Years choked up with ice,
which the short summers of that high latitude are not sufficiently powerful
to dissolve.
About the present period, Harold Harfagr, or the fair-haired, one of the
petty sovereigns or vikingr of Norway, began to subjugate the other
chieftains of the country under his paramount authority, and was so
successful as to establish the Norwegian monarchy in 875. Gorm, likewise,
about the same time, united the petty states of Jutland and the Danish
islands into one kingdom, as Ingiald Illrode had done long before in
Sweden. Such independent spirits as found themselves dissatisfied with this
new order of affairs, found a sure asylum in Iceland; and the emigrations
to this new country became so numerous, that Harold at length deemed it
expedient to impose a tax of half a mark of silver, equal to five pounds of
our modern money, on every one of his subjects who were desirous of going
to settle in that island.
[1] Fragm. Vet. Islandic. ap. Langebeck, II. 31. - Forster, Hist. of Voy.
and Disc. in the North, p. 50.
SECTION II.
Voyages of Ohthere to the White Sea and the Baltic, in the Ninth
Century.[1]
Some of the Norwegian chieftains, who were dissatisfied with the usurpation
of supreme authority by Harold, took refuge in England, where Alfred had
recently settled many of the vanquished Danes and Nordmen in the northern
part of his dominions, which had been almost entirely depopulated and laid
waste, by their long-continued and destructive ravages.
