Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/204

 From the natural products, or crops of the land, all that was enjoyed had to be obtained. Iceland enjoyed the advantage of more security of property and person; and the natural products of Iceland,—fish, oil, skins, butter, wool, and before the introduction of cotton as a clothing material, the wadmal, or coarse woollen cloth manufactured in Iceland, in which rent and taxes were paid, and which circulated as money through all the North, and in which even other goods were valued as a medium of exchange,—would all be of much higher comparative value than in after ages, when commerce and manufactures gave people a greater supply of better and cheaper articles for the same uses. The market for wood of Norway being confined to such islands as produced none for building purposes, the houses would probably be much the same in size and conveniences as those common among all classes in Norway, and little more expensive. The trade of bartering their products for those of other countries would probably be much more extensive than now, because their kind of products were much more generally used in other countries. In Drontheim, Bergen, and Tunsberg, several merchant vessels at the same time are often spoken of in the sagas; and Torfæus, in his "Vinlandia," page 69., mentions a Hrafnus Limiricepeta, so called from his frequent voyages to Limeric in Ireland—a Limeric trader,—who had related to Thorfinn, Earl of Orkney, some accounts of a Great Ireland in the Western Ocean. In the Færeyinga Saga, we read of merchants frequenting the Feroe Isles to purchase the products of the country, and of the people sending off cargoes of their wool to Norway. The commercial intercourse of those times has probably been greater than we suppose, although dealings were only in the rude products of one land bartered against those of another. Matthew Paris tells us of his being at Bergen