of Iceland and can now realise how lately in our history it is that
the world has become small. At the beginning of the last century
it was roughly of the size which it had been at the end of the last
millennium. It then took seven days to sail from Norway to Iceland,
and if it was foggy, or blew hard, you were likely not to hit it off
at all, but to fetch up at Cape Wharf in Greenland. It was some
such accident, in fact, which discovered Iceland to the Norwegians.
Gardhere was on a voyage to the Isle of Man "to get in the inheritance
of his wife's father," by methods no doubt as summary as efficacious.
But "as he was sailing through Pentland frith a gale broke his
moorings and he was driven west into the sea." He made land in
Iceland, and presently went home with a good report of it. He may
have been the actual first discoverer, but he had rival claimants, as
Columbus did after him. There was Naddodh the Viking, driven ashore
from the Faroes. He called the island Snowland because he saw little
else. Nevertheless, says his historian, "he praised the land much."
Such was the beginning of colonisation in Thule. It was accidental,
and took place in A.D. 871.

But those who intended to settle there had to devise a better way of
reaching it than that of aiming at somewhere else and being caught in
a storm. What should you do when you had no compass? One way, perhaps
as good as any, was Floki Wilgerdsson's. "He made ready a great
sacrifice and hallowed three ravens who were to tell him the way." It
was a near thing though. The first raven flew back into the bows; the
second went up into the air, but then came aboard again. "The third
flew forth from the bows to the quarter where they found the land."
It was then very cold. They saw a frith full of sea-ice--enough for
Floki. He called the country Iceland, and the name has stuck. They
stayed out the spring and summer, then sailed back to Norway, of