The North Star/Chapter 44
XLIV
TO ICELAND
King Olaf sat in his council room writing on his parchment tablets. With him were Father Reachta and Father Breasal. A little apart sat Thorgills. The king was sending letters to the leading chiefs of Iceland, to Hall of the Side, to Gissur the White, and to Njaal, the learned lawyer of Bergthor’s Knoll. The two priests were to carry the letters in which Olaf had asked these Icelanders, as they had already accepted Christianity through his influence, to aid the priests in spreading the gospel of Christ. After the work in Iceland, the missionaries were to preach in Greenland and in the Faroe Islands. King Olaf’s heart was full of the desire to spread the gospel to these distant parts of his kingdom.
As he sealed his letters, the king turned affectionately to the priests. “My fathers,” he said, “it grieves me to part with you. Ye came to me when I claimed my kingdom and ye have taught the love of the White Christ throughout Norraway.”
“My King,” earnestly answered Father Reachta, “our sojourn by thy side, working with thee, hath been full of comfort; but we hear the call of other lands for the faith of Christ and we cannot tarry with thee, even as our hearts would ask.”
“I have summoned to me, my father, Sigmund Bresteson, the first jarl over the Faroe Islands. I talked to him of the Christ, and Bishop Sigurd hath brought him into our Holy Faith. Now he hath returned to his home, and I have written to him to aid you all he can when you reach his dominion. Five hundred years ago the Irish monks brought the faith of Christ to Iceland; and now I would have ye light again the holy flame they kindled. I have sent to Ireland for more priests, and my heart is filled with happy hope as I think how soon all my kingdom, even these far off lands, may belong to Christ. Thangbrand, the Saxon priest, whom Sitric, Bishop of Canterbury, sent me to convert the Danes, hath had so many quarrels that I despatched him to Iceland: There he was even more violent and hath been driven from the island. Thangbrand is such a fighting priest, as it were a viking in a monk’s gown, that he should live by the sword instead of the book. In Iceland he cut off the heads of them that argued with him; and even if his argument were better and could convert them, they were dead before he could baptize them. So not many converts did Thangbrand make; and ye will have to strive to undo what harm he hath done to the cause of Christ. And I would have you inquire, my fathers, of the tale of some strange country to the west, that one Bjarne Herjulfssen found when he journeyed some twelve years ago and the wind blew him far out of his course. The Greenlanders mocked at him and said he was dreaming after too much ale,—that there was no such land ever heard of before. Bjarne’s tale was of a fair, fruitful land, where the trees and the vines did grow to the very water’s edge. Have ye, my fathers, ever heard of such a land? It was when I was wandering among the Saxons that Bjarne made his voyage.”
“My King,” answered Father Reachta, “more than five hundred years ago an Irish abbot, St. Brendan, sailed with his monks far to the west and they found a fair land where no race of Europe had ever journeyed before. Seven years St. Brendan and his monks sojourned in the new land; and they returned to Ireland to gather other priests and keep alive the faith they had planted in this new, fair land. But St. Brendan died before he did return. I have many times read the tale of St. Brendan where he tells of his journey to the strange country; and I have dreamed of following him to bring again the tidings of Christ to this beautiful, unknown land of the West. But, my King, I am an old man; and younger feet will make this journey.”
“Nay! nay! Father Reachta,” cried Olaf enthusiastically, “I will myself fit thee out a ship when thou dost return from Iceland.” Father Reachta did not answer, but he knew that at his age, there would be no journeying to unknown lands.
Thorgills looked up and spoke in the silence:
“My King, I would say, touching this new land, there are sagas that my father learned from his father, and they tell of the voyages of the Irish monks to this land of the West. The sagas say that the men in the new land spoke the tongue of Brendan and held the faith of Patrick. In the sagas they call the new land the ‘Irland it Mikla’ meaning that it was a greater Ireland. It is a land of mighty rivers and green hills, of vine and fruit and grain, and the waters around are warm as if touched by the breath of perpetual summer. So sing, my King, the old Norse bards of the land in the West where the Irish monks, in their leathern-bound osier boats sailed in those summer seas. It was from these same Irish monks, who preached so many centuries ago in the north lands, that the Norse scalds first learned to read and to write runes and to play the harp and sing sagas that tell the deeds of their warriors and heroes to the music of verse and rhyme.”
“O that I could journey to this land!” cried King Olaf, who had been listening breathlessly. “I have heard that Leif Ericson, the son of Jarl Erik hath been so delighted with the tales that Bjarne hath told that he hath declared he will go himself and find this land. I have promised him ships and men. Leif Ericson is a Christian; and I have urged him to take priests with him, to bring the people of this strange land to the Christian faith. I would that I too could go! It may be, Thorgills, when Leif doth return, thou and I shall go journeying again.” King Olaf turned to Father Breasal. “Didst ever hear what manner of men dwell in the new land?”
“When I was a youth in my Irish monastery, I did read in the Roman books of history that Pliny the Elder spoke of two strange red men who were brought to Rome in the reign of Nero. They were exhibited to the Roman populace in the arena, with the gladiators; and the people did believe the strange wild men were satyrs. My old abbot did believe, and I believe these unknown, red men were of that new land that St. Brendan of Clonfert visited in his seven years’ voyage. But, my King, it is to Iceland we now must go; and not to the happy isles of Brendan’s memory. In the years when we are all at rest, our brethren from our own island shall find again this golden West and give it to Christ as Brendan longed to do; and it may indeed become, in zeal and faith, what your forefathers, honored bard, have called it, the ‘Irland it Mikla,’ a greater land of St. Patrick. And now, my King, farewell! God’s blessing be on thee always.”