The first attempt made to colonize the island was in the year 874. Ingulf, the son of a Norwegian jarl, had slain his adversary; and to escape the consequences of the act, he, with his brother-in-law Jorleif, prepared to visit a region where neither the vengeance of the kindred nor that of Harald Harfagre could pursue him. Deeply imbued with the superstition of the ancient Norwegian worship, he offered due sacrifices to the gods—for in these patriarchal times the privilege of sacrificing descended with that of primogeniture; and when he sailed took with him the ornamented doorposts of the apartment in which his household deities were enshrined. These, as he approached the island, he cast into the sea, and vowed that on the part of the coast to which the elements should drive them, he would establish his colony. In the meantime a promontory on the south-east, still called Ingulfshod, received him; but the door-posts, watched by his slaves, proceeded to the south-west, and entered a bay on which the modern Reykiavik stands. The place in which he had fixed his temporary abode was comparatively fertile; the neighbourhood of the bay for many leagues was unusually sterile; yet in spite of all remonstrances Ingulf removed to the latter spot, which he believed to be divinely ordained for him. His companion, Jorleif, chose a more fertile locality to the south; but Jorleif had no reverence for the gods, to whom he never deigned to sacrifice. In the estimation of many, the latter was the wiser man; but in a short time he was murdered by his own slaves, who fled with his substance to some distant islands. They did not escape with impunity: pursued by Ingulf, they paid the penalty of their crime. However much the regret of the chief for the fate of his friend, he piously observed that it was the lot of all who despised the national divinities.
|884.|
Ingulf was followed by several Norwegian chiefs, and by a multitude of simple freemen, who desired “to live far away from tyrannical kings and jarls.” In general, each new community chose for itself some habitable valley, fixed its boundaries, erected a rude temple to the gods, and provided for the civil no less than the religious administration. Of the jarls contemporary with Ingulf, Thorolf was the most celebrated. Descended, in popular opinion, like many other chiefs, from the divine race which had held the government of the country, Thorolf was at once the head of his clan and the pontiff of his religion. Attached to the great temple of Thor, on one of the islands close to the Norwegian coast, furnished with a venerable beard, endowed with many vassals, many flocks and herds, and a wide domain, Thorolf was one of the most influential chiefs in the north of that kingdom. But he had the misfortune to incur the wrath of Harald Harfagre, by giving an asylum to Biorn, one of his kinsmen, who was persecuted by that monarch. From a Thing, or public assembly of the province, Harald obtained a decree of outlawry against Thorolf, if, within a given period, he failed to surrender Biorn. To ascertain the will of the gods, whether he should give himself up to the king or flee to Iceland, he sacrificed to Thor, and the reply favoured the latter project. No less devout than Ingulf, he took with him the statue of Thor, the earth on which the throne had stood, and a portion of the temple. Approaching the island, he threw into the sea the wooden columns which had supported the sanctuary; and, as his predecessor had done ten years before him, settled on the spot to which the elements carried them. Marking the boundaries of his new domain by walking round it with a flaming brand and setting fire to the grass, his next object was to build a large house, and then a large temple, in which he was to officiate as the high-priest of Thor. There were the same columns, the same throne, the same mystic ring, and the same great altar. The other divinities were placed in the niches prepared for them; and the worship was celebrated with less pomp indeed than in the parent country, but with equal fervour. Close to the temple was the spot where the Thing, or judicial assembly of the people, was held, in the open air, in presence of “Freya, and Niord, and the Almighty As,” by whom the witnesses in a suit always sware. The ground of both was held to be holy; for the laws which the ancient divinities had ordained were necessarily a part of religion. This was the ordinary mode of proceeding when any new colony was formed. By degrees, as the cabins of the slaves increased, and were spread over the domain, the aspect of the country became more cheerful. The settlement of Thorolf was soon a flourishing one; it was increased by many new arrivals from Norway; and was at length divided into three populous districts, each of which recognized him as chief pontiff, until human passion begun to produce its inevitable result,—disunion and bloody feuds.
