Iceland is separated from Norway by a wide and stormy sea with a depth of 2000 fathoms, while it has a sub-oceanic connection with the Faroes and the Hebrides by banks and ridges with a depth of only 100 fathoms. The great volcanic mass of the island embraces an area of 40,450 square miles just south of the Arctic Circle and consists of snowy fjells pierced by active volcanoes and very difficult of access. It has two plateaux, built up by volcanic rocks of older and of newer formation. The two deep bays of Breidifjord and Hunafloi divide the island into two separate table-lands connected by an isthmus only 4½ miles across, but 750 feet high. The only habitable parts of Iceland were and still are the narrow strips of land along the sea shore, and even the famous place where the Thingvalla or assembly of the people was held is in a plain which was formerly the bed of a lava stream, between the geyser district and Reykjavik.

The voyage to Iceland was long and dangerous, the difficulty of colonising insuperable to all but men endowed with the Viking spirit. The first settlers sent tidings that the sea abounded in fish, and that cattle could live through the winter, so the tide of immigration continued. The Icelanders elected their Judges, established district courts, and were ruled by their own freely-elected Althing or assembly, held on the banks of the lake called the Thingvalla Vatn. This land of freedom, under the Arctic Circle, became the fountain of northern mythology and history, and it is to the Skalds of Iceland that we owe nearly all our knowledge of the beliefs, as well as of the deeds, of the ancient Norsemen. Iceland was also the stepping-stone for further Arctic discovery.

The settlement of Iceland, with the roll of settlers, is recorded in a famous work written by Ari Froði (1067–1148) called the Landnamabók.

CHAPTER VI
THE NORSEMEN IN GREENLAND

The enthralling story of the discovery of Greenland and America, as the actual beginning of great Arctic enterprises, must be introduced by some account of the authorities on which it rests, for parts of it have been the subjects of much criticism and dispute.

The earliest writer who mentions the deeds of the Norsemen in Greenland was Adam of Bremen, a Canon of the cathedral of that city and master of the cathedral school, A.D. 1070. In those days Svend Estridsen, a nephew (sister’s son) of England’s King Canute, was King of Denmark, whose memory was a storehouse of facts concerning the history of the Scandinavian races. Adam of Bremen accordingly made a journey to his court and spent some time there, and the King was his authority on all he was able to write relating to Greenland. Adam’s testimony is, therefore, earlier than, and quite independent of Icelandic manuscripts, and becomes a test for the truth of the sagas and traditions. In this lies its great importance as an authority.

The detailed Icelandic narratives are two or three centuries later. The first is the Hauksbok, composed not later than 1334. Its name is derived from Hauk who was Lagman of Iceland in 1295, and in whose handwriting a portion is written. It contains the Saga of Erik the Red. The second manuscript is the Flatey book or Codex Flateyensis, so called from having belonged to one Finsson who lived on Flat Island, near the Breidifjord in Iceland. It is now in the Royal library at Copenhagen, having been brought from Iceland by Thormod Torfason (Torfœus) as a present to King Frederick III of Denmark. It was written about the year 1387 and contains the Saga of Olaf Tryggvason, King of Norway, in which two narratives are interpolated, the story of Erik the Red and the story of the Greenlanders.

The two versions in the Hauk book and the Flatey book differ materially in the details, but the main facts are the same. The version of the Hauk book is the older and appears to be the more reliable, and in the days of Hauk there was still communication with the Greenland colony. Two complete vellum texts of the Hauk book survive. The work, in addition to the Saga of Erik the Red, contains the Saga of Thorfin Karlsefni. Hauk, who was a descendant of Karlsefni, one of the Greenland heroes, died in 1334.

We learn from the Hauksbok that there was a man named Thorwald, living in the district of Stavanger, in the south of Norway, with his son Erik the Red. They had killed a man, and in consequence fled to Iceland and settled at Hornstrandir in Haukadal, on the north shore of Iceland’s north-west peninsula. Here Thorwald died, and his son married a widow named Thorhild who bore him three sons, Thorstein, Leif, and Thorwald. He also had a natural daughter named Freidis.

Erik soon got into trouble again. His thralls caused a landslide on Valthiof’s farm, for which a kinsman of Valthiof, named Eyulf the Foul, killed them. Erik retaliated by slaying Eyulf, as well as his friend Hrafn “the duellist,” and being attacked by the friends of the men he had killed, was driven from Haukadal. He then went to settle on two small islands, called Oxney and Sudrey, at the mouth of Breidifjord, naming his dwelling-place Erikstad. Here he was soon again in trouble with a neighbour named Thorgest, with whom he quarrelled. Two of the sons of Thorgest with some others were killed, and the two enemies began to keep large bodies of men at their homesteads.