In the twelfth century monasteries abounded, and Icelanders marched in the armies of the crusaders, but when the Reformation came, the people in a body accepted the doctrines of Luther, and the state religion has ever since been, as it now is, the Lutheran. In their tiny churches, with a salary averaging less than two hundred dollars a year, the faithful clergy labor unceasingly, preferring this rugged life to one of more ease in a more friendly clime, for there is no Icelander great or small who does not firmly believe his own to be “the best land the sun ever shone on.”