Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/73

deemed an honourable occupation. Iceland men are mentioned in the sagas, occasionally, as being in the service of vikings of Norway, as hired men; but no long-ship, or viking belonging to Iceland, is mentioned. The necessity of trading in peace across the sea, and of giving no pretext for capture or retaliation on Iceland vessels, may have been one cause for this remarkable abstinence from the favourite pursuit of the nobles of those ages in other northern countries. It could not be from the cause to which it is usually attributed, the want of wood in the country to build long-ships. The Icelanders had to buy merchant ships in Norway of a size to cross the sea, and appear to have had them in abundance; and the same class of people who fitted out viking expeditions in other countries could have purchased long-ships as easily as ships of burden. Their neighbours in the Feroe Islands were equally destitute of wood; yet they had a very celebrated viking, Sigmund Breestesen. The Orkney Islands had their Swein, a renowned viking, so late as the 12th century. But in none of the sagas in which the exploits of these vikings are related, is there any mention of any Iceland viking at any period. The fair inference is, that the men who emigrated from Norway to Iceland, and who were of the class and had the means to fit out long-ships for piracy, were men more advanced in civilisation and intelligence, and of higher principle, than men of the same class in that age in the other northern countries. In all the sagas there appears a kind of reluctance to dwell upon or approve of that part of the hero's life passed in viking expeditions, or in "gathering property" by piracy. One imagines, at least, that in the Saga of Olaf Tryggvesson, of Olaf the Saint, and of other great chiefs, the saga-man shows a disposition to hurry over this part of their lives, to throw it into the years of extreme youth, and not to approve himself of that part of his