84 Norivay and the Norwegians 



There was a certain Norse King of Dublin named 

 Olaf the White. His reign lasts from about a.d. 853 

 to A.D. 870, He was married to a wife called Aud, who 

 gained the name of the Deeply Wise or Very Wise. 

 This Aud was the daughter of a Norse King in the 

 Hebrides called Ketil Flatnose ; his nose had been cut 

 off in battle, that is the origin of his name. By Olaf 

 the White Aud had a son called Thorstein the Red, 

 whom we catch sight of once in company with an Earl 

 of the Orkneys marauding in Caithness. Thorstein was 

 killed in Scotland, a.d. 875 ; and then his mother Aud, 

 who, we see, had lost father, husband, son in three 

 different parts of Great Britain, determined to seek a 

 new home in those western islands to which the Norse 

 stream of emigration had turned. She had with her 

 several grand-daughters. She went first to the Orkneys, 

 and while there she married one of her grand-daughters 

 to the Earl of Orkney. Then she went on to the Faroes, 

 and another of her grand-daughters she married to the 

 chief Norseman in these islands. Finally, she made her 

 way to Iceland, obtained there a large territory, and 

 married other of her grand-daughters to the chief 

 colonists of the country. These early colonists and 

 their descendants were a distinguished class in the 

 island — a sort of Mayflower emigrants, shall we say, or 

 Knickerbockers ? They were called ' the colonists ' 'par 

 excellence — landnamamenn; and about them was written 

 the Landnama-ldk : ' The Book of the Settlement.' 



The stream of settlers in Iceland was to a large 

 degree set flowing by the change in the history of 

 Norway, which we shall have to relate in the next 

 chapter. It is enough to say here that the celebrated 



