Chapter 12
The Frontier Republic
“It is a still and silent sea that drowns a man.”
- Edda of Sæmund the Wise
Most Viking discoveries were made by island hopping. Sometime towards the end of the eighth century, the Vikings discovered the Shetlands, an archipelago located roughly sixty miles north of the Scotland. This uninhabited cluster of more than three hundred rocky islands was probably found by Norwegian Vikings since it lies almost directly west of Bergen, Norway’s largest western port. The Vikings used them for stock raising, mostly sheep and cattle, to resupply ships headed south.
About fifty years after the discovery of the Shetlands, Viking explorers found the Faeroe Islands a hundred and seventy miles to the northwest. These seventeen treeless islands were used for the same purpose as the Shetlands, namely the production of wool and salted meat.
They had no reason to keep going west. The Faeroes themselves, were well out of the way of the main target of the British Isles, and any further rocky little islands would have been too remote – and given the sudden storms and frequent fogs of the North Sea – too dangerous to be worth visiting.
The first Vikings to reach Iceland, therefore, did so purely by accident. Viking sailors reckoned through careful observation, and trial and error, not sophisticated navigational tools. Land was found by noting changes in the color of water, differences in the flight patterns of birds, and the presence of driftwood. The Vikings calculated latitude by the midday sun during the day, and by the stars at night. If neither of those two options were available, they relied on instinct. Skippers were notoriously pragmatic. The Laxdæla Saga tells the story of Olaf the Peacock who got hopelessly lost in a fog and drifted for days. When it finally lifted, there was a heated debate about what direction to go. The crew voted for a particular direction and informed Olaf of their choice. The grizzled captain ignored them and told his veteran navigator to pick the direction. ‘I want only the shrewdest one to decide‘, he said, ‘because in my opinion, the council of fools is all the more dangerous the more of them there are.’
Around the middle of the ninth century, a Norwegian named Naddodd got lost on his way to the Faeroe islands, overshooting his destination by four hundred miles. When he finally spotted land, he had the crew fan out looking for human settlement to try to figure out where they were. When they could find none, he scaled a mountain and looked into the interior, seeing nothing but a vast icy plain of glaciers and frozen fields. There was no smoke from hearth fires – a sign that at least this part of the land was uninhabited – so Naddodd returned to his ships, just as a heavy snow began to fall. It seemed appropriate to give this new country a name, so Naddodd chose ‘Snowland’ after its chief characteristic.
The landing party were undoubtedly disappointed that there were no monasteries to raid, but when they returned to Norway, Naddodd and his crew told how there was good land for the taking to the northwest. Word eventually spread to Sweden where a merchant named Garthar decided to find it for himself. With a bit of good luck he managed to retrace Naddodd’s route and landed on the east coast of the new country.99 Instead of coming ashore, however, he sailed along the coast to find out large it was. By the time he had concluded that it was an island the weather was worsening, so he and the crew beached the ships and built a house on the northern coast, staying alive through the bitter winter by harvesting seagull eggs and other marine life. Since there were no predators, and it was seemingly uninhabited, Garthar named the island ‘Gartharsholmi‘ after himself and returned to Scandinavia.100 At least one of his men was impressed enough to want to stay behind. A free man named Nattfari (Nightwalker), remained on the homestead with a male and female slave for company, becoming the island’s first settlers.
They soon had company. A Norwegian named Flóki set out at the end of the ninth century with the explicit attempt to colonize the new land. Story has it that he brought his family with him, along with cattle and other settlers, and navigated with the aid of three ravens. His plan was to release them periodically, and if one didn’t return, he would know that land could be found in that direction. When this unorthodox ploy actually worked, his contemporaries began calling him ‘Flóki the Lucky’ and ‘Raven Flóki’.
The little group set up a camp on the western coast at a place called Vatnsfjordur, and built a farmstead. The summer was a delightful one, with the midnight sun so bright that they could ‘pick lice off their clothes at night’. There was plenty of grazing land for Raven Flóki’s stock animals, and even some birch trees for constructing homesteads. Unfortunately for the settlers, however, the winter was brutal. They had neglected to store up enough hay, and all their animals died. When they tried to move, they found that icebergs and glaciers choked the fjords. Only when the summer had begun did the ice clear enough to allow them to leave.
The disillusioned Flóki sailed away as soon as he could, leaving most of his crew behind. When he returned to Norway, he reported that the land was worthless, calling it ‘Iceland’. Yet his failed attempt at colonization and demoralized comments didn’t deter anyone.101 Just a year or two after his return, a Norwegian named Ingólfur Arnarson repeated the attempt, and this time it worked.
