xii THE VINLAND VOYAGES 



the Vikings in Ireland than the Columbian "discov- 

 ery" of America was to the learned men of the Papacy 

 six centuries later. 



Just as clearly as Dicuil states the presence of the 

 Irish in Iceland before 825 A.D. do the Norsemen 

 themselves state that they found the Irish in Iceland 

 when they arrived. 



In modern times the Irish have built up a reputa- 

 tion as a turbulent and even a warlike people, but 

 they were comparatively gentle and peaceable in the 

 Viking Age. They had, however, offered partially 

 effective resistance to the Norse conquest in Ireland j 

 but they were in a position to offer none in Iceland. 

 This was because they were so few, but more be- 

 cause those few were, in the main, clergy with their 

 retainers who had gone to Iceland for solitude, and 

 not warriors. By the Norse accounts many of 

 the Christian Irish fled the country around or after 

 870 A.D. 



Between 870 and 930 A.D. Iceland is believed to 

 have acquired a population of about 50,000. The 

 language, institutions, and the dominant nobility were 

 all Norse 3 but the people did not all come to Iceland 

 direct from the Norse countries. Many came instead 

 by way of the British Isles, where they had visited 

 for years or a decade and where some families had 

 stayed for two or three generations. Most of the 



