288 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1941 



seeking freedom as Leifur the Lucky, the Icelander who discovered 

 America. 



Iceland was colonized mainly by Norse vikings, who wanted to 

 throw off the political yoke of Harald the Fairhaired of Norway. 

 But a considerable part of the early settlers came from the British 

 Isles, principally from Scotland and Ireland. The Icelanders are 

 therefore a Scandinavian people with a mixture of Celtic blood. 



Hrafna-Floki was the first viking who intended to settle down in 

 Iceland, but he left the country after a short stay, somewhat disap- 

 pointed, as due to lack of foresight he gathered no hay for the sheep 

 he had brought with him and therefore lost them all. Before he left 

 the country he climbed a high mountain and saw a firth full of ice. 

 This gave him the idea of giving the country the uninviting and rather 

 misleading name it bears. 



In the year 874 the first settler of Iceland, Ingolfur Arnarson, 

 landed on the south coast of the country. Three years later he 

 built his homestead where Reykjavik now stands. Reykjavik claims 

 the distinction of being specially selected by the gods themselves to 

 become the leading place of the country. According to the tradition, 

 Ingolfur, when he sighted land, threw overboard his high seat pillars, 

 declaring that he would settle down where the gods deigned to have 

 them driven ashore. After a 3-year search he found them where is 

 now the harbor of Reykjavik. 



Sixty years after the settlement of Ingolfur the population was 

 about 50,000 ; these self-willed vikings made their homes here, becom- 

 ing a nation of farmers and creating their own history and culture. 



In the summer of 930 the people established a code of laws. This 

 legislative assembly, the Althing, the oldest parliament in the world, 

 used to gather every summer at a place called Thingvellir. 



In the year 1000 the Christian faith was adopted by law. In the 

 same year Leifur, called the Lucky, discovered America, which he 

 called Vinland. In commemoration of this event, the Congress of 

 the United States of America presented Iceland with an impressive 

 statue of Leifur the Lucky at the one-thousandth anniversary of the 

 Icelandic Parliament in 1930. 



THE LANGUAGE 



Icelandic, the language of Iceland has remained pure and prac- 

 tically unchanged since the time when it was the common tongue 

 of all northern people. Consequently, it might be called the mother 

 tongue of the Scandinavian languages; a great many words in the 

 English language are derived from this same source. 