|874 to 936.|
At this distance of time, we do not estimate as we ought the number of emigrants from Norway to this newly-discovered island. Before the death of Harald Harfagre, most of its habitable portions had their occupants. What with the expulsion of the pirates, what with the voluntary exile of the chiefs who disdained to acknowledge a superior, the mother country must have lost no inconsiderable proportion of its inhabitants. It promised indeed to be left half peopled, when that monarch, in conjunction with the nobles who still remained, severely prohibited these emigrations. But neither he nor they could always watch the ports; still less could they control the motions of those who, while occupied in traffic from coast to coast, seized the opportunity of sailing for a land where there were no kings, no lords. Yet this was only true of the earliest state of Icelandic civilization. Subsequently, as the chiefs with their numerous slaves and their warlike dependants repaired to that place, a system resembling the clanship of Norway, though less despotic, was introduced. They, indeed, seized the land as their own, and parcelled it out to their followers on certain conditions. Among these conditions was always the payment of an annual rent in agricultural produce, and of something for the support of religion; but frequently was superadded some hereditary jurisdiction in the family of the chief. As he was often a pontiff no less than a patriarch, and was a reputed descendant from the divine family of the Ynglings, this union of the sacerdotal, of the judicial, and of almost royal functions, invested him with a consideration which he had scarcely enjoyed even in Norway. He who filled this two-fold office of pontiff and civil magistrate, who formed a sort of patriarchal aristocracy not uninteresting to contemplate, was called Godar, or Haf-godar. But in half a century after the colonization of the island, an evil arose for which the social constitutions of the period afforded no remedy. The isolation of the communities led to the formation of a separate rival spirit, which was often destructive to the district. When two neighbouring communities or their magistrates disputed, who was to act as the umpire? There was no monarch, no hereditary chief of the province, no Al-Thing, to decide between them. It became necessary, therefore, either to renounce the advantages of a general confederation, and to live in scattered independent tribes, whose hostilities must soon have led to the depopulation of the island, or to establish a superior authority. Hence the selection of a supreme judge, who was also empowered to collect laws, which, however, could not be obligatory until they had been accepted by the chiefs and the people of each community. The first Icelander raised to this high dignity was Ulfliot (925), who, though sixty years of age, proceeded to Norway to obtain a more intimate acquaintance with the unwritten observances of that kingdom. Under the direction of Thorleif the Wise, he obtained in three years the information which he sought; and on his return to Iceland he promulgated a code that for many generations regulated the decisions of the deemsters, or local judges. Its provisions have unfortunately perished, with the exception of some inconsiderable fragments. They were no doubt nearly identical with those which governed the parent country; but of the latter we have not one in the state in which it was originally promulgated,—not one that has not been altered by succeeding legislators. The spirit of the code which Thorleif himself compiled at the instance of Hako the Good, can be inferred only from the general character of Norwegian society, and from the legal provisions of later times; provisions which are, in truth, but adaptations of ancient penalties to an altered state of society. The laws designed for pagan use would obviously require considerable modification before they could be adopted by Christians.
|930.|
To understand rightly the social condition of Iceland during the pagan and indeed the succeeding ages, too much attention cannot be paid to the political constitution and the civil administration of that interesting colony. The island was divided into four great districts,—viertel; and over each was a chief magistrate elected by the people. At certain periods, there was an assembly of the freemen in each; all had a voice in the deliberations; all could vote; and the magistrate whom they had chosen was entrusted with the execution of such laws, such regulations, as they adopted. But though comprising one fourth only of the habitable portion of the island, each of these districts was too extensive to render the meetings of the freemen so frequent as the interests of the community required. Hence the sub-division of each into inferior districts, which had their meetings for the transaction of such business as was more peculiarly local. Affairs which concerned the whole community could be discussed only in the Al-Thing, or great national assembly, which was held once a year. The place of meeting was situated on a level plain, on the shores of the lake of Thingvalle, and was called the Law Mount. Justice, indeed, was generally administered on an eminence among all the nations of Gothic origin; not because there was any sanctity in a hill, but that the proceedings might be more visible to the multitude. During eight centuries the Law Mount continued to be the scene of the national assemblies; and it is only in our own