The Human Dynasty

I’ve just spent a few days in Iceland visiting museums and tourist attractions which have a link to the sagas.
Iceland was one of the last places on the earth to be inhabited. The first settlers arrived in roughly 870AD, drawn by the wide open spaces and the chance to escape oppressive Norwegian kings. The stories of many of these settlers, particularly the chieftains, are told in a series of stories – sagas – which were passed down orally, generation by generation, until they were written down in the 13th century.
The Icelanders are largely descended from Viking men and the Celtic women whom they met or enslaved on their journeys: something which has recently been confirmed by genetic testing of the population.
Virtually all Icelanders can trace their ancestry back to the first settlers. Indeed I was told that everybody has genealogical links to two particularly fecund medieval bishops.
The sagas are proving to be a much more accurate historical account of early Icelandic history than was long thought to be the case. For example, archaeological evidence found at the Viking settlement in Newfoundland, largely tallies with account given in the sagas.
It is strange to drive past an isolated farmstead and to be told that in the 10th century such and such a farmer lived there and the sagas said he did this or that. We know next to nothing about what happened to farmers and their families in England at that time.
However, the centuries after the arrival of the Black Death in 1401 really up until the Second World War were not happy ones for Iceland. The population fell dramatically as the result of climatic changes brought about by the Little Ice Age and the economic stagnated through centuries of insensitive Danish colonial control. At one time there was serious talk about evacuating the population and at the end of the 19th century thousands of Icelanders emigrated to better lives in North America.
There is clearly an element of nostalgia for the era of the saga in today’s Iceland, particularly after last year’s economic crash. The whole period means a lot to Icelanders, perhaps in a similar way to the British view of the Second World War – a period of heroic deeds and a time when our nation was important in the annals of the world.
As a result of this fascination there are two dozen or so impressive museums and tourist attractions mostly scattered across the Western half of the island, where most of the first settlements took place. I’ll be writing about my experiences and the importance of genealogy in the country today in a future issue of Ancestors. In the meantime if you are thinking about next year’s holiday why not consider Iceland – you won’t regret it: find out more about the saga attractions at http://www.sagatrail.is.