Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/71

vessel, with, the necessary outfit and stock, could only be afforded by people of the highest class, and they only had to dread the jealousy and power of Haarfager. Their friends, retainers, housemen, and servants attached to their families, went with them; but the landnammen, the origines gentis, were the sons and brothers of the nobles and kings, as they were called, who from the very same cause, the dread and hatred of Haarfager's power, went out to plunder and conquer on the coasts of England and France. At the very same period that Rolf Ganger set out on his expedition, which ended in the conquest of Normandy, one of his brothers sought a peaceful asylum in the uninhabited Iceland; and the more peaceful of the higher class in those days were, we may presume, the most civilised and cultivated of their age. New England, perhaps, and Iceland, are the only modern colonies ever founded on principle, and peopled at first from higher motives than want or gain; and we see at this day a lingering spark in each of a higher mind than in populations which have set out from a lower level. The original settlers in Iceland carried with them whatever there was of civilisation or intelligence in Norway; and for some generations at least were free from the internal feuds, and always were free from the external wars and depredations on their coasts, which kept other countries in a state of barbarism. They enjoyed security of person and property. The means of subsistence in Iceland were not so very different from the means in Norway, nor of so much more difficult attainment, as might on a hasty view be supposed. The south coast of Iceland is not higher north than the country about Drontheim fiord, and the most northerly part is barely within the Arctic Circle. A large proportion of the population of Norway lived in those ages, and five now, in as high a latitude; and, from not being surrounded by the ocean