Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1941, Page 159

ICELAND IN THE NORTH
By Sigfús Blöndal,
former librarian in the Royal Library of Copenhagen.
I.
A CCORDING to the generally accepted chronology Iceland
L\ was colonised from Norway in the period 874—930.
-J~ _\_The settlers were mostly Norwegians, a few Danes and
Swedes, and a considerable Celtic element from Scotland and
Ireland, from the Norse establishments in these countries.
Although it may be accepted as truth that many of the Nor-
wegian emigrants emigrated for political reasons, as many chief-
tains of western Norway would not submit to the rule of King
Harold Fairhair, when he had made himself the master of all
Norway, it is pretty certain, that this cannot always have been
the case; many will have emigrated for economic reasons. The
causes of the emigration from Norway will in many cases have
been identical with those, that had caused the emigrations to
the Orkneys, to Shetland and to the British Isles: the hope of
greater economic possibilities. This has pre-eminently been the
case of Iceland. We note that most of the settlers came from
rather unfertile and barren tracts of the western coasts of Nor-
way, as Sogn, Hardanger and Helgeland, all famous for their
fine scenery and well wooded, but generally deficient in grazing
and in arable land. And so when the news came of the large,
newly discovered country, Iceland, with wide-reaching grazing
fields and meadows, virgin soil, and wood enough for domestic
purposes, and besides unlimited fisheries, all these things taken
together must have made a strong impression. Farming and
especially raising of cattle must have been much easier in Ice-
land than in their parts of Norway; the fisheries were even richer,
and recent researches seem to support the theory, that the climate
of Iceland in those days has been somewhat milder than later, —
at any rate we find that the new settlers practised agriculture
there to some extent during several centuries.
In the year 930 the colonists established themselves as a
separate, independent state, by the institution of the Althing, an
assembly with legislative and judicial powers. And now it becomes
yery remarkable how the Icelanders, while stoutly asserting their
independence, in their laws did recognise their relationship and