Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/181

 He sold even a piece of wood used for a door-bar, or a broomstick, to a Bremen merchant for half a mark of gold; for it was of massur-wood of Vinland. He returned, and purchased land in Iceland; and many people of distinction are descended from him and his son Snorro, who was born in Vinland. After his death his widow, Gudrid, went to Borne, and on her return lived in religious seclusion in Iceland.

The above is an abridgment of the eight chapters on which the whole accounts of Vinland rest, and which are given at length in. the Appendix; and so much fanciful speculation has been reared upon this foundation, that it deserves examination. The main facts—the discovery of various lands to the south and west of Greenland, the repeated voyages to them, and the reasonable motives of such voyages—bear all the internal evidences of simple truth. We may generally believe in the truth of the accounts of men's actions, when we see reasonable and sufficient motives for them so to act. Iceland, although it had wood in those days, and has some still, produced only a scrubby small brushwood of birch or hazel, not fit for ship-building, nor for the large halls which it was the fashion of the age for great people to have for entertaining and lodging their followers in; and the state of society made it necessary for safety to keep large bodies of retainers always at hand, and about them. It is told as a remarkable thing in the Landnamma Book, or History of the Original Settlers in Iceland (page 29.), that Avang found such large wood where he settled, that he built a long-ship; and in the Ivristni Saga it is mentioned that Hialte Skeggeson built a ship at home, so large that he sailed in it to Norway. In general, however, they had to buy their sea-going vessels in Norway. The drift wood found about the shores of Iceland in great abundance to a late period, and perhaps even now, would be too much shaken and