Having thus briefly announced the nature, plan, and object of the present work, of which this first Volume is now before the public, it only remains to say, that the Editor and Proprietor, each in his particular department, are resolved to exert their utmost endeavours, that nothing may be omitted which can contribute to render the work deserving of public approbation and extensive patronage.
PART I.
VOYAGES AND TRAVELS OF DISCOVERY, FROM THE ERA OF ALFRED, KING OF ENGLAND, IN THE NINTH CENTURY; TO THE ERA OF DON HENRY, PRINCE OF PORTUGAL, AT THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY
CHAPTER I.
Discoveries in the time of Alfred King of England, in the ninth century of the Christian era
In the midst of the profound ignorance and barbarism which overspread the nations of Western Europe, after the dissolution of the Roman empire in the West, a transient ray of knowledge and good government was elicited by the singular genius of the great Alfred, a hero, legislator, and philosopher, among a people nearly barbarous. Not satisfied with having delivered his oppressed and nearly ruined kingdom from the ravages of the almost savage Danes and Nordmen, and the little less injurious state of anarchy and disorganization into which the weakness of the vaunted Anglo-Saxon system of government had plunged England, he for a time restored the wholesome dominion of the laws, and even endeavoured to illuminate his ignorant people by the introduction of useful learning. In the prosecution of these patriotic views, and for his own amusement and instruction, besides other literary performances, he made a translation of the historical work of Orosius into his native Anglo-Saxon dialect; into which he interwove the relations of Ohthere and Wulfstan, of which hereafter, and such other information as he could collect respecting the three grand divisions of the world then known; insomuch, that his account of Europe especially differs very materially from that of Orosius, of which he only professed to make a translation.
Although Alfred only mounted the throne of England in 872, it has been deemed proper to commence the series of this work with the discovery of Iceland by the Nordmen or Norwegians, about the year 861, as intimately connected with the era which has been deliberately chosen as the best landmark of our proposed systematic History and Collection of Voyages and Travels. That entirely accidental incident is the earliest geographical discovery made by the modern nations, of which any authentic record now remains, and was almost the only instance of the kind which occurred, from the commencement of the decline of the Roman power, soon after the Christian era, for nearly fourteen centuries. And as the colonization of Iceland did not begin till A.D. 878, the insertion of this circumstance in the present place, can hardly be considered as at all deviating from the most rigid principles of our plan.
It were foreign to our present object to attempt any delineation of the piratical, and even frequently conquering expeditions of the various nations of Scandinavia, who, under the names of Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes, and Normans, so long harassed the fragments of the Roman empire. About the year 861, one Naddod, a Nordman or Norwegian vikingr, or chief of a band of freebooters, who, during a voyage to the Faro islands, was thrown by a storm upon the eastern coast of an unknown country, considerably beyond the ordinary course of navigation, to which he gave the significant name of Snio-land, or Snow-land, from the immense quantities of snow which every where covered its numerous lofty mountains, even in the height of summer, and filled its many valleys during a long and dreary winter. As Naddod gave a rather favourable account of his discovery on his return to Norway, one Gardar Suafarson, of Swedish origin, who was settled in Norway, determined upon making an expedition to Snow-land in 864; and having circumnavigated the whole extent of this new discovery, he named it from himself, Gardars-holm, or Gardars-island.
Gardar employed so long a time in this expedition, that, not deeming it safe to navigate the northern ocean during the storms of winter, he remained on the island until the ensuing spring, when he sailed for Norway. He there reported, that though the island was entirely covered with wood, it was, in other respects, a fine country. From the favourable nature of this report, one Flocke, the son of Vigvardar, who had acquired great reputation among the Nordmen or Normans, as an experienced and intrepid vikingr or pirate, resolved to visit the newly-discovered island. Flocke likewise wintered in the northern part of the island, where he met with immense quantities of drift ice, from which circumstance he chose to give it the name of Iceland, which it still bears. He was by no means pleased with the country, influenced, 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 formerly cultivated with decent success in that northern region; whereas, in the present day, not a tree is to be found in the whole island, except some stunted birches, and very low bushes or underwood, in the most sheltered situations, and no corn will now ripen, even in the most favourable years. But the roots and stumps of large firs are still to be seen in various parts; and the injurious alteration of its climate is known to have been occasioned by the straits between old Greenland and Iceland having been many years choked up with ice, which the short summers of that high latitude are not sufficiently powerful to dissolve.
1
Fragm. Vet. Islandic. ap. Langebeck, II. 31. –Forster, Hist. of Voy. and Disc. in the North, p. 50.