times that the place of meeting has been removed to a spot more convenient indeed to the scattered population, but less hallowed by time. The president was chosen for life,—an anomaly surely in a community where the freemen would be thought equal; but the truth is that among all the Germanic nations there was a wide difference between the theory and practice of the constitution. The meanest freeman present at the Thing might, for any thing we know, have a vote; he might even have the right of speech; but still the real power lay in the hands of a few noble chiefs. What made the authority of this president, this logsogomadr, or promulgator of the law, the more formidable, is the fact, that though he was not, as some writers have contended, a legislator, no laws were made without his concurrence; and of these he had the interpretation, no less than the administration. His office therefore being more than executive, and conferred for so long a period, made him irresponsible, except when the Thing was actually assembled. As we have before observed, Ulfliot was the first who held this dignity. The laws he enacted were, we are told, preserved for two centuries by tradition only, before they were committed to writing. This is not credible. The Runic art at least was understood many centuries before his time; and so, we may infer, were the ordinary characters: at least we read of communication by letter between the sovereigns and jarls of the time. The more important of Ulfliot’s laws must have been invested in a dress less perishable than oral tradition. For ages before his time, every German tribe with which we are acquainted, had, besides its common or unwritten, its statute or written, law; and we know not why Scandinavia should in this respect be different from such barbarous tribes as the Saxons, or Finns, or Suabians, during the same period. On this subject, however, more in the proper place.[[10]]
6. Greenland owed its discovery to the Icelandic colony. Towards the close of the tenth century, Eric the Red, son of Torwald, a Norwegian jarl, who had been compelled to forsake his country in consequence of a feud, was, for the same reason, obliged to leave Iceland. Whither was he to repair? To Norway he could not; for there were the deadly enemies of his family whom old Torwald had made. To hide himself in Iceland was hopeless; and in the Orkneys, which were far distant, he could scarcely hope to escape the vengeance of those enemies. He therefore resolved to seek a land of which some maritime adventurers had obtained a confused knowledge. Sailing towards the west, he at length discovered a small island in a strait, which he called Eric’s Sound, and on which he passed the winter. The following spring, he examined the neighbouring continent, which from its smiling verdure—smiling in comparison with the bleak desolation of Iceland—he called Greenland. Filled with the importance of this adventure, he soon returned to that island, and succeeded in collecting a number of colonists, whom he established in the newly-discovered land. Yet Greenland was not uninhabited: better for the settlers had it been so; for the wild natives were not friendly to men whom they regarded as intruders on their own domain. Some years after the settlement of the colony, viz. in 999, Leif, the son of Eric, repaired to Norway, where he was well received by the reigning monarch, Olaf Trygveson: Olaf was soon interested in the description which Leif gave of the country; and in his zeal for the conversion of all pagans, he resolved to support the new colony. Whatever might be the faults of the royal convert, he was the instrument of much good. He persuaded or forced Leif to receive baptism, and caused a missionary to accompany him to Greenland. Hence the introduction of that religion among the Norwegian colonists; but it had little success amongst the natives, who, whether from stupidity or vicious habits, have always been slow to comprehend its truths. During more than three centuries this infant colony flourished: the plague of 1348 lamentably thinned its numbers; and early in the following century the rest were either exterminated by the savage inhabitants, or compelled to leave the country. Not a vestige remains of that colony; nor is it clearly ascertained in what part of the coast it was located.
7. North America (1001–1002). The most curious part of the present subject is that which relates to the alleged discovery of North America by a native of Iceland. Let us state the facts, as recorded by the ancient sagas, and the authorities followed by Snorro Sturleson, before we reason upon them.—Herjulf, a descendant of Ingulf, and his son Biarn, subsisted by trading between Iceland and Norway, in the latter of which countries they generally passed the winter. One season, their vessels being as usual divided for the greater convenience of traffic, Biarn did not find his father in Norway, who, he was informed, had proceeded to Greenland, then just discovered. He had never visited that country; but he steered westwards for many days, until a strong north wind bore him considerably to the south. After a long interval, he arrived in sight of a low, woody country, which, compared with the description he had received of the other, and from the route he had taken, could not, he was sure, be Greenland. Proceeding to the south-west, he reached the latter country, and joined his father, who was located at Herjulfsnæ, a promontory opposite to the western coast of Iceland.
|1001.|