Page:The Finding of Wineland the Good.djvu/228

 of the Icelandic discovery through the English, and especially the Bristol trade with Iceland. These theories do not require further consideration here, since they have no bearing on the primitive history of the Wineland discovery.

(2) Lpgsggumenn [sing. Iggspgumaðr], lit. law-saying men, publishers of the laws. The office was introduced into Iceland contemporaneously with the adoption of the law code of Ulfliot [Úlfljótr], and the establishment of the Althing [Popular Assembly] in the year 930, and was, probabl}', modelled after a similar Norwegian office. It was the duty of the 'lawsayer ' to give judgment in all causes which were submitted to him, according to the common law established by the Althing. The ' law-sayer ' appears to have presided at the Althing, where it was his custom to regularly announce the laws. From this last, his most important, function called 'law-saying' [Iggsaga], the office received its name. From the time of its adoption, throughout the continuance of the Commonwealth, the office was elective, the incumbent holding office for a limited period [three years] although he was eligible for reelection. [Vigfusson, Diet. s. v., states that during the first hundred years the law-speakers were elected for life.]

(3) Little is known of Rafn beyond his genealogy, which is given in Landnáma, Ft. 1 1, ch. xxi, and again in Sturlunga Saga I, ch. vii [Vigfusson's ed. p. 5]. Rafn was distantly related to Ari Marsson and Leif Ericsson. His ancestor, Steinolf the Short [Steinólfr hinn lági], was the brother of Thorbiorg, Ari Marsson's grandmother, and through the same ancestor, Steinolf, Rafn was remotely connected with Thiodhild, Leif Ericsson's mother.

(4) By this Thorfinn, the second earl of that name, is probably meant, i. e. Thorfinn Sigurd's son. ' He was the most powerful of all the Orkney earls. * * * Thorfinn was five 3'ears old when the Scotch king, Malcolm, his maternal grandfather, gave him the title of earl, and he continued earl for seventy years. He died in the latter days of Harold Sigurdsson,' [ca. a.d. 1064].

(5) It is recorded in Icelandic Annals [Annales regii, Skálholt, Gottskalk's, and Flatey Annals] that King Olaf Tr3'ggvason eftected the Christianization of Halogaland in the j'ear 999. In this year, according to the Saga of Olaf Trj'ggvason in ' Heimskringla,' ' King Olaf came with his men the same autumn to Drontheim, and betook himself to Nidaros, where he established himself for the -inter; ' and in the same place we read, ' Leif, the son of Eric the Red, he who first settled Greenland, was come that summer from Greenland to Norway; he waited upon King Olaf, accepted Christianity, and spent the winter with King Olaf.' In the spring following, and hence in the spring of the year 1000, for Olaf was killed in the autumn of that 3'ear, ' King Olaf sent Leif Ericsson to Greenland to proclaim Christianity there, and he sailed that summer to Greenland. He rescued at sea a ship's crew of men who were in