l899-'00 TRANSACTIONS 19 



The poet Thomson m "Autumn" refers to Pytheas's isle 

 when he says : 



"Where the northern ocean in vast whirls 

 Boils round the naked melancholy isles 

 of furthest Thule." 



The Irish, the Norwegians, the Swedes and the Danes were 

 in the exploring business at an early date. Decuil in his book 

 "de Mensura Orbis Terrarum," writing in 825 says "it is now 

 30 years since I was told by some Irish ecclesiastics who had 

 dwelt in that island (viz. Iceland) from the ist Feby. to the ist 

 of August that the sun scarcely set there in summer and that it 

 always leaves light enough to do one's business." 



Naddodd, a Scandinavian pirate in 860 appropriately named 

 the island Sneeland (Snowland). The island was subsequently 

 visited by two Swedes Svofason and Flokko by whom the name 

 was changed to Iceland which it has ever since retained. In 847 

 the Norwegians Ingolf and I^ief were such lovers of freedom that 

 they led a body of retainers there ; 



Where cheered by song and story dwelt they free 

 And held unscathed their laws and liberty. 



Between 878 and 901 our own King Alfred justly singled out 

 in England's emblazoned historic page as the "Great" (the only 

 one of our 48 sovereigns so designated) -was trying to make his 

 little Wessex a model land so that he "might" — to recall his 

 dying words—' 'leave to the men that came after a remembrance of 

 him in good works." We all know what he accomplished and 

 all realize in the words of Greene that "the memory of the life and 

 doings of the noblest of English rulers has come down to us 

 living and distinct through the mist of legends and exaggerations 

 that gathered round it, " * 



We can heartily endorse Sir Walter Besant's view of him : 

 ' 'There appears one who restores the better spirits of the people 

 by his example, by his preaching, by his self sacrifice. There 

 passes in imagination before us a splendid procession of men and 

 women who have thus restored a nation or raised its fallen ideals, 

 but the greatest of them all, the most noble, the most godlike is 

 that of the 9th centur)^' Alfred. There is none like Alfred in the 



