Landnámabók
Preface
I did it first of all in single isolated chapters, singling out the chapters from any portion of the original work as they might seem to have an especial bearing on the local Place Names or dialect with which I was engaged.
I then wrote these out again as a whole. This translation of it as a whole was first completed in the spring of 1895. The work of writing it out occupied me almost incessantly during the winter and spring of that year.
Since then the translation has been copied and corrected, most of it twice over. The original Icelandic copy first used was one from the edition of Copenhagen, 1843. For a considerable portion of the work I used an edition taken from the Mela Bók and bearing that date of 1770 or thereabouts. (1)
The Table of Contents, the Notes in a great measure, and the list of Place Names with references, are my own work. This I say not as claiming credit, but as acknowledging responsibility.
E. Magnússon, Esq., M.A., a distinguished Icelander, whose works in his own department of literature are too well and widely known to need comment from me, has throughout assissted me with his kind counsel and advice; to him, therefore, I have inscribed the translation. The character of this immortal work of Ari may be well summed up in the words of this gentleman when he says: --- "It is a classic of all classics in the mediæval literature of the whole Germanic world," and the present is an attempt to render, however, imperfectly, that work from Icelandic, a language spoken by only about 60,000 or 70,000 people, all told, into English, spoken as it is by a kindred people, a race numbering over one hundred millions, whose maritime enterprize (2) followed by settlement and colonization derived apparently from the Norsemen, have given them the dominion of a great part of the earth.
The Settlement of Iceland is contemporary, and in a great measure identical with that national migration which resulted in the Norse Settlement of the north-western portion of Great Britain. The glimpses of Early British Church History (3) that run through the following pages, show that Iceland derived its first knowledge of Christianity from British settlers, that when the Norsemen first left Norway they were heathen, but that their sojourn in the Hebrides or the north-west of our island, generally had the effect of converting them to the Christian faith.
This work in the original is unique as a record, for no other country in the world has such an account of its Earliest History, and no other country in the world affords such an unimpeachable testimony to the truth of its Earliest history by having preserved its original language, place names, men's names, and traditions, essentially unaltered and unimpaired.
T. E.
Notes:
1. The great discrepancy in places between the two editions used will account for some differences between those in the Register at the end and the names &c., in the body of the work. [Back]
2. The author of the Book of the Settlement contrasts early Norse discovery with more recent discovery, when he says of Floki using the ravens to guide him: "Floki had consecrated the ravens to this service in Norway that they might lead him in his discoveries, as navigators in the north had not, at that time, any knowledge of the compass (leiðarstein) to guide them. See note in the original Icelandic edition, Copenhagen, 1843, I, 2, page 30. [Back]
3. For notices of Early Church History see Prologue and I, 9, 12, 15; II, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 and Notes; III, 12; V, 15. [Back]
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