Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/54

 the Fielde, the fiords, and rivers, without other aid from agriculture, or the arts of civilised life, than is implied in keeping herds of reindeer in a half tame state, or a few cows upon the natural herbage of the mountain glens. We, in our state of society, do not consider that the superior fertility of the warmer climes and better soils of southern countries, adds nothing to the means of subsistence of those who do not live upon those products of the earth which are obtained by cultivation. A hermit at the present day could subsist himself, from the unaided bounty of nature, much better at the side of a fiord in Norway, than on the banks of the Tiber, or of the Tagus, or of the Thames. Iceland, which we naturally think the last abode to which necessity could drive settlers, had in its abundance of fish, wild fowl, and pasturage for sheep and cows, although the country never produced corn, such advantages that it was the earliest of modern colonies, and was a favourite resort of emigrants in the 9th century. The Irish monk Dicuil, who wrote in 825 his work "De Mensura Orbis Terræ," published by C. A. Walckenaer in Paris in 1828, says that for 100 years, that is from 725, the desire for the hermit life had led many Irish clerks to the islands to the north of the British sea, which, with a fair wind, may be reached in two days' sail from the most northerly British isles. These were most likely the Feroe Isles, or Westmann Isles. "These isles," he says, "from the creation of the world uninhabited, and unnamed, are now, in 825, deserted by the hermits on account of the northern sea robbers. They have innumerable sheep, and many sorts of sea fowl." This would show that even before the settlement of the Northmen in Iceland about 825 (and in one of the sagas it is said the first settlers found in the Westmann Isles books and other articles of Irish priests), the facility of subsistence had drawn some individuals to those rocks in the northern ocean, and they were