﻿NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 3 1 



personal disfavor, which could not be without effect even in dealing 

 with an independent community, since its independence was a little un- 

 certain and it was linked to the parent country by many ties. His per- 

 sonal prestige counted also ; why need any one hesitate about serving a 

 Heavenly King whom even the redoubtable Olaf of Norway delighted 

 to follow? Already he had many island adherents and the end was 

 plainly near. It is curious, but hardly a matter of surprise, that the 

 same year witnessed the formal adhesion of both Iceland and Green- 

 land to the Christian faith, as well as the incidental discovery of 

 America by a newly converted missionary sea-captain, a son of 

 Eric, sailing out to the latter country with the message of Christ and 

 King Olaf. 



Turning back a very little from this, the Iceland of the year 980 

 and thereabout was in the very flood-tide of population and hopeful- 

 ness, even afflicted with an excess of strenuous enterprise and uncom- 

 promising self-assertion, which made every neighborhood faction 

 eager to fight for its sentiments at a word, every man painfully con- 

 cerned in distinguishing himself and his steel sword on others, 

 every member of a family bound to avenge any wrong or slight to 

 its least appendage or take vengeance indefinitely for some retaliation 

 perfectly warranted by their own code. 



The last word is significant, for the thing itself was rarely lost 

 sight of. The distorted and bloody law-abiding spirit of the Icelander 

 has been often commented on as almost unique in history. He had 

 inherited a common law, and so venerated it that he sent an envoy 

 early in the island history to Norway for more perfect enlighten- 

 ment. This man brought back a slightly modified code. It caught 

 the popular fancy wonderfully and became a great factor in their 

 daily lives, though its precepts and the decisions under them for the 

 most part were carried in memory only. A singularly artificial system 

 of pleading and practice grew up, every one being a stickler for 

 exactness of procedure and treating legal formulas as of quite 

 magical efficacy — witness the effective but unintended declaration 

 of truce which the adroit Snorri the Priest, in the Saga of the 

 Heathslayings, entraps a conceited memorizer into declaiming, before 

 the latter knew that his most deadly enemy was beside him. 



Most of the sagas are indeed almost as much the histories of 

 litigation as of private war. The two things went together. Duelling 

 was fully recognized and relied on as one means of settling disputes — 

 even at first, of acquiring and holding other men's wives and prop- 

 erty; while the blood feud seems to have had a semi-legal status, 

 gradually losing ground in theory but remaining popular, so that 



