Page:A Wild-Goose Chase - Balmer - 1915.djvu/73

Rh crushed with their axes the helmets of Magyar and Saracen.

These jarls and vikings were not men to submit when they were beaten. So, when Harold Fairhair conquered, they spread to find new lands of their own over the sea. Some conquered and occupied counties of England; some established themselves in Gaul; some at Dublin and Limerick; others overran Scotland, the Orkneys and Shetlands, and some sailed on to Iceland. Picked men these were, the strongest and most daring of the boldest stock of Europe.

Now, in the records of those vikings who reached and occupied Iceland it is written that in 876 a sailor named Gunnbiorn was driven by foul weather to a land still farther west, where his ship was caught in ice. He and his men managed to survive till the summer freed them and they returned to Iceland and told of the new land. But a hundred years passed before any one proved the story. Then in Norway one Eric the Red killed a man in a quarrel and ran to refuge in Iceland. Quarrelling again with his neighbours, he killed several and