luenced, no doubt, by the unfavourable impression he
had imbibed by spending a long protracted winter on the dreary northern
shore, amid almost ever-during arctic ice, and surrounded by the most
unpromising sterility; and though some of his companions represented the
land as pleasing and fertile, the desire of visiting Iceland seems, for
some time, to have lain dormant among the adventurous Norwegian navigators;
probably because neither fame nor riches could be acquired, either by
traffic or depredation, in a country which was utterly destitute of
inhabitants.

At length, in 874, two friends, Ingolf and Lief, repaired to Iceland, and
were so much satisfied with its appearance, that they formed a resolution
of attempting to make a settlement in the country; induced, doubtless, by a
desire to withdraw from the continual wars and revolutions which then
harassed the north of Europe, and to escape from the thraldom which the
incipient monarchies of Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, were then imposing
upon the independent chiefs or vikingr of the Normans. In pursuance of this
determination, Ingolf transported some people to Iceland, about the year
878, with several cattle, and all kinds of implements, to enable him to
commence a colony. At this period his friend Lief was absent in the English
wars; but went soon afterwards into Iceland, to which he carried the booty
which he had acquired in England.

The first discoverers of Iceland are said to have found some Irish books,
bells, and croziers on the coast; whence it has been imagined, that some
people from Ireland had resided there previous to its discovery and
settlement by the Normans. But it seems a more probable supposition, to
account for these articles having been seen, that a party of Norman pirates
or vikingr, who had previously landed in Ireland, or perhaps on Icolmkil,
and had carried away the plunder of some abbey or monastery, had been
driven to Iceland by a storm, and wrecked upon the coast, where these
articles might have been washed on shore: Or they may have attributed the
storm, by which they were driven so far beyond their knowledge, to the
anger of the God of the Christians, for their sacrilegious robbery of a
holy institution, and may have left these articles behind, in hopes of
propitiating a more favourable termination to their voyage. The first
settlers found extensive forests in the valleys of Iceland; and we know,
from authentic documents, that corn was fo