The Icelanders’ own records (Landnámabók) mention around 400 original settlers, over fifty of whom had names that implied mixed Irish ancestry, or Celtic nicknames denoting considerable time spent outside Scandinavia, 38 of which had been powerful chieftains in Norway. Of the four hundred chief settlers, who divided the whole Island amongst them, the greatest, or most powerful, or those who carried the largest families with them, did not come immediately from Norway, but from the Western Islands, whither they first made sail when emigrating from their ancient udal 2 possessions in the old country. And even as to those, about whose fates during the time between their emigration from Norway and their arrival in Iceland nothing is told expressly, that they passed some time in the Western Islands, or in Ireland at