HISTORICAL NOTICE. 57 ■was not found to answer with a race of people like the warlike Norse who had made a home in Iceland; so in the year 926 steps were taken by the principal men for the founding of a common- wealth, and the drawing up of a code of laws for the government of the whole island. A man well acquainted with the laws of Norway, TTlfljot, living at Lon in the south, was commissioned to frame the statutes. He was related to certain famous lawgivers in Norway, and he proceeded thence forthwith to take counsel with them. He remained in that country about three years, the chief part of the time at the home of porleifr the Wise, his mother’s brother; the same who shortly after assisted King llacon, the foster-child of the English King Athelstane, in framing ‘ The Gula Thing’s Code.’ TJlfljot’s foster-brother, Grimr ‘ Goatshoe,’ was directed during his absence to seek out a natural fastness, easily guarded, where the ‘ National Assembly ’ might hold its meetings undisturbed. He selected a rocky islet, in the midst of a sunken plain, cut off from the surrounding country by deep fissures, which at that time were only passable in one place over rocky debris that formed a rude causeway. This spot is the now world-famous 'pingvellir (Thing-fields). The plain at this time was the property of porir ‘ Cropbeard,’ but he having just recently slain a man named Kol, his estate was confiscated. Besides the act of confiscation which happened so opportunely, the facts that the spot lay at the junction of the tracks across the desert interior, and within the ping of the priesthood founded by Ingolfr, one of the first settlers, no doubt had some weight in determining its selection as the ‘ Thingstead.’ The priest of this district, by reason of the ‘ legal capital ’ of the country being within his cure, became the ‘ Alisherjargo^i ’ (Priest of the Whole Host), or high priest of the island. ‘ There then, on the great sunken plain between the two rifts, with the bright ])ingvallavatn before it, and the huge Broadshield (SkjalAbrevf>) mountain looking down on it, was the AIJnng set in the year 929, and Ulfljot’s code solemnly adopted as the law of the land.’ There appears to be some question as to the number of members of this, the first AIJnng, and Herra Jon A. Hjaltalfn, a well-known Icelandic scholar, says: ‘ At the same time the whole island was divided into four quarters, east, south, west and north. The east, south and west quarters were again subdivided into three districts each, and the north quarter into four districts. Each district had three chiefs, or temple priests, as they are also called. All these

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