Only a Viking would have found Iceland enticing! For a ninth century European, the island was at the remote end of the world. Just below the arctic circle, it is habitable – but only barely. The western, southwestern, andparts of the northwest coasts are livable thanks to the moderating waters of the North Atlantic Drift, but many of the fjords and coastlines are blocked by icebergs and ice floes for much of the year.
These icebergs made any approach to the island treacherous. Only an inch of wood separated Viking sailors from the Atlantic ocean, and even a small iceberg could rip through the hull. Nor was there much wood for repairs if they then managed to land. The island, nearly forty thousand square miles, is larger than England, Wales, and part of Scotland combined, but is mostly treeless. The interior, a vast central plateau of volcanoes, snowfields, and glaciers, is nearly three hundred miles across and completely uninhabitable. Only the coasts – roughly fifteen percent of the total land area – are capable of supporting a human population.
The first Norwegians who looked into the interior probably thought they were seeing a preview of Ragnarok. In that last battle, the primeval ice giants and fire demons would be released, plunging the world into a freezing and fiery twilight. Iceland, with its volcanoes and glaciers, and its winters of lasting darkness, must have seemed a vision of things to come.
The island straddles the Mid-Atlantic Ridge – the division between the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates that is responsible for both its many hot springs and active volcanoes. The latter regularly unleash lava floes that melt glaciers and spew ash across the surface of the entire island.102 This in turn, stunts the growth of any plant life, and wreaks havoc on attempts at raising stock. When the animals eat the ash-covered grass, the sulfides damage the teeth and gums, and most of them die. A Viking population would be forced to slaughter and preserve what they could, eating well one year and starving the next.103
From the start, Iceland was a forbidding landscape, even for Scandinavians who had experience surviving along the fjords of the North Atlantic. It demanded full cooperation between all of the colonists, and ruthlessly weeded out the weak. To paraphrase a later settler in a different colony, ‘those who didn’t work, starved.’
The reasons the Vikings came were varied, but can loosely fall into two categories. They were either fleeing oppression at home – King Harald Fairhair was busy imposing his will over Norway – or were unable to resist the attraction of free land. Occasionally it was a bit of both. The founder of the first permanent settlement, Ingólfur Arnarson, had become involved in a blood feud (a distressingly common occurrence among the Vikings) and was looking to escape to greener pastures. Hearing about Raven Flóki’s island, he sailed with his stepbrother, wife, and entire household.
His stepbrother Hjörleifur, had a checkered past as well. After killing a man in Norway, he decided to go raiding in Ireland until tempers cooled down at home. He returned with ten Celtic slaves, and a sword that he had found in an Irish barrow that had once belonged, he rather dubiously claimed, to Ragnar Lothbrok. Famous sword or not, the family he had insulted was still out for blood, so he joined Ingólfur on his trek to Iceland.
When they came in sight of land, Ingólfur decided to let the god Thor choose where he would establish his homestead. He had brought with him a pair of wooden poles and now cast them overboard, vowing to build wherever they washed ashore. He then beached the ship and sent two slaves to find the poles. The current carried them into the small bay of a fjord on the southwestern coast. Steam from nearby hot springs partially obscured it, so Ingólfur named it Reykjavík, which means ‘Smoky Bay‘. He built his hall on the spot, positioning the two poles on either side of his own seat at the head of the main table.
Ingólfur’s kinsman Hjörleifur was not so fortunate. He was not about to let the whim of the gods choose anything and selected the first spot that looked promising to build his hall. Although he picked a fine spot, he paid for his arrogance a short time later when his slaves revolted, and he was killed in the resulting skirmish. To the Vikings, the lesson was simple. Honor the gods, and prosper, or disregard them and fail.
The choosing of a settlement became a religious ceremony for those first settlers, and many of them emulated Ingólfur by letting the currents choose a site for them.104 The god of choice for nearly all of them was Thor. He controlled the storms at sea, the mist, rain and skies, and his favor was therefore critical. This was true even of those who adopted Christianity. When asked what god he worshiped, an early tenth century Icelander, Helgi the Lean, replied, ‘On land I worship Christ, but at sea I always invoke Thor’.105
Thor’s help, or at least a good deal of luck, was needed. The trip to Iceland took seven to ten days from the west coast of Norway, a distance of some six hundred miles. The usual route involved island hopping, from the Shetlands to the Faeroes, and then to Iceland, a treacherous and often stormy route.
