x::^^ 



INTRODUCTION ix 



acquire real ships, or at least boats, and would sail or 

 row in them to Iceland, not in coracles. 



We know from two independent sources that the 

 Irish did discover Iceland before 800 A.D. The first 

 source is Irish, the work of the monk Dicuil who tells, 

 writing somewhere around 825 A.D., that the Irish 

 had been in Iceland thirty years before. Or he may 

 mean they had been there longer, for there is an 

 ambiguity in his statement which may be interpreted 

 to say either that the Irish had been in the Faeroes a 

 hundred years and in Iceland thirty, or else that they 

 had been in both islands a hundred years and that the 

 mentioned visit of thirty years before to Iceland was 

 merely a particular voyage in which Dicuil was in- 

 terested. 



Dicuil's work has internal evidence of its truth. He 

 is writing in part to contradict a popular erroneous 

 belief about the length and character of the summer 

 day in the Far North. In Iceland (on the south coast), 

 says he, the truth is that you never see the sun through 

 its full circle, but you have, nevertheless, so bright 

 a twilight in midsummer that even at midnight you 

 could take off your shirt and, without a candle, pick 

 the lice from it. Today we should convey the same 

 idea by saying that on the southern coast of Iceland 

 in midsummer you can read a newspaper at midnight, 

 though the sun itself is hidden. 



