The day after men went to the Hill of Laws. A skald opportunely sang some verses with the result that now men burst out in great fits of laughter. And eventually "in this way the atonement came about, and then hands were shaken on it, and twelve men were to utter the award, and Snorri the priest was the chief man in this award, and others with him. Then the manslaughters were set off the one against the other, and those men who were over and above were paid for in fines. They also made an award in the suit about the Burning."[13]
The Allthing still meets, but no longer amid mountain wilds. A very substantial stone structure, two storeys and an attic high, faces the square at Reykjavik; it bears date 1881. Below is a library; above the chamber, from a gallery in the attic, the public may look on. It is impossible to visit this humble structure without emotion, for it is the seat of one of the ancientest moots upon the earth. Had it only a continuous history from its first institution it would be older by, at any rate, a century or two than the very Mother of Parliaments, for the French-named body that sits at St. Stephen's can hardly claim historic continuity with the Saxon Witanagemot. But the well-fitted Althinghuus is an unromantic substitute for the vast and desolate wildness of the Thingvellir. It is with a shock, too, that one notices on the walls great pictures of Egypt and of Greece. Are not Ellidaar and Hvita, salmon rivers of Iceland, to this assembly at any rate better than all the waters of Nile and Cephissus?[14]
The Cathedral of Reykjavik, next to the Althinghuus, is a small whitewashed structure with saddle roof tower, whose vane is dated 1847. It is entirely destitute of the slightest interest, save for the lovely font by Thorwaldsen (p. [138]), a cube of white marble. Round the top is a garland of flowers to support the metal bowl; on the four sides are bas-reliefs representing the Baptism of Christ, a mother and her children, cherubs, and Christ blessing the children. The Bishop, or Lutheran superintendent, has charge of the whole island, which in the middle ages formed two dioceses.
The Christianising of Iceland was a less violent process than that of the other northern lands. The building of the earliest church was owing to the gentle influence of the great Scottish apostle of Ireland. "Aur-lyg was the name of a son of Hrapp, the son of Beorn Buna. He was in fosterage with Bishop Patrec, the saint in the Southreys. A yearning came upon him to go to Iceland, and prayed Bishop Patrec that he would give him an outfit. The bishop gave him timber for a church and asked him to take it with him, and a plenarium, and an iron church-bell, and a gold penny, and consecrated earth to lay under the corner-posts instead of hallowing the church, and prelates to dedicate the church to Columcella."[15] And the church was built at Esia-rock, looking out over the ocean. Close by in the sea-weed the iron bell had been found, for it was cast into the sea that, like the heathen porch-pillars, it might point out the exact site that was the best.
The passing from the old faith to the new was on the whole remarkably destitute of bigotry. One, Helge, for example, "put his trust in Christ, and named his homestead after him, but yet would he pray to Thor on sea voyage and in hard stress, and in all those things that he deemed really of most account."[16] While the Landnama-bok itself ends with the remark: "Some held their Christendom well till their death-day, but it did not often go on in the family, because that of their sons, some reared temples and sacrificed, and the land was heathen nearly a hundred and twenty winters."
Then at a notable Allthing, about the year 1000, one Thor-gar spoke to the people at the Rock of the Laws. He told them a story about two kings who formerly ruled in Norway and Denmark respectively. "They had long kept up strife between them, till at last the people of both countries took the matter into their own hands, and made peace between them, although they themselves did not wish it; but this plan was so successful that the kings after a few winters' space were sending gifts to each other, and their friendship endured as long as they both did live. 'And this seems to me the best not to let them have their will that are most out and out on each side, but let us so umpire the matter between them that each side may gain somewhat of his case, but let us all have one law and one faith. For this saying shall be proved true, If the Constitution be broken the peace will be broken.'
"Thor-gar ended his speech in such a way that each side agreed to hold those laws which he should think best to declare.
"This was the declaration of Thor-gar, that all men in Iceland should be baptized and believe in one God, but as to the exposure of children, and the eating of horse-flesh, the old law should hold; men might sacrifice in secret if they would, but should fall under the lesser outlawry if witnesses came forward against them. This heathendom was taken away some years later."[17]
The final establishment of the faith was chiefly owing to Bishop Gizor, who was, we are told, "better beloved by all the people of the land than any other man whom we know to have been on the land."[18] Such, indeed, was the devotion men felt for him, so much did they appreciate his speeches, that the Icelanders voluntarily agreed to a complete valuation of all that they possessed in order that they might have the privilege of paying tithes! Greater proof of love than that no people ever showed! It would stagger humanity indeed were anything of the sort to be recorded to-day. Gizor it was who fixed the seat of the Bishopric at Skalholt, for before it was nowhere; he, too, set up the northern Bishop's stool at Holar, giving more than the fourth part of his income to endow it. This Gizor was surnamed the White, and he kept such peace in the land that there were no great feuds between the chiefs, and the carrying of arms was almost laid aside. And he sent his son Islaf to school in Saxland; he also became a Bishop and took to wife Dalla, the daughter of Thorwald.