There is one part of the Arctic and Sub-arctic regions, and one only, where a country retaining the warmth and the adaptability of the temperate zone as an abode for civilised man extends far beyond the Arctic Circle, and, as it were, connects the vast tracts of ice and snow with the habitable earth. This is the Scandinavian peninsula. It stretches northwards to 71° 10′ N., maintaining a temperature throughout its length which renders it fit for the abode of a race of men who have been leaders in progress and civilisation. This remarkable phenomenon is due to the flow of warm water from the Atlantic, which passes northward along the coast of Norway. The Atlantic current has the effect of ameliorating a climate which would otherwise be of Arctic severity, while at the same time it keeps off and checks the polar icebergs in their southerly drift, so that ice is never seen on the northern shores of Finmarken. Reclus has very truly said that this current has played a chief part in the modern history of mankind.

The Norsemen appear to have arrived in the Scandinavian peninsula, and superseded the Finnish tribes, a century or two before the Christian era. The physical geography of the region moulded the thoughts and lives of the new-comers. With a noble foundation to build upon, their character was evolved by their environment. The stormy seas and impenetrable fogs, the glories of the fjords with their mighty cliffs and glittering cascades, the valleys and lakes, the dense forests and mysterious ice fjells—all were made to form settings for the long array of fancies created by the glowing enthusiasm of the Norsemen.

But the imagination of these people had a still wider and loftier range. Influenced by the glories of nature which surrounded them, they sought for the origin and first impulses of created things and strove to make their conceptions co-extensive with the universe, while they peopled nature with supernatural agencies of all kinds. Yet there was a proud humility in the loftiest flights of their imaginations. They elaborated a mythology and cosmogony, but alone among religious beliefs that of the Norsemen recognised that there must be some greater and higher order of things to follow that which, in the youth of the world, sufficed partly to satisfy their own aspirations. Fimbultyn, “he who sent the heat,” the great Helper, the mighty God, would guide the new order and live for ever.

The most beautiful myth in the northern mythology is that of Arctic day and night, of Balder and Hoder. It has been the theme of modern poets from Œhlenschlager to Matthew Arnold. The death of the Sun-God, the Deity of light and beneficence, through the treachery of Lok, but by the unknowing hand of his blind brother Hoder, the God of Darkness, is a myth the meaning of which is obvious. But the story of his death, of the mourning of all created things, and of the efforts to save the beloved one from Hela, the Goddess of Death, is deeply pathetic. The funeral of Balder attended by the whole pantheon, including giants and dwarfs, each deity with all his legendary attendants, and the launch of the flaming ship bearing the body into the silent sea, reaches the highest flight of poetic imagination.

Then Hermod, the messenger of the Gods, is sent by the All-father, on Odin’s horse Sleipner, with an order for the death-goddess Hela in Nifelheim, her abode of ice and snow, to release Balder:—

The Arctic Circle! He puts Sleipner at it, the celestial steed clears it at a bound, and Hermod, the first Arctic explorer, enters Nifelheim. But the mission fails, for there was one thing that Odin could not do, and that was to undo what he himself had ruled. So Hela held her prey until the twilight of the Gods, when the old order passed away.

The Norsemen arrived in the Scandinavian peninsula, as we have seen, a century or two before the Christian era, and the whole body of their beliefs and legends, comprised in the Eddas, was written down mainly in the 14th century, so their gradual conception and evolution occupied several centuries. The lives of these people were passed in a hard struggle with Nature, in wild adventures by fjord and forest, and in constant warfare. The gods and giants seemed very near to them, to some even visible in those young days of the world. In the black clouds rolling down from the ice-fjells they saw the mighty Thor followed by the hosts of Asgard, just as they heard his pealing thunder. In the clang of battle the Val maidens, sweeping through the air on their celestial steeds, were realities. The temples and sacrificial ceremonies of the Norsemen were sacred. The seat-posts with deities carved on the ends, generally Odin and Thor, were the most venerated possessions of the chiefs.

