Footnote 172: They were the Varangian guard at Constantinople, described by Sir Walter Scott in Count Robert of Paris. About this same time their kinsmen, the Russ, moving eastward from Sweden, were subjecting Slavic tribes as far as Novgorod and Kief, and laying the foundations of the power that has since, through many and strange vicissitudes, developed into Russia. See Thomsen, The Relations between Ancient Russia and Scandinavia, Oxford, 1877.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 173: Fealty to Norway was not formally declared until 1262.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 174: The settlement of Iceland is celebrated by Robert Lowe in verses which show that, whatever his opinion may have been in later years as to the use of a classical education, his own early studies must always have been a source of comfort to him:—
Χαῖρε καὶ ἐν νεφέλαισι καὶ ἐν νιφάδεσσι βαρείαις
Καὶ πυρὶ καὶ σεισμοῖς νῆσε σαλευομένη·
Ἐνθάδε γὰρ βασιλῆος ὑπέρβιον ὕβριν ἀλύξας
Δῆμος Ὑπερβορέων, κόσμου ἐπ' ἐσχατιῇ,
Αὐτάρκη βίοτον θείων τ' ἐρεθίσματα Μουσῶν
Καὶ θεσμοὺς ἁγνῆς εὗρεν ἐλευθερίας.
These verses are thus rendered by Sir Edmund Head (Viga Glums Saga, p. v.):—
"Hail, Isle! with mist and snowstorms girt around,
Where fire and earthquake rend the shattered ground,—
Here once o'er furthest ocean's icy path
The Northmen fled a tyrant monarch's wrath:
Here, cheered by song and story, dwelt they free,
And held unscathed their laws and liberty."
Laing (Heimskringla, vol. i. p. 57) couples Iceland and New England as the two modern colonies most distinctly "founded on principle and peopled at first from higher motives than want or gain."[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 175: Just what was then considered wealth, for an individual, may best be understood by a concrete instance. The historian Snorro Sturleson, born in 1178, was called a rich man. "In one year, in which fodder was scarce, he lost 120 head of oxen without being seriously affected by it." The fortune which he got with his first wife Herdisa, in 1199, was equivalent nominally to $4,000, or, according to the standard of to-day, about $80,000. Laing, Heimskringla, vol. i. pp. 191, 193.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 176: Laing's excellent English translation of it was published in London in 1844. The preliminary dissertation, in five chapters, is of great value. A new edition, revised by Prof. Rasmus Anderson, was published in London in 1889. Another charming book is Sir George Dasent's Story of Burnt Njal, Edinburgh, 1861, 2 vols., translated from the Njals Saga. Both the saga itself and the translator's learned introduction give an admirable description of life in Iceland at the end of the tenth century, the time when the voyages to America were made. It is a very instructive chapter in history.
The Icelanders of the present day retain the Old Norse language, while on the Continent it has been modified into Swedish and Norwegian-Danish. They are a well-educated people, and, in proportion to their numbers, publish many books.[Back to Main Text]