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Not satisfied with having delivered his oppressed and nearly ruined kingdom from the ravages of the almost savage Danes and Nordmen, and the little less injurious state of anarchy and disorganization into which the weakness of the vaunted Anglo-Saxon system of government had plunged England, he for a time restored the wholesome dominion of the laws, and even endeavoured to illuminate his ignorant people by the introduction of useful learning.
Some of the Norwegian chieftains, who were dissatisfied with the usurpation of supreme authority by Harold, took refuge in England, where Alfred had recently settled many of the vanquished Danes and Nordmen in the northern part of his dominions, which had been almost entirely depopulated and laid waste, by their long-continued and destructive ravages.
Forst. Forster, Voy. and Disc. 79. Vit. S. Anscharii, ap. Langeb. Script. Dan. Ad. Brem. Hist. Eccles. Lib. I. cap. 17. Early Discovery of Winland by the Icelanders, about A.D. 1001. The passion which the Nordmen or Normans had always manifested for maritime expeditions, still prevailed among them in the cold and inhospitable regions of Iceland and Greenland.
From the favourable nature of this report, one Flocke, the son of Vigvardar, who had acquired great reputation among the Nordmen or Normans, as an experienced and intrepid vikingr or pirate, resolved to visit the newly-discovered island.
The Cwens sometimes pass the moors and mountains to invade and plunder the country of the Normans; who likewise sometimes retaliate, by crossing over to spoil their land. In these moors, there are some very large meres or lakes of fresh water, and the Cwenas sometimes carry their small light ships over land into these lakes, and employ them to facilitate their depredations on the Nordmen.
Ohthere told his lord King Alfred, that lie lived to the north of all the Nordmen or Norwegians; and that he dwelt in that land to the northward, opposite to the west sea; and that all the land to the north of that sea is waste and uninhabited except in a few places, to which the Finans or Fins repair in winter for hunting and fowling, and for fishing in the summer.
Although Alfred only mounted the throne of England in 872, it has been deemed proper to commence the series of this work with the discovery of Iceland by the Nordmen or Norwegians, about the year 861, as intimately connected with the era which has been deliberately chosen as the best landmark of our proposed systematic History and Collection of Voyages and Travels.
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