As time passed, the districts along the coasts and in the more accessible parts of the interior rapidly became populous. Constant strife necessitated chiefs and leaders, but the people loved their freedom, and the right of speaking and voting in their assemblies. A free race, divided into many communities by the obstacles of Nature, continued to work out its destinies, and to multiply on the isles and fjords until the crowded state of their homes and the wild spirit of adventure drove them to the building of ships and the search for new homes beyond sea.

It is the proud boast of their descendants that the Norsemen were the first people who definitely abandoned the coast, and sailed boldly over the open sea. They crossed the North Sea to Shetland, Orkney, Caithness, and even Ireland, probably as early as the 6th century. They were also established in the Lofoten Islands and on the borders of Finmarken in those early days. There the tales of their folk-lore seemed to lure them further into the Arctic wilds. The fishermen of Værö and Röst, the most southerly of the Lofotens, when out at sea in stormy weather, fancied that they got a glimpse of a green and fertile island which they called Udröst, sometimes Alfland or the “elf land.” But when they sailed towards its shore, it always disappeared in the clouds. It was said that only the wise and good have ever been on Udröst, and then only in thought. So says the Lofoten song:—

We hear the first authentic Arctic story from England’s own king, Alfred—the most truly great, the wisest, and the best monarch that ever ruled over any country. Always working for the good of his people, he translated the geographical work of Orosius for their benefit, inserting his own priceless additions and comments. Among them is the narrative of an Arctic voyage obtained at first hand from a native of that Halgoland whence Udröst was sometimes visible on the horizon. The explorer, named Ohthere, came to Alfred’s court to tell his story, and so it was saved from oblivion by being inserted in the King’s edition of Orosius. King Alfred describes Ohthere as a very wealthy man, owning 600 reindeer, horned cattle, sheep, and swine; as having a small extent of tilled land, but deriving the chief part of his revenues from the tribute of the Finns (as the Lapps were called) in skins and feathers, whalebone, and hides for making ropes. Ohthere gave the length of a walrus as 15 feet, and of a whale as 96 feet. He told the King that the best whale-fishing was off the coast of Halgoland. Ohthere’s own home was at Gibostad on the mainland of Senjen in the province of Halgoland, “the land of fire,” or “of the northern lights.” It was well within the Arctic Circle.

Ohthere wished to discover the coast beyond his ken, so he undertook a most adventurous voyage to the north and east, keeping the wild rocky shore on his starboard hand, and the wide Arctic sea on what he called his boec bord. He explored the whole of the Finmarken coast, mentioning the business of fishing for walrus or “horse-whales” as he called them, and he also described the Lapps, who were met with up to the North Cape.

Ohthere reached the most northern point of Europe. This is Nordkyn or Kinnerodde, at the eastern entrance of the Laxe fjord; but on the island of Magerö the low projecting spit of Knivskjärodde reaches still further north to 71° 11′. The bold black headland of the North Cape, with its flat summit and nearly vertical strata of mica slate, has a height of 1005 feet, but a mile less northing. The adventurous Ohthere was thus the first to round the North Cape. He then shaped a course eastward and finally entered the White Sea, sailing round the Kola Peninsula as far as the mouth of the Karzuga river, and coming into touch with people called Terfinna and Beorma. The former were the Finns of Ter, the old name for the Kola Peninsula; the Beormas were the North Karelians. This was the extent of Ohthere’s discoveries as recorded by King Alfred.

In those far-off days, when Alfred the Great was devoting his life to the good of his people, England was in the course of being made, and the Norsemen were destined to have no small share in the making of it. But it is worthy of note that even then the work of polar exploration and the achievements of explorers were the subjects of investigation by Alfred, an interest which has been continued for a thousand years.

The difficulty of communication by land, and the innumerable bays and fjords in the country of the Norsemen soon led to extensive ship-building, each district doubtless following its own designs, to some extent, in build and rig. Fortunately we know exactly the build of the Viking ships, for one dating from the 9th century was discovered in 1880, buried in the blue clay at Gokstad near Sandefjord11. This Viking ship is of oak, clinker-built, fastened and riveted with iron bolts. In those days conifers had by no means superseded oaks in southern Norway. The ship has the lines of an excellent sea boat, 78 feet long over all, with a 66 ft. length of keel and 16 feet beam, but only 4 feet in depth. There was a mast and a long yard with a square sail, as well as 64 rowlocks for oars in the third row of planks from the top. The steer oar was fitted on the starboard quarter of the vessel, which was sharp at both ends and drew very little water. Wooden shields were hung round the bulwarks and the vessel contained utensils for cooking, bedsteads, and various other articles. Hundreds of such ships carried the Norse warriors along the coasts or to distant shores, some of them, such as the “Ormen lange” of Olaf Tryggvason, being probably much larger than the interesting relic of Gokstad.

