32 LETTERS FROM HIGH LATITUDES. [VI. 



Unscrupulous, turbulent, greedy of money, he married two 

 heiresses — the one, however, becoming the colleague, not the 

 successor of the other. This arrangement naturally led to 

 embarrassment. His wealth created envy, his excessive 

 haughtiness disgusted his sturdy fellow-countrymen. He 

 was suspected of desiring to make the republic an appanage 

 of the Norwegian crown, in the hope of himself becoming 

 viceroy ; and at last, on a dark September night, of the year 

 1 241, he was murdered in his house at Reikholt by his 

 three sons-in-law. 



The same century which produced the Herodotean work 

 of Sturleson also gave birth to a whole body of miscellane- 

 ous Icelandic literature, — though in Britain and elsewhere 

 bookmaking was entirely confined to the monks, and merely 

 consisted in the compilation of a series of bald annals 

 locked up in bad Latin. It is true, Thomas of Ercildoune 

 was a contemporary of Snorro's ; but he is known to us 

 more as a magician than as a man of letters ; whereas 

 histories, memoirs, romances, biographies, poetry, statistics, 

 novels, calendars, specimens of almost every kind of com- 

 position, are to be found even among the meagre relics 

 which have survived the literary decadence that supervened 

 on the extinction of the republic. 



It is to these same spirited chroniclers that we are in- 

 debted for the preservation of two of the most remarkable 

 facts in the history of the world : the colonization of 

 Greenland by Europeans in the 10th century, and the dis- 

 covery of America by the Icelanders at the commencement 

 of the nth. 



The story is rather curious. 



Shortly after the arrival of the first settlers in Iceland, a 

 mariner of the name of Eric the Red discovers a country 

 away to the west, which, in consequence of its fruitful 

 appearance, he calls Greenland. In the course of a few 

 years the new land has become so thickly inhabited that it 

 is necessary to erect the district into an episcopal see ; and 

 at last, in 1448, we have a brief of Pope Nicolas "granting 



