Kneeland.] 120 [December 4, 
Norway by Italian traders and by the Norse Vikings. This work 
is executed with great skill in Iceland at the present day. 
The women of Iceland wear on the top of the head a circular piece 
of black cloth, with a long tassel of black silk hanging from a silver 
or gilded cylindrical ring an inch or two in length; this ring is pre- 
cisely like those which the women of Cairo wear over the nose to 
hold the veil in place so as partially to expose the eyes. This hufa, 
as it is called, is much like that worn by the Greek women at the 
present day. 
The Phrygian caps of the Faroése men, and of the Icelandic 
students, remind one very forcibly of a similar head gear in 
Greece. The oriental customs of their ancestors, before the 
Aryan migration from Central Asia, from their isolation, have re- 
mained longer in Iceland than in the other and continental branches 
of the Scandinavian races. Among these may be mentioned the 
following: — They were early dwellers in tents; their form of goy- 
ernment was patriarchal; the rites of hospitality were sacred duties; 
their travelling in long caravans of horses; the courtesy of their 
salutations; the use of milk curds for food, of dried fish for their 
cattle, and of dung for fuel; and the love of hearing in poetic form 
the exploits of their ancestors who established themselves in Spain, 
and in that way also obtained Mediterranean ideas which they carried — 
to the North. 
Another way in which southern ideas travelled northward was 
by the skalds or poets, who visited central Europe and even the 
East, reciting the martial deeds of the Scandinavians at the courts of 
kings, who were proud to have such learned and accomplished 
men in their service. They returned home laden with fame and 
wealth, bringing the various ideas of southern nations. 
Peaceful farmers and herdsmen in the summer, in the winter and 
spring they became Vikings or sea-rovers, robbers on every plunder- 
able shore. Western Europe, from Great Britain to Spain, was oc- 
cupied or plundered by them, and they were so much dreaded that, 
in the prayers of the church at that time, was inserted the clause 
“from the fury of the Northmen, good Lord, deliver us.” They 
obtained booty and southern ideas at the same time; but these bold 
sailors, the discoverers of Greenland and America, never lost their 
grand ideas of independence, trial by jury, the equality of woman 
before the law, and the other traits which make the energy, per- 
severance, and progressiveness of England and America — the Norse 