The time came—as well in Norway as in Denmark and Sweden, and as it appears to come sooner or later in all lands—when the most powerful of the numerous chiefs forced the rest to submit, and united all into one kingdom. “Harold of the fair hair” descended from the Ynglings of Upsala, children of the God Frey, was the chief of Ringerike and Vestfold in the south of Norway, a valiant and persistent warrior. He succeeded in subjugating the whole country, and founded a dynasty which lasted for five centuries. Harold reigned from 860 to 930 A.D. His reign was the period of adventurous expeditions and of colonisation. The population was increasing, and some of the chiefs could not brook the enforced allegiance to an overlord. The spirit of adventure and discovery was in the air. The northern Vikings loved the freedom of a roving life upon the ocean. Brave and fearless, they were controlled only by their code of honour, and the precepts of Odin’s rules contained in the Havamel or high song of Odin, and in the lay of the Valkyrie Sigfrida alone restrained them. Their fleets were the terror of all the coasts of western Europe, and no creek or haven was safe from the ravages of their leaders. Such a man was Rolf the Ganger, a chief in Nordmore, who finally established himself as Duke of Neustria. His commanding ability and statesmanship were shown by his great and enduring achievement. Other Vikings settled in the Faroes, Shetlands, Orkneys, Caithness, and the chief harbours of Ireland. Naddod seized the Faroes, and in 863 Gardar Svafarson reached the coast of Iceland. It is curious that both in the Faroes and in Iceland Irish monks were found, who had gone there to find lonely places as dwellings for anchorites. They went away on the arrival of the Norsemen, as they would not live with heathens.

The great event of the period of Harold Haarfager was the colonisation of Iceland. It was a forbidding home, yet the leading men of the Norwegian fjords settled there in numbers. Ingulf Ormsson, who came in 875, was the first. Two years afterwards Gunnbjörn Ulfson followed, sailing westward until he discovered islets (doubtless on the east coast of Greenland) which were afterwards called Gunnbjörn’s Skerries. He turned back, and shaped a course for Iceland, which he had passed without knowing it.

Iceland is separated from Norway by a wide and stormy sea with a depth of 2000 fathoms, while it has a sub-oceanic connection with the Faroes and the Hebrides by banks and ridges with a depth of only 100 fathoms. The great volcanic mass of the island embraces an area of 40,450 square miles just south of the Arctic Circle and consists of snowy fjells pierced by active volcanoes and very difficult of access. It has two plateaux, built up by volcanic rocks of older and of newer formation. The two deep bays of Breidifjord and Hunafloi divide the island into two separate table-lands connected by an isthmus only 4½ miles across, but 750 feet high. The only habitable parts of Iceland were and still are the narrow strips of land along the sea shore, and even the famous place where the Thingvalla or assembly of the people was held is in a plain which was formerly the bed of a lava stream, between the geyser district and Reykjavik.

The voyage to Iceland was long and dangerous, the difficulty of colonising insuperable to all but men endowed with the Viking spirit. The first settlers sent tidings that the sea abounded in fish, and that cattle could live through the winter, so the tide of immigration continued. The Icelanders elected their Judges, established district courts, and were ruled by their own freely-elected Althing or assembly, held on the banks of the lake called the Thingvalla Vatn. This land of freedom, under the Arctic Circle, became the fountain of northern mythology and history, and it is to the Skalds of Iceland that we owe nearly all our knowledge of the beliefs, as well as of the deeds, of the ancient Norsemen. Iceland was also the stepping-stone for further Arctic discovery.

The settlement of Iceland, with the roll of settlers, is recorded in a famous work written by Ari Froði (1067–1148) called the Landnamabók.