THE VOYAGES OF THE NORTHMEN. 113 



however, be searched in vain for any allusion which cai 

 be interpreted as referring to the compass. In the middle 

 of the ninth century, Harald Fairhair, of Norway, drove 

 many of the chieftains from the country, and the record of 

 their voyages in search of new lands then begins. Naddod 

 Viking discovered Iceland in 861, and was followed by 

 Floki, the son of Vilgerd, a noted pirate, in 865. Floki 

 sailed from Roga land in Norway, and on reaching Smor- 

 stind offered a great sacrifice and consecrated the three 

 crows by means of which he meant to find the way for, 

 says the Saga, "the magnet was not then in use for the 

 northern sailors." When he thought he was near to the 

 land, he freed the first crow, which returned to the port 

 from which he had sailed; the second crow flew about aim- 

 lessly until tired, and then came back to the vessel; but 

 the third crow went onward, and after the manner of its 

 kind, in a straight line, and so laying his course, Floki 

 found the eastern coast of the island. 1 



Following the discovery of Iceland came that of Green- 

 land, by Thorvald and his son Eirik the Red, who made 

 the first voyage 2 in 985, and followed the coast. L^t^r 



l L,andnamabok: i., c. 2, \ 7. Wheaton: History of Northmen, London, 

 1831. Mallet: Northern Antiquities, 188. 



This use of crows or ravens for finding the way at sea is believed to 

 have been common among the Northmen, and there may have been a 

 particular variety of these birds trained for the purpose and consecrated 

 thereto by religious rites which fell into disuse on the introduction of 

 Christianity; a probability strengthened by the fact that the raven was 

 the bird of Odin, the raven god, Hrafnagud, as he is called in the Scald 

 poetry. 



The Icelandic saga was written in the nth century, and hence its di- 

 rect reference to the non-use of the magnet at an earlier period has been 

 cited to establish undoubted knowledge of the compass at the date of the 

 work. The latter, however, was left uncompleted by its original author, 

 and it was glossed by many writers up to the time of Hauk, the son of 

 Enland, who entirely re-made it in the I4th century so that the refer- 

 ence belongs to that date and not to a period three centuries earlier. 

 See Klaproth, L,' Invention de la Boussole, cit. sup. 



2 Flateyjarb6k, i., 429; Du Chaillu : Viking Age, cit. sup., 18. 

 8 



