Norwegian, and German sailors as good. In 1336, during the war with Scotland, we find the English ships, which were sailing for foreign countries, proceeded in strong companies, so as to be the better able to protect themselves against the Scots and pirates.[1]
At some date early in the fourteenth century arose a flourishing trade between England and Iceland. There are small traces of this in English records, but fortunately the Icelandic chronicles leave no possible doubt. Thus the 'Islenzkir Annálen,' under the year 1348, record the fact of the news of the black death in England reaching Iceland, adding that two hundred thousand people had died of the disease. In 1349 the death of English sailors at Bergen in Norway, is mentioned. Such items of news must have arrived by the boats which came to fish and the ships which came to barter cloth and other English manufactures for dried fish. It is possible that early intercourse with Iceland may be reflected in Giraldus Cambrensis' comparatively accurate knowledge of the position of that island. He adds that the people were few but truthful. and that the priests were their kings[2]
Following out the history of this trade, we find in 1354 an admiral appointed for the English fleet in the "Boreal," or northern parts, which may possibly have been intended to protect our fisheries. In 1392 we hear that there was a bad year in shipwrecks for the Germans, English, and Norwegians, and that many cogs were wrecked on the Norwegian coast. In 1396, Thord Arnisson was killed by "outlander chapmen." who had come ashore, and who were probably English.[3]
It is somewhat remarkable that, after sailing so far as to Iceland, the English sailors and fishermen should not have pushed on across the comparatively narrow strait which separates Iceland from Greenland. The memory of Greenland and Winland cannot, at the date when the English appeared, have died out; and hence it is probable that English fishermen or adventurers followed the leading of the Icelanders. though record there is none of their doings. There are supposed to be traces of navigators—not more
