62 LETTERS FROM HIGH LATITUDES. [VII. 



drama of Iceland's early history. As I gazed around on 

 the silent, deserted plain, and paced to and fro along the 

 untrodden grass that now clothed the Althing, I could 

 scarcely believe it had ever been the battle-field where such 

 keen and energetic wits encountered, — that the fire-scathed 

 rocks I saw before me were the very same that had once 

 inspired one of the most successful rhetorical appeals ever 

 hazarded in a public assembly. 



As an account of the debate to which I allude has been 

 carefully preserved, I may as well give you an abstract of it. 

 A more characteristic leaf out of the Parliamentary Annals 

 of Iceland you could scarcely have. 



In the summer of the year iooo, when Ethelred the 

 Unready ruled in England, and fourteen years after Hugh 

 Capet had succeeded the last Carlovingian on the throne of 

 France, — the Icelandic legislature was convened for the 

 consideration of a very important subject — no less important, 

 indeed, than an inquiry into the merits of a new religion 

 lately brought into the country by certain emissaries of Olaf 

 Tryggveson, — the first Christian king of Norway, — and the 

 same' who pulled down London bridge. 



The assembly met. The Norse missionaries were called 

 upon to enunciate to the House the tenets of the faith they 

 were commissioned to disclose ; and the debate began. 

 Great and fierce was the difference of opinion. The good 

 old Tory party, supported by all the authority of the Odin 

 establishment, were violent in opposition. The Whigs advo- 

 cated the new arrangement, and, as the king supported their 

 own views, insisted strongly on the Divine right. Several 

 liberal members permitted themselves to speak sarcastically 

 of the Valhalla tap, and the ankles of Freya. The discussion 

 was at its height, when suddenly a fearful peal of subterranean 

 thunder roared around the Althing. " Listen ! " cried an 

 orator of the Pagan party ; " how angry is Odin that we 

 should even consider the subject of a new religion. His 

 fires will consume us." To which a ready debater on the 

 other side replied, by " begging leave to ask the honourable 



