The first attempt made to colonize the island was in the year 874. Ingulf, the son of a Norwegian jarl, had slain his adversary; and to escape the consequences of the act, he, with his brother-in-law Jorleif, prepared to visit a region where neither the vengeance of the kindred nor that of Harald Harfagre could pursue him. Deeply imbued with the superstition of the ancient Norwegian worship, he offered due sacrifices to the gods—for in these patriarchal times the privilege of sacrificing descended with that of primogeniture; and when he sailed took with him the ornamented doorposts of the apartment in which his household deities were enshrined. These, as he approached the island, he cast into the sea, and vowed that on the part of the coast to which the elements should drive them, he would establish his colony. In the meantime a promontory on the south-east, still called Ingulfshod, received him; but the door-posts, watched by his slaves, proceeded to the south-west, and entered a bay on which the modern Reykiavik stands. The place in which he had fixed his temporary abode was comparatively fertile; the neighbourhood of the bay for many leagues was unusually sterile; yet in spite of all remonstrances Ingulf removed to the latter spot, which he believed to be divinely ordained for him. His companion, Jorleif, chose a more fertile locality to the south; but Jorleif had no reverence for the gods, to whom he never deigned to sacrifice. In the estimation of many, the latter was the wiser man; but in a short time he was murdered by his own slaves, who fled with his substance to some distant islands. They did not escape with impunity: pursued by Ingulf, they paid the penalty of their crime. However much the regret of the chief for the fate of his friend, he piously observed that it was the lot of all who despised the national divinities. [Sidenote: 884.]