and he added
that when he turned north it took him nine days to reach Greenland.
Fourteen years later than this voyage of Bjarni, which was said to have
been in A.D. 986--that is, in the year 1000 or thereabouts--Lief, the
same who had brought the Christian priest to Greenland, taking with
him 35 companions, sailed from Greenland in quest of the land seen by
Bjarni, which Lief first found, where a barren shore stretched back to
ice-covered mountains, and, because of the