NORTHERN ISLANDS. UNDER the title of Northern Islands we include all those lying in the ocean to the north of Scotland, to wit, Iceland, the Feroes, Shetland, and the Orkneys. These islands were all peopled from Norway and Denmark during the ninth century. Till that time many of them, particularly Iceland and the Feroes, though, perhaps, occasionally visited by stray Vikingar, or by ships driven out of their course by tempests, had lain waste and desert from the creation, the abode alone of wild beasts and birds. But at that period the proud nobles of Norway and Denmark, who scorned to be the vassals of Harold Fair-hair and Gorm the Old, the founders of the Norwegian and Danish monarchies, set forth in quest of new settlements, where, at a distance from these haughty potentates, they might live in the full enjoyment of their beloved independence. Followed by numerous vassals, they embarked on the wide Atlantic. A portion fixed themselves on the distant shores of Iceland; others took possession of the vacant Feroes; and more dispossessed the Peti and Papæ, the ancient inhabitants of Shetland and the Orkneys, and seized on their country. As the Scandinavians were at that time still worshippers of Thor and Odin, the belief in Alfs and Dwarfs accompanied them to their new abodes, and there, as elsewhere, survived the introduction of Christianity. We now proceed to examine the vestiges of the old religion still to be traced. ICELAND. Hvad mon da ei Og her lyksalig leves kan? Jeg troer Paa denne kolde Öe. Islandske Landlevnet. What! cannot one Here, too, live happy? I believe it now Ir is in vain that we look into the works of travellers for information on the subject of popular belief in Iceland. Their attention was too much occupied by Geysers, volcanoes, agriculture, and religion, to allow them to devote any part of it to this, in their eyes, unimportant subject. So that, were it not for some short but curious notices given by natives of the island, we should be quite ignorant of the fate of the subordinate classes of the old religion in Iceland. Torfæus, who wrote in the latter end of the seventeenth century, gives, in his preface to his edition of Hrolf Krakas Saga, the opinion of a venerable Icelandic pastor, named Einar Gudmund, respecting the Dwarfs. This opinion Torfæus heard when a boy from the lips of the old man. : "I believe, and am fully persuaded,” said he, "that this people are the creatures of God, consisting of a body and a rational spirit; that they are of both sexes; marry, and have children; and that all human acts take place among them as with us that they are possessed of cattle, and of many other kinds of property; have poverty and riches, weeping and laughter, sleep and wake, and have all other affections belonging to human nature; and that they enjoy a longer or a shorter term of life according to the will and pleasure of God. Their power of having children," he adds, 66 appears from this, that some of their women have had children by men, and were very anxious to have their offspring dipped in the sacred font, and initiated into Christianity; but they, in general, sought in vain. Thorkatla Mari, the wife of Kari, was pregnant by a Hill-man, but she did not bring the child Aresus into the world, as appears from the poems made on this fatal occasion. There was formerly on the lands of Haga a nobleman named Sigvard Fostre, who had to do with a Hill-woman. He promised her faithfully that he would take care to have the child received |