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What King Olaf achieved in Norway he achieved also in the outlying parts of his dominions. He sent priests into the lands of the Laps and Fins. It has been told how he sent his priest Thrangbrand to Iceland. He also sent missions to the Orkney Islands, to the Shetlands, and the Faroes, and even to so distant a country as Greenland.
We were sweeping up the North Sea like a net, with the North Atlantic fleet waiting at the Faroes for 'em and not one of 'em had three days' coal! Now, was that a dream? No! I told a lot of people as much a meeting was it? to reassure them. They were warlike but extremely frightened. Queer people paunchy and bald like gnomes, most of them. Where? Of course! We had it all over a big dinner oysters!
He wanted to feel the sentiment of the people, and was disappointed to find them all well satisfied with their king. Full of humor and a good talker, everybody he met was pleased with him, and when he talked with the men-at-arms of Erling Skakke they told him all they knew about the state of affairs. They were quite won over by this lively priest from the Faroes.
We also saw a few fishing boats off the coast. We now shaped a course for the coast of Norway, keeping to the north of the Faroes. On Sunday, the 17th, we again ran into a very heavy storm. Ever since the storm on January 27th the propeller had been constantly racing and sending shudders through the ship from stem to stern.
A similar vision appeared to Brand, the son of Gneisti, in the Faroes. At Swinefell in Iceland blood fell on the cope of a priest on Good Friday, so that he had to take it off. At Thvatta a priest saw on Good Friday deep sea before the altar and many terrible wonders therein, and for long he was unable to sing the Hours."
In October, fifty ships, with 10,000 starved and fever-stricken men, trailed into the Biscay ports of Spain. Torn by September gales, the rest of the Armada had been sunk or stranded on the rough coasts of Scotland and Ireland. "The wreckers of the Orkneys and the Faroes, the clansmen of the Scottish isles, the kernes of Donegal and Galway, all had their part in the work of murder and robbery.
But they sailed forth, nevertheless, not knowing whither they went; true to their great principle, that the spirit must conquer the flesh: and so showed themselves actually braver men than the Norse pirates, who sailed afterwards over the same seas without fear, and without the need of miracles, and who found everywhere on desert islands, on sea-washed stacks and skerries, round Orkney, Shetland, and the Faroes, even to Iceland, the cells of these "Papas" or Popes; and named them after the old hermits, whose memory still lingers in the names of Papa Strona and Papa Westra, in the Orkneys, and in that of Papey, off the coast of Iceland, where the first Norse settlers found Irish books, bells, and crosiers, the relics of old hermits who had long since fasted and prayed their last, and migrated to the Lord.
and so forth; which was still sung, with other "rimur," or ballads, in the Faroes, at the end of the last century. Professor Rafn has inserted it, because it talks of Vinland as a well-known place, and because the brothers are sent by the princess to slay American kings; but that Rime has another value.
"Bellona-like" appearance of the Queen on her white palfrey, with truncheon in hand, addressing her troops, in that magnificent burst of eloquence which has so often been repeated, was not till eleven days afterwards; not till the great Armada, shattered and tempest-tossed, had been, a week long, dashing itself against the cliffs of Norway and the Faroes, on, its forlorn retreat to Spain.
All is ruined now, perhaps by gradual change of climate. But they had richer fields of enterprise than Greenland, Iceland, and the Faroes.
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