The earliest voyages northward to the Arctic Circle, of which there is certain literary mention in the early Middle Ages, are the Irish monks' expeditions across the sea in their small boats, whereby they discovered the Faroes and Iceland, and, at all events for a time, lived there. Of these the Irish monk Dicuil gave an account, as early as about the year 825, in his description of the earth, "De Mensura Orbis Terræ" [cf. Letronne, 1814, pp. 38 f., 131 f.]. It is characteristic of the spiritual tendency of that period of the Middle Ages that these remarkable voyages were not, like other voyages of discovery, undertaken from love of gain, thirst for adventure, or desire of knowledge, but chiefly from the wish to find lonely places, where these anchorites might dwell in peace, undisturbed by the turmoil and temptations of the world.[154] In this way the unknown islands near the Arctic Ocean must have seemed to satisfy all their requirements; but their joy was short-lived; the disturbers of the North, the Vikings from Norway, soon came there also and drove them out or oppressed them. What Dicuil tells us of the Scandinavian North is chiefly derived from Pliny, and contains nothing new. But of the unknown islands in the northern ocean he writes [7, 3]: [Sidenote: Discovery of the Faroes by the Irish] "There are many more islands in the ocean north of Britain, which can be reached from the northern British Isles in two days' and two nights' direct sailing with full sail and a favourable wind. A trustworthy priest ('presbyter religiosus') told me that he had sailed for two summer-days and an intervening night in a little boat with two thwarts [i.e., two pairs of oars],[155] and landed on one of these islands. These islands are for the most part small; nearly all are divided from one another by narrow sounds, and upon them anchorites, who proceeded from our Scotia [i.e., Ireland], have lived for about a hundred years ('in centum ferme annis'). But as since the beginning of the world they had always been deserted, so are they now by reason of the Northman pirates emptied of anchorites, but full of innumerable sheep and a great number of different kinds of sea-birds. We have never found these islands spoken of in the books of authors." [Illustration: The Faroes]