The ship used for such a journey was called a knörr. It was roughly eighty feet long and could accommodate several dozen passengers. In addition to food and water for the journey, the first settlers would have also carried horses, pigs, sheep, and cattle, along with farming tools and weapons. They wouldn’t have needed building materials as there were some scrub forests of birch that could be harvested.
Although it was a hard land, there were some advantages. Along the coasts there was plenty of pasture land, no predators, and virtually no insects. Seals, walruses, and other mammals were plentiful, and flocks of seagulls, puffins, and great auks nested on the coasts. Vast schools of North Atlantic cod could be found in the nearby waters, and its meat could be frozen and broken into chunks to be consumed on long sea voyages. Fruits, grains, and vegetables all had to be imported – a vulnerability the Vikings never solved – but it was possible to carve out a home of some sort.
One settler, Aud the Deep Minded, illuminates the power a woman could hold in Icelandic society. She was the wife of Olaf the White, co-ruler of Dublin with Ivar the Boneless. After her husband and son died, Aud outfitted a ship of twenty men, and captained it herself, managing the impressive – and highly praised – feat of landing with crew and cargo intact. When she arrived, she claimed a huge plot of land, freed her slaves, and divided the property between herself and them. She acted as a clan chief, presiding over her own hall and its celebrated feasts. As a mark of the respect she was held in, she was given a complete Viking ship burial when she died. Nowhere else in Europe at the time, would a woman be allowed to own land much less rule over it.
This limited equality was possible because the harsh conditions created a society that was both rugged and stubbornly independent. Most of the settlers had come to Iceland to escape being told what to do, or to find a new life, and they didn’t intend to create a new tyranny on their free island. This was a remarkable experiment, a kind of frontier republic on the fringes of human existence. There were no towns or cities, no army or taxes, no king, and virtually no government. There were only isolated farmsteads, extended families living together in groups as small as fifteen and as large as several hundred.
When mediation between individuals was needed, both parties turned to the local Gothi, a man who was respected for his reputation, knowledge of the traditional law, and his generosity. Despite the respect he was held in, the Gothi was no chieftain. The Icelanders were very conscious of creeping despotism, and were determined to stop it. The Gothar were not lords or nobles; theirs was not a hereditary position, and if they failed to do their job adequately they were replaced. There were no peasants and nobility. All free men were equal.106
When group decisions needed to be made for a local area, it was done in the ancient Germanic manner of a Thing. The free Icelanders would gather at an assembly and vote, with the majority carrying the day. If there was ever a need for foreign policy, or a decision affecting the whole island, a great assembly called the Althing would meet. Each farmstead would send a representative and again a simple vote would determine the outcome.
The closest thing they had to a national figure was the Lawspeaker, a particularly respected Gothi who was elected for a three-year term. Each year he would stand on a special rock at the Althing and recite from memory one third of Iceland’s laws with the other Gothar around him making sure he didn’t make an error. Any Icelander who wanted to announce the settlement of farm, or a marriage, or business contract would do so here, in the presence of the assembled free men.
The feat of memory, being able to recite the entire law code, was a testament to both the simplicity of Iceland’s laws and the capability of Icelandic memories. This was a skill perfected during the long Arctic nights, when there was nothing to do except weave entertaining stories to pass the time. During the Viking Age, Iceland’s main export was its poetry. Icelandic Skalds – traveling poets – became famous for their ability to bring tales of Viking heroes to life. Any king, or would-be adventurer had to have a skald on hand in their hall to tell of their exploits. Many Icelanders found fame and even wealth by telling their stories across the Scandinavian world.
The island was resource poor, but it had a society that only the Vikings could have pulled off. Since travel across the interior was impossible in some places, the only way to maintain contact and a sense of mutual identity, was by sailing around the coasts. Life was certainly hard, but the idea of a self-regulating society was wildly attractive. Iceland held out the promise of good land where a lowly Norwegian or Irish Viking could settle and live as a jarl, without having to risk life and limb fighting fierce Anglo-Saxon or Celtic opponents. Within a generation it had filled up.
Fifty years after Ingólfur Arnarson’s landing, the population had risen to around ten thousand and there was no more available land to claim. Iceland remained a popular destination, especially for exiles from Norway, but its initial promise had dimmed. Men began looking out to sea again, perhaps following schools of fish further and further from shore, in little journeys of discovery. Glimpses of misty land masses far to the west began to filter back, and there were always restless men who found even Iceland’s frontier society too constricting. For them, the lure would always be westwards.