iece of land which lay next the beach they were flung upon
was then viewed from the nearest hill-summit, and place of the homestead
picked out. Then the land was hallowed by being encircled with fire,
parcelled among the band, and marked out with boundary-signs; the houses
were built, the "town" or home-field walled in, a temple put up, and the
settlement soon assumed shape. In 1100 there were 4500 franklins, making
a population of about 50,000, fully three-fourths of whom had a strong
infusion of Celtic blood in them. The mode of life was, and is, rather
pastoral than aught else. In the 39,200 square miles of the island's
area there are now about 250 acres of cultivated land, and although
there has been much more in times past, the Icelanders have always been
forced to reckon upon flocks and herds as their chief resources, grain
of all kinds, even rye, only growing in a few favoured places, and very
rarely there; the hay, self-sown, being the only certain harvest. On
the coast fishing and fowling were of help, but nine-tenths of the folk
lived by their sheep and cattle. Potatoes, carrots, turnips, and several
kinds of cabbage have, however, been lately grown with success. They
produced their own food and clothing, and could export enough wool,
cloth, horn, dried fish, etc., as enabled them to obtain wood for
building, iron for tools, honey, wine, grain, etc, to the extent of
their simple needs. Life and work was lotted by the seasons and
their changes; outdoor work--fishing, herding, hay-making, and
fuel-getting--filling the long days of summer, while the long, dark
winter was used in weaving and a hundred indoor crafts. The climate is
not so bad as might be expected, seeing that the island touches the
polar circle, the mean temperature at Reykjavik being 39 degrees.

The religion which the settlers took with them into Iceland--the
ethnic religion of the Norsefolk, which fought its last great fight at
Sticklestead, where Olaf Haraldsson lost his life and won the name of
Saint--was, like all religions, a compound of myths, those which had
survived from savage days, and those which expressed the various degrees
of a growing knowledge of life and better understanding of nature. Some
historians and commentators are still fond of the unscientific method of
taking a later religion, in this case christianity, and writing down all
apparently coincident parts of belief, as having been borrowed from the
christian teachings by the