on t' erethismata Mouson
Kai thesmous hagnes heuren eleutherias.]

These verses are thus rendered by Sir Edmund Head (_Viga Glums
Saga_, p. v.):--

"Hail, Isle! with mist and snowstorms girt around,
Where fire and earthquake rend the shattered ground,--
Here once o'er furthest ocean's icy path
The Northmen fled a tyrant monarch's wrath:
Here, cheered by song and story, dwelt they free,
And held unscathed their laws and liberty."

Laing (_Heimskringla_, vol. i. p. 57) couples Iceland and New
England as the two modern colonies most distinctly "founded on
principle and peopled at first from higher motives than want or
gain."]

[Footnote 175: Just what was then considered wealth, for an
individual, may best be understood by a concrete instance. The
historian Snorro Sturleson, born in 1178, was called a rich
man. "In one year, in which fodder was scarce, he lost 120 head
of oxen without being seriously affected by it." The fortune
which he got with his first wife Herdisa, in 1199, was
equivalent nominally to $4,000, or, according to the standard
of to-day, about $80,000. Laing, _Heimskringla_, vol. i. pp.
191, 193.]

[Footnote 176: Laing's excellent English translation of it was
published in London in 1844. The preliminary dissertation, in
five chapters, is of great value. A new edition, revised by
Prof. Rasmus Anderson, was published in London in 1889. Another
charming book is Sir George Dasent's _Story of Burnt Njal_,
Edinburgh, 1861, 2 vols., translated from the _Njals Saga_.
Both the saga itself and the translator's learned introduction
give an admirable description of life in Iceland at the end of
the tenth century, the time when the voyages to America were
made. It is a very instructive chapter in history.

The Icelanders of the present day retain the Old Norse
language, while on the Continent it has been modified into
Swedish and Norwegian-Danish. They are a well-educated people,
and, in proportion to their numbers, publish many books.]

[Sidenote: Discovery of Greenland, 876.]

[Sidenote: Eric's Colony in Greenland, 986.]

Now from various Icelandic chronicles[177]