It is related by the Icelanders that Einar, Count or Earl of Orkney or of the Orkney islands, discovered turf there, and on that account was named Torffeinar. He was the son of Raugnwauld, or Rognwald, earl of Mören, Sued and Nordmör in Norway, in the time of the celebrated Norwegian King Harold, commonly called Haarfager or Pulcricomus, on account of his beautiful hair[590]. He must have lived therefore in the middle of the ninth century; but on so trifling a subject I shall enter no further into the labyrinth of the Icelandic Saga. In Sweden turf was first made known at a very modern period by some navigators in the district of Halland; and in the time of Charles XI. much trouble was taken to introduce it as fuel. In 1672 the town of Laholm obtained an exemption from duty for the turf dug up in the lands belonging to it. In later times turf began to be burned to charcoal, sometimes in kilns, and sometimes in furnaces built for that purpose, by which this advantage is obtained, that it kindles sooner, burns with less air, and forms a more moderate and uniform fire without much smoke. This method of reducing turf to charcoal, which is still practised in some parts of Bohemia, Silesia, and Upper Saxony, was, it appears, proposed about the year 1669, by the well-known John Joachim Becher, who recommended at that time a method of depriving coals of their sulphur by burning them, and the use of naphtha or rock-oil procured from them by that process[591]. The burning of turf to coal seems to have been first made known in Germany by Hans Charles von Carlowitz, chamber-counsellor, and principal surveyor of the mines of the electorate of Saxony[592]. To save wood and promote the benefit of the mines he sought for turf; and having discovered it, he then endeavoured to find out some method of rendering it fit to be employed in the melting-houses, and this was the reducing to coal, which, as he himself says[593], he first attempted in kilns at Scheibenberg, in the year 1708. At the Brocken the first experiments were made in 1744, with turf which had been dug up several years. This was announced by F. C. Brückman in 1745[594], as a new invention; but an anonymous writer stated[595] soon after, that this charring had been long used in the district of Hadeln, and that the smiths there employed no other kind of coals for their work.