36 A rctic and A nt arctic Exploration [part i 
alone restrained them. Their fleets were the terror of all 
the coasts of western Europe, and no creek or haven was 
safe from the ravages of their leaders. Such a man 
was Rolf the Ganger, a chief in Nordmore, who finally 
established himself as Duke of Neustria. His command- 
ing ability and statesmanship were shown by his great 
and enduring achievement. Other Vikings settled in the 
Faroes, Shetlands, Orkneys, Caithness, and the chief 
harbours of Ireland. Naddod seized the Faroes, and in 
863 Gardar Svafarson reached the coast of Iceland. It 
is curious that both in the Faroes and in Iceland Irish 
monks were found, who had gone there to find lonely places 
as dwellings for anchorites. They went away on the arrival 
of the Norsemen, as they would not live with heathens. 
The great event of the period of Harold Haarfager 
was the colonisation of Iceland. It was a forbidding 
home, yet the leading men of the Norwegian fjords 
settled there in numbers. Ingulf Ormsson, who came 
in 875, was the first. Two years afterwards Gunnbjorn 
Ulfson followed, sailing westward until he discovered 
islets (doubtless on the east coast of Greenland) which 
were afterwards called Gunnbjorn's Skerries. He turned 
back, and shaped a course for Iceland, which he had 
passed without knowing it. 
Iceland is separated from Norway by a wide and 
stormy sea with a depth of 2000 fathoms, while it has 
a sub-oceanic connection with the Faroes and the 
Hebrides by banks and ridges with a depth of only 100 
fathoms. The great volcanic mass of the island embraces 
an area of 40,450 square miles just south of the Arctic 
Circle and consists of snowy f jells pierced by active 
volcanoes and very difficult of access. It has two 
plateaux, built up by volcanic rocks of older and of 
newer formation. The two deep bays of Breidifjord and 
Hunafloi divide the island into two separate table-lands 
connected by an isthmus only miles across, but 750 
feet high. The only habitable parts of Iceland were and 
still are the narrow strips of land along the sea shore, 
and even the famous place w T here the Thingvalla or 
assembly of the people was held is in a plain which was 
formerly the bed of a lava stream, between the geyser 
district and Reykjavik. 
