that deal specifically with the Icelanders and their adventures from the settlement of
their country in the late ninth century until shortly after they had all been converted to
Christianity in 999 / 1000. Greenland plays a vital role in these sagas as well as the
voyages to Vinland, all in all filling five thick volumes ( 400 – 500 pages each) of printed
text in the recent first complete English translation. The sagas about the people in the
Faroe Islands and the Orkney earls fall outside this literary genre.
THE SETTLEMENT OF ICELAND IN
BOOKS AND ARCHAEOLOGYChristianity brought literacy to Iceland, and medieval historians who applied their
knowledge of book-making to write about the past in Iceland sought all their informa-
tion in oral stories and lore. Living oral traditions studied in many parts of the world
have shown a tendency to adapt to contemporary reality, whereby facts change according
to the context in which they are repeated even though people consider themselves to be
preserving memories from the past. Despite this mutability, however, it is still possible
to talk about a continuous tradition lasting several centuries and embodying essential
truths which are archaeologically verifiable. For example, the written accounts are
correct insofar as Iceland was rapidly settled after 870 by people from Norway and
Britain, with several hundred large estates owned by chieftains and some 3 , 000 farms.
Their dating can be ascertained from the ‘Settlement Layer’ of volcanic ash which
covered a large part of the country following an eruption in 871 (± 1 year), as may be
corroborated by ice-core samples from the Greenland glacier. Immediately above this
layer of ash are relics of the oldest settlements in Iceland. The saga-writers and chron-
iclers also knew that people left Iceland to settle in Greenland near the end of the tenth
century. Likewise they knew stories about sailings to the continent of North America
around 1000 – as was confirmed when relics left by people from Greenland and Iceland
were found in the 1960 s at L’Anse aux Meadows on the northern point of Newfound-
land. The saga-writers knew that heathendom was the prevailing faith during the
settlement of Iceland, and that Christianity was adopted by law around 1000. All this
was known because people preserved the memories of these events, told stories about
them and linked the names and lineage of certain individuals to specific incidents. It is
an inherent feature of narrative art and the oral tradition that various details inevitably
stray from the straight and narrow path of truth on their long journey through the
centuries. Inconsistencies in detail, however, do not alter the overall picture that is
presented and is well compatible with archaeological findings.
Ancient writings mention the island of Thule, far to the north. Although their
reliability is questionable, the fact that the English cleric Bede (d. 735 ) mentions this
island in his History of the English Church and People could show that he had already heard
real accounts of voyages to Iceland by that time. Writing around 825 , the Irish monk
Dicuil mentions that thirty years previously priests had told him about the island Thule
in the far north, where they stayed in summer when the nights were so bright they could
look for lice on their shirts. And Ari the Learned mentions Irish hermits (papar) who
were already in Iceland when the Viking settlement began.
There is no reason to doubt that Irish monks visited Iceland; Irish hermits commonly
sought out islands where they would be left in peace. But these visitors would have been
few in number and sporadic, and would not have had any significant impact on the
–– chapter 41 : The North Atlantic expansion––