lands for the faith of Christ and we cannot tarry with thee, even as our hearts would ask.”
“I have summoned to me, my father, Sigmund Bresteson, the first jarl over the Faroe Islands. I talked to him of the Christ, and Bishop Sigurd hath brought him into our Holy Faith. Now he hath returned to his home, and I have written to him to aid you all he can when you reach his dominion. Five hundred years ago the Irish monks brought the faith of Christ to Iceland; and now I would have ye light again the holy flame they kindled. I have sent to Ireland for more priests, and my heart is filled with happy hope as I think how soon all my kingdom, even these far off lands, may belong to Christ. Thangbrand, the Saxon priest, whom Sitric, Bishop of Canterbury, sent me to convert the Danes, hath had so many quarrels that I despatched him to Iceland: There he was even more violent and hath been driven from the island. Thangbrand is such a fighting priest, as it were a viking in a monk’s gown, that he should live by the sword instead of the book. In Iceland he cut off the heads of them that argued with him; and even if his argument were better and could convert them, they were dead before he could baptize them. So not many converts did Thangbrand make; and ye will have to strive to undo what harm he hath done to the cause of Christ. And I would have you inquire, my fathers, of the tale of some strange country to the west, that one Bjarne Herjulfssen found when
