[29] By an old chronicler quoted, but not named, by C. A. Vansittart Conybeare in his Place of Iceland in the History of European Institutions, 1877.
[30] It is extremely interesting to find so eminent a French antiquary as C. Enlart seeking to revive the theory that the famous Round Tower at Newport, R.I., was a church erected by the Norse. See Revue de l'Art Chrétien, Sept.-Oct., 1910. I cannot help feeling, however, that the balance of probability leans heavily against this view.
[31] I have never seen the Alaska sea-coast; the deep bays and arms of Nova Scotia, lovely as they are, only mildly recall some of the tamest of Norwegian seascapes.
[32] The district of which Nidaros or Trondhjem is the centre.
[33] He was Pope Adrian IV., but the Dictionary of National Biography suggests a doubt as to his name having been Nicolas Breakspear at all.
[34] See p. 31. The title of this diocese is still attached to that of the Isle of Man, but the southern islands are the same as the Isles attached to the Scottish Diocese of Argyll.
[35] A very interesting account of the foundation of this distant bishopric is given in Graenlendinga Tháttr, a work that gives us a peep of Greenland in the twelfth century after nothing has been heard of the colony for a hundred years. It is printed in Origines Islandicæ, Vol. II. See p. 38. The first bishop for Greenland was consecrated by Archbishop Auzur, of Lund.
[36] "That was a great minster, and wrought strongly of lime, so that it might scarce be got broken when Archbishop Eystein let take it down" (Heimskringla, Vol. 3, Ch. XXXIX.). All my citations from the Heimskringla are from the translation by Morris and Magnússon, except the lay at the beginning of the first chapter.
[37] The corona is very rich. Clustered pillars, with arches divided by shafts and closed by stone screens, sustain the triforium, whose two-light openings have large carved caps and varied tracery, and the clearstorey with tall lancets. The dome-vault, which rises above, is steadied perhaps, but hardly supported, by very thin flying buttresses of rounded unconstructive form. The surrounding aisle has the richest of mural arcading and little chapels open from it to east and north and south.
Into the east end of the quire a large arch opens from the corona itself, and a small one each side from the aisle. The quire is almost all rebuilt, pillars clustered or octagonal deeply fluted, with huge carved caps, sustain triforium, clearstorey and vaulting of character not dissimilar to those of the corona. The general effect is extremely fine, and one is reminded a little of Holyrood Chapel at Edinburgh and again of Lincoln Angel Quire. The corona recalls the similar feature at Canterbury, but is very much more beautiful.