Leaving the old world by the northern passage, Iceland lies at the threshold of America. It is nearer to Greenland than to Norway, and Greenland is but one of the large islands into which the arctic currents divide the North American continent. Thither, to Iceland, if we identify the localities in Geoffrey of Monmouth, King Arthur sailed as early as the beginning of the sixth century, and overcame whatever inhabitants he may have found there. Here too an occasional wandering pirate or adventurous Dane had glimpsed the coast.[512] Thither, among others, came the Irish, and in the ninth century we find Irish monks and a small colony of their countrymen in possession.[513] Thither the Gulf Stream carries the southern driftwood, suggesting sunnier lands to whatever race had been allured or driven to its shelter.[514] Here Columbus, when, as he tells us,[515] he visited the island in 1477, found no ice. So that, if we may place reliance on the appreciable change of climate by the precession of the equinoxes, a thousand years ago and more, when the Norwegians crossed from Scandinavia and found these Christian Irish there,[516] the island was not the forbidding spot that it seems with the lapse of centuries to be becoming. [Illustration: NORSE SHIP. This cut is copied from one in Nordenskiöld’s _Voyage of the Vega_ (London, 1881), vol. i. p. 50, where it is given as representing the vessel found at Sandefjord in 1880. It is drawn from the restoration given in _The Viking ship discovered at Gokstad in Norway (Langskibet fra Gokstad ved Sandefjord) described by N. Nicholaysen_ (Christiania, 1882). The original vessel owed its preservation to being used as a receptacle for the body of a Viking chief, when he was buried under a mound. When exhumed, its form, with the sepulchral chamber midships, could be made out, excepting that the prow and stern in their extremities had to be restored. In the ship and about it were found, beside some of the bones of a man, various appurtenances of the vessel, and the remains of horses buried with him. They are all described in the book above cited, from which the other cuts herewith given of the plan of the vessel and one of its rowlocks are taken. The _Popular Science Monthly_, May, 1881, borrowing from _La Nature_, gives a view of the ship as when found _in situ_. There are other accounts in _The Antiquary_, Aug., 1880; Dec., 1881; 1882, p. 87; _Scribner’s Magazine_, Nov., 1887, by John S. White; _Potter’s American Monthly_, Mar., 1882. Cf. the illustrated paper, “Les navires des peuples du nord,” by Otto Jorell, in _Congrès Internat. des Sciences géographiques_ (Paris, 1875; pub. 1878), i. 318.]