gly reenforced by Norwegians who took refuge there to avoid the
tyranny of their king, Harold, the Fair-haired. Ingolf built the town
Ingolfshof, named after him, and also Reikiavik, afterward the capital,
named from the "reek" or steam of its hot springs. So important did this
colony become that in the second generation the population amounted to
60,000.

Ingolf was admired by the poet James Montgomery (not to be confounded
with Robert, whom Macaulay criticized so severely), who in 1819 thus
wrote of him and his island:

There on a homeless soil his foot he placed,
Framed his hut-palace, colonized the waste,
And ruled his horde with patriarchal sway
--Where Justice reigns, 'tis Freedom to obey....
And Iceland shone for generous lore renowned,
A northern light when all was gloom around.

The next year after Ingolf had come to Iceland, Gunnbiorn, a hardy
Norseman, driven in his ship westerly, sighted a strange land....
About half a century later, judging by the Icelandic sagas, we
learn that a wind-tossed vessel was thrown upon a coast far away
which was called "Mickle Ireland" (_Irland it Mikla_)--[Winsor's
Hist. America, i, 61].

Gunnbiorn's discovery was utilized by Erik the Red, another sea-rover,
in A. D. 980, who sailed to it and, after three years' stay, returned
with a favorable account--giving it the fair name _Greenland_. The Norse
established two centers of population on Greenland. It is now believed
that after doubling Cape Farewell, they built their first town near that
head and the second farther north. The former, _Eystribygd_ (i. e.,
"Easter Bigging"), developed into a large colony, having in the
fourteenth century 190 settlements, with a cathedral and eleven
churches, and containing two cities and three or four monasteries. The
second town, _Westribygd_ (i. e., "Wester Bigging") had grown to ninety
settlements and four churches in the same time.

The germ and root of that civilization (afterward extinct, as we shall
see) was due to Leif the son of Red Erik, who visited Norway, the
mother-country, at the very close of the tenth century.

[Illustration: Remains of a Norse Church at Katortuk, Greenland.]

He found that the king and people there had enthusiastically embraced
the new religion, _Christianity_. Leif presently shared their fervor,
and decided to reject Woden, Thor, and the other gods of old
Scandinavia. A priest was told off to accompany Leif ba