ICELAND: ITS HISTORY AND INHABITANTS. II. 



55 



The first undoubted account of the discovery of Iceland is 

 foLiiKlin Chapter VII. of Le mensura orhis tcrrae " by the Irish 

 monk Dicuil, written in A.D. 825. He states that thirty yeais 

 ago (i.e., 795) some monks told him of their stay in Iceland. 

 There is nothing in tlie passage to show that the island had not 

 been discovered long before 795, or that it was only visited by 

 monks ; on the contrary, for Dicuil says it is untrae what others 

 say that the sea round Iceland is frozen, etc. 



Dicuil thinks this island is Pytheas' Thule, and this seems to 

 have been the name given to the island when it was discovered 

 by the Celts. We may, then, take it for certain that Iceland 

 was called Thule by its earliest inhabitants. 



The Norwegian heathen settlers who followed in the latter 

 half of the ninth century found books, bells and croziers left 

 behind by the monks who fled from the island at the approach 

 of the vikings. But these and a few place-names, such as 

 Papey, Papyli, Papos, are the only traces left of these early 

 settlers. They were called Fapar by the vikings. 



It is doubtful whether Naddo'S or Gardar was the first 

 Scandinavian discoverer of Iceland, about A.D. 860. Eaven- 

 Floki, who let loose three ravens in mid-ocean and sailed in the 

 direction in v.diich they flew, was the next to go there, and 

 called it Iceland because from a mountain top in north-west 

 Iceland he saw a fiord full of drift ice. The first Norwegian settler 

 in Iceland was Ingolf Arnarson, a chieftain, in A.D. 874. When 

 in sight of land he threw the pillars of his own high seat over- 

 board and settled where they came ashore, on the advice of his 

 gods, as he believed. When, after the battle of Hafursfiord, 872, 

 Harald Fairhair became undisputed king of all Norway, and 

 subjected the free chieftains and noblemen of the country to 

 taxation, they preferred to emigrate. For sixty years the men 

 of the best blood in Norway flocked to Iceland. Each chieftain 

 took witli him earth from below his temple altar in the 

 motherland, built a new temple in the new land, and took 

 possession of land by going round it with a burning brand in 

 his hand. He deposited the holy gold ring on the altar which 

 he was to wear at all ceremonies. Until a Parliament for 

 Iceland was established in 930, these chieftains were the rulers 

 of the island, each in his district or land-take (land-ndm), as it 

 was called. 



E 



