第40章 LETTER VIII.(3)

In the year 1029,a certain Icelander,named Gudlief,undertakes a voyage to Limerick,in Ireland.On his return home,he is driven out of his course by north-east winds,Heaven knows where.After drifting for many days to the westward,he at last falls in with land.On approaching the beach,a great crowd of people came down to meet the strangers,apparently with no friendly intentions.Shortly afterwards,a tall and venerable chieftain makes his appearance,and,to Gudlief's great astonishment,addresses him in Icelandic.Having entertained the weary mariners very honourably,and supplied them with provisions,the old man bids them speed back to Iceland,as it would be unsafe for them to remain where they were.His own name he refused to tell;but having learnt that Gudlief comes from the neighbourhood of Snaefell,he puts into his hands a sword and a ring.The ring is to be given to Thured of Froda;the sword to her son Kjartan.When Gudlief asks by whom he is to say the gifts are sent,the ancient chieftain answers,"Say they come from one who was a better friend of the Lady of Froda than of her brother Snorre of Helgafell."Wherefore it is conjectured that this man was Bjorn,the son of Astrand,Champion of Breidavik.

After this,Madam,I hope I shall never hear you depreciate the constancy of men.Thured had better have married Bjorn after all!

I forgot to mention that when Gudlief landed on the strange coast,it seemed to him that the inhabitants spoke Irish.Now,there are many antiquaries inclined to believe in the former existence of an Irish colony to the southward of the Vinland of the Northmen.Scattered through the Sagas are several notices of a distant country in the West,which is called Ireland ed Mekla--Great Ireland,or the White Man's land.When Pizarro penetrated into the heart of Mexico,a tradition already existed of the previous arrival of white men from the East.Among the Shawnasee Indians a story is still preserved of Florida having been once inhabited by white men,who used iron instruments.In 1658,Sir Erland the Priest had in his possession a chart,even then thought ancient,of "The Land of the White Men,or Hibernia Major,situated opposite Vinland the Good,"and Gaelic philologists pretend to trace a remarkable affinity between many of the American-Indian dialects and the ancient Celtic.

But to return to the "Foam."After passing the cape,away we went across the spacious Brieda Fiord,at the rate of nine or ten knots an hour,reeling and bounding at the heels of the steamer,which seemed scarcely to feel how uneven was the surface across which we were speeding.

Down dropped Snaefell beneath the sea,and dim before us,clad in evening haze,rose the shadowy steeps of Bardestrand.The north-west division of Iceland consists of one huge peninsula,spread out upon the sea like a human hand,the fingers just reaching over the Arctic circle;while up between them run the gloomy fiords,sometimes to the length of twenty,thirty,and even forty miles.Anything more grand and mysterious than the appearance of their solemn portals,as we passed across from bluff to bluff,it is impossible to conceive.Each might have served as a separate entrance to some poet's hell--so drear and fatal seemed the vista one's eye just caught receding between the endless ranks of precipice and pyramid.

There is something,moreover,particularly mystical in the effect of the grey,dreamy atmosphere of an arctic night,through whose uncertain medium mountain and headland loom as impalpable as the frontiers of a demon world,and as I kept gazing at the glimmering peaks,and monstrous crags,and shattered stratifications,heaped up along the coast in cyclopean disorder,I understood how natural it was that the Scandinavian mythology,of whose mysteries the Icelanders were ever the natural guardians and interpreters,should have assumed that broad,massive simplicity which is its most beautiful characteristic.

Amid the rugged features of such a country the refinements of Paganism would have been dwarfed into insignificance.

How out of place would seem a Jove with his beard in ringlets--a trim Apollo--a sleek Bacchus--an ambrosial Venus--a slim Diana,and all their attendant groups of Oreads and Cupids--amid the ocean mists,and icebound torrents,the flame-scarred mountains,and four months' night--of a land which the opposing forces of heat and cold have selected for a battle-field!