[Footnote 172: They were the Varangian guard at Constantinople, described by Sir Walter Scott in _Count Robert of Paris_. About this same time their kinsmen, the Russ, moving eastward from Sweden, were subjecting Slavic tribes as far as Novgorod and Kief, and laying the foundations of the power that has since, through many and strange vicissitudes, developed into Russia. See Thomsen, _The Relations between Ancient Russia and Scandinavia_, Oxford, 1877.] [Footnote 173: Fealty to Norway was not formally declared until 1262.] [Footnote 174: The settlement of Iceland is celebrated by Robert Lowe in verses which show that, whatever his opinion may have been in later years as to the use of a classical education, his own early studies must always have been a source of comfort to him:-- [Greek: Chaire kai en nephelaisi kai en niphadessi bareiais Kai pyri kai seismois nese saleuomene Enthade gar basileos hyperbion hybrin alyxas Demos Hyperboreon, kosmou ep' eschatie, Autarke bioton theion t' erethismata Mouson Kai thesmous hagnes heuren eleutherias.] These verses are thus rendered by Sir Edmund Head (_Viga Glums Saga_, p. v.):-- "Hail, Isle! with mist and snowstorms girt around, Where fire and earthquake rend the shattered ground,-- Here once o'er furthest ocean's icy path The Northmen fled a tyrant monarch's wrath: Here, cheered by song and story, dwelt they free, And held unscathed their laws and liberty." Laing (_Heimskringla_, vol. i. p. 57) couples Iceland and New England as the two modern colonies most distinctly "founded on principle and peopled at first from higher motives than want or gain."] [Footnote 175: Just what was then considered wealth, for an individual, may best be understood by a concrete instance. The historian Snorro Sturleson, born in 1178, was called a rich man. "In one year, in which fodder was scarce, he lost 120 head of oxen without being seriously affected by it." The fortune which he got with his first wife Herdisa, in 1199, was equivalent nominally to $4,000, or, according to the standard of to-day, about $80,000. Laing, _Heimskringla_, vol. i. pp. 191, 193.]