56 



DR. JON STEFANSSON, PH.D., ON ICELAND : 



Periods of Icelandic History. 



I. The Commonwealth, a.d. 870-1264. The Eddas. 

 The Sagas. 



II. The Norwegian time, a.d. 1264-1400. Copyists 

 annalists. 



III. The English period, English influence being pai^a- 



mount, A.D. 1413-1520. 

 YV. The Keformation, the sixteenth century. 

 V. The Eenaissance, the seventeenth century. 

 YI. The Stagnation, the eighteenth century. 

 YII. The Independence Movement and its victrav, 18'H)- 

 1905. 



Few Englishmen are aware that there is a British Colony in 

 the Atlantic which has never owed allegiance to the Britisli 

 Empire — which was a republic for about four centuries, and 

 during that time produced one of the great literatures of the 

 world — which is larger in area than Ireland by one-fifth, 

 which is only 450 miles distant from the nearest point of the 

 north-west coast of Scotland, Cape Wrath. This is Icdaacl, 

 fully one-half of wdiose settlers, in the ninth and tentli 

 centuries, came from the northern parts of the British Isles — 

 Scotland, Ireland, the Hebrides, and Orkney — and were partly 

 Norse, partly Gaelic in blood. 



Fewer still are aware that the long Constitutional struggle of 

 Iceland is at an end, Denmark having conceded all its demands. 

 To understand the present stage of this question it is necessary 

 to tell the history of the past. 



Iceland was settled and colonised in the years 870-9c'O, 

 ]);irtly by Norwegian chieftains who left Norway because they 

 would not submit to King Harold Fairhair, partly by the 

 kinsmen of these chieftains and by others from the northern 

 ])arts of the British Isles. We possess the record and genea- 

 logy of about 5,000 of the most prominent of them in the 

 Landndmcdnk or Book of Settlement. No other nation 

 l)0ssesses a similar full record of its beginnings. 



A rei)ul)lic or connnonwealtli, witli a Constitution and on 

 e]al)orate code of laws, was established and lasted till A.D. 1262 - 

 64, four centuries if reckoned from the Settlement, the longest- 

 lived of republics, liome alone excepted. 



The chieftains, Go^in, who presided not only at meetings init 

 at tem])le feasts and sacrifices, and were thus the temporal and 

 s])iritual lieads of their dependants, sent J'/Jliof to Norway to 



