THE NORSE TRAFFIC WITH ICELAND

Abstract

R 0 M the time of the Settlement a flourishing trade had sprung up between Norway and Iceland.' In these early days the principal imports of Iceland, according to the sagas, were timber and meal; the chief export was vadmdl, or wadmal, the coarse woollen cloth of the country. Later the Icelanders began also to import wine, beer, malt, wax, incense, honey, woollen cloth, linen, tar, tin, copper, iron, and iron goods; and they exported hides, sulphur, falcons, train-oil, and, above all, skreid, or stockfish. To and from Iceland came shipping from all parts of the Scandinavian world-Norway, Denmark, Ireland, the Sudreyjar, the Orkneys and the Shetlands, the Feroes, and Greenland.2 Down to the early half of the thirteenth century the Icelanders possessed their own trading-fleet. It was merchants from Iceland who, about I200, set up the beacon on Sanday Island in the Sudreyjar. In the early Middle Ages they frequently sailed to Ireland and England and, as late as I225, we hear of vessels from Iceland at Yarmouth.3 Voyages to the Sudreyjar and the Orkneys are often mentioned; and in I i98 an Icelandic craft visited Rouen. For the most part, however, they sailed to Norway, and especially to Trondheim. For two centuries and more after its foundation at the close of the tenth century, this town was the centre of the Iceland trade. In the time of Magnus Berfoett there were no less than 300 Icelanders living in Trondheim. After about I250 the traffic to Iceland, as well as that to the Shetlands, Fxroes, and Greenland, was almost entirely in the hands of Norwegians. Norwegian vessels and Norwegian crews are very frequently mentioned in the thirteenth-century sagas. At a much later period, however, the Icelanders still owned a few ships. These belonged to certain of the more important personages, such as a bishop or a lawman.4 Thus Vilchin, Bishop of Skalaholt, towards the end of the fourteenth century, owned his own craft. 'He had also a bz>za built in Norway, which was called the Bishop's bzza. She was always a fast sailer, as was to be expected.'5 For the rest the Icelanders came to rely on Norwegian shipping. Timber was one of the oldest imports to Iceland. From the time of the Settlement timber for house-building often formed part of the cargoes which were