TO ACCOMPANY THE „INDEX SCHOLARUM" OF THE UNIVERSITY FOR THE YEAR 1857, CHRISTIANIA 1860. PRINTED BY BRØGGER & CHRISTIE. TO ACCOMPANY THE „INDEX SCHOLARUM" OF THE UNIVERSITY FOR THE YEAR 1857, CHRISTIANIA 1860. PRINTED BY BRØGGER & CHRISTIE. TK PREFACE. The Islands on the west coast of Scotland and England occupy an important place in the earlier pages of the Norwegian history, not only because of their having been, for about 170 years at least, if not for double that time, a part of the Norwegian kingdom, but also, because in the period when Norway itself was consolidated into one monarchy, and numbers of its citizens, disgusted with this new state of things contrary to their ideas of freedom and independence, sought new homes in foreign parts, these islands became, as it were, a kind of first rendezvous or central place, whence afterwards the emigrants themselves or their descendants in the first and the second degree, spread in various directions to form new settlements, never, however, ceasing to feel themselves as Norwegians, but carrying with them everywhere the language, manners and institutions of their original home, and keeping always up a connexion with the mother country, which generally, when stronger powers from without did not interfere, sooner or later ended in real dependency or political union. We know this at least to be the case with Iceland, the most important and interresting of all Norwegian settlements, the history and manner of whose colonization is accurately known from the Landnámabók. If we study this remarkable work thorougly, we shall find, that of the four hundred chief settlers, who divided the whole Island between them, the greatest, or most powerful, or those who carried the largest families with them, did not come immediately from Norway, but from the western islands, whither they first made sail when emigrating from their ancient udal possessions in the old country. And even as to those, about whose fates during the time between their emigration from Norway and their arrival in Iceland nothing is told expressly, it is still somehow to be guessed, that they |