already settled by Northmen. Some joined the Norwegian settlers in Ireland, and drove the Celtic population out of some districts on its eastern coast. Others, again, followed Hrolf Ganger (Göngu Hrolfr) ('the Walker'), or Rollo as our books call him, a Viking who, having incurred the wrath of Harald, sailed forth from his home on the fjords near Bergen to found in Northern Gaul a dynasty of Norsemen whence came the long line of Norman dukes and English kings, Albanique patres atque altae moenia Romae. And yet others, hearing the praises of the lately-discovered isle far off in the ocean, turned their prows to the west and landed on the solitary shores of Iceland. They embarked without any concert or common plan; each chieftain, or head of a household, taking his own family, and perhaps a group of friends or dependents; and they settled in the new land where they pleased, sometimes throwing overboard as they neared the shore the wooden columns, adorned with figures of Thor and Oðin, of the high-seat in their old Norwegian hall, and disembarking at the point to which these were driven by the winds and currents. At first each took for himself as much land as he desired, but those who came later, when the better pastures had been already occupied, were obliged to buy land or to fight for it; and a curious custom grew up by which the extent of territory to which a settler was entitled was fixed. A man could claim no more than what he could carry fire round in a single day; a woman, than that round which she could lead a two-year-old heifer. So rapid was the immigration, many colonists from Norwegian Ireland and the Scottish isles, Orkneys, Shetlands and

Hebrides (the two former groups being then Scandinavian) joining those who came direct from Norway, that in sixty years the population had risen (so far as our data enable it to be estimated) to about 50,000, a number which seems not to have been exceeded down to the census of A. D. 1823. With those who came from Ireland and the Hebrides there came some small infusion of Celtic blood, which we note in such names as Njál, Kjartan, and Kormak, given to men descended from the daughters of Irish chieftains.

Planting themselves in this irregular way, and in a country where the good land lay in scattered patches, and where deserts glaciers and morasses, as well as torrents, passable only with difficulty or even danger, cut off one settlement from another, the first settlers did not create, and indeed felt little need of, any political or social organization. But after a time a sort of polity began to shape itself, and the process of its growth is one of the most interesting phenomena of mediaeval history. The elements out of which it sprang were of course those two which the settlers had brought with them from Norway, and both of which were part of the common heritage of the Teutonic racethe habit of joint worship at a temple, and the habit of holding an assembly of all freemen to discuss and dispatch matters of common interest, and more especially lawsuits1. This assembly resembled the Old English Folk Mot, and was called the Thing, a name which survives in our English word Hustings (Husting or

1 Not but what the habit of holding such an assembly has existed among peoples of very diverse race in many parts of the world. It existed among the Greeks. It exists among the Kafirs of South Africa.

House Thing), the platform from whence candidates spoke at parliamentary elections, which disappeared in A. D. 1872 when written nominations were prescribed by the statute which introduced vote by ballot. The ping1 was held at the temple, usually dedicated to Thor, the favourite deity of the Norsemen as Odin was of the Swedes; since the place of worship was the natural centre of the neighbourhood, and the ping was presided over by the local magnate or chief, who was usually also the owner or guardian of the local temple, there being among the Scandinavian peoples no special sacerdotal caste.

Now when a Norse chief settled himself in Iceland, one of his first acts was to erect a temple, often with the sacred pillars which he had brought from the ancestral temple in the old country. The temple soon became a place of resort, not only for his own immediate dependents, but also for those other settlers of the district who might not be rich enough to build and maintain a shrine of their own. Of this temple the chieftain and his descendants were the priests; and as the meetings of the local ping were held at it, he was the natural person to preside over such meetings, both because he was usually (though not invariably) eminent by his wealth and power, and also because he offered the sacrifices and kept the sacred temple-ring on which judicial oaths were taken, as at Rome men swore at the Ara Maxima of Hercules. Thus the priest acquired, if he had not already enjoyed it, the position of a sort of local chieftain or magnate, not unlike those kings of heroic

1 I use the Icelandic and Anglo-Saxon letter þ in this word to distinguish it from the common English word.

Greece whom we read of in Homer, or those German tribe-princes whom Tacitus describes. Although his title was that of Goði1 (originally Guði) or priest, a word derived from the name of the Deity, he lost in becoming the depositary of a certain measure of political power most of such religious character as his office had possessed. Nor did any sanctity attach to his person. In that age at least religion had come to sit rather lightly upon the Norsemen. Either from inner decay, or from the influence of the Christian peoples with whom they came in contact beyond the seas, the old faith was beginning to disintegrate. Worship was often cold or careless, and we read of men who regarded neither por nor Oðin, but trusted in their own might and main.

The Goði was therefore much more of a secular than of an ecclesiastical person, a chieftain rather than a priest in our sense of the word 2. His powers as a chieftain were very indefinite, as indeed had been those of the local chieftains of Norway. He was only the first among a number of free and warlike landowners, some of them equal or superior to him in lineage, with an official dignity which was little more than formal in the hands of a weak man, but might be turned to great account by a person of vigour and ability. As he presided in the ping, so he was the appropriate person to see to the regularity of its judicial proceedings, to preserve order, and to provide for the

1 The term goði does not seem to have been used in Norway, but Ulfila, in his translation of the Bible into Gothic (in the fourth century A. D.), renders iepeús by gudja. The o is pronounced like th in 'then.'

2 It is true that as the Sagas whence we draw our knowledge of the Goði were all written down at a time when heathenism had vanished, it is possible that they may not fully represent the original character of the office.

carrying out of any measures of common concern on which it might determine. When any unforeseen danger or difficulty arose, he was looked to to advise or take the lead in action; the members of his ping expected aid and protection from him, while he, like a thegn among the Teutons of contemporary England, expected support and deference from them. But he had no legal powers of coercion. Any one might oppose him in the ping or out of it. Any ping-man might withdraw at pleasure, join himself to some other Goði, and become a member of some other ping1. There was, it must be noted, no territorial circumscription corresponding to the ping. Land had nothing to do with the position held by the Goði to the pingmen, and herein, as well as in the absence of the relation of commendation and homage, we see a capital difference between this system and feudality. Nor was the post of Gooi a place whence much emolument could be drawn. The pingmen were indeed required to pay a sort of tax called the temple toll (hoftollr), but this did no more than meet the expenses to which the Goði was put in keeping up the temple, and feasting those who came to the

1 The illustrious Konrad Maurer, to whose learned researches and sound judgement every one who writes about the constitutional antiquities of Iceland must feel infinitely indebted, thinks that the name of Goði was used in Norway before the emigration to Iceland, though probably the priest was there a less important person than he became in Iceland, where his custody of the temple put him to some extent in the position held in the Norwegian motherland by the hereditary chieftain, who was in Norway the natural president of the local Thing.

Those who desire to study the early history of Iceland may be referred to the writings of Dr. Maurer, and especially to his Island bis zum Untergange des Freistaats (Munich, 1874), and his Beiträge zur Rechtsgeschichte des Germanischen Nordens (Munich, 1852).