30 
LETTERS FROM HIGH LATITUDES. 
firma. But the third, on obtaining his liberty a few 
days later, flew forward, and by following the direc¬ 
tion in which he had disappeared, Babna Floki, or 
Floki of the Havens, as he came to be called, triumph¬ 
antly made the land. 
The real colonists did not arrive till some years 
later, for I do not much believe a story they tell of 
Christian relics, supposed to have been left by Irish 
fishermen, found on the Westmann islands. A Scandi¬ 
navian king, named Harold Haarfager (a contemporary 
of our own King Alfred’s), having murdered, burnt, and 
otherwise exterminated all his brother kings who at 
that time grew as thick as blackberries in Norway, first 
consolidated their dominions into one realm, as Edgar 
did the Heptarchy, and then proceeded to invade the 
Udal rights of the landholders. Some of them, ani¬ 
mated with that love of liberty innate in the race of the 
noble Northmen, rather than submit to his oppressions, 
determined to look for a new home amid the desolate 
regions of the icy sea. Freighting a dragon-shaped 
galley—the Mayflower of the period—with their wives 
and children, and all the household monuments that 
were dear to them, they saw the blue peaks of their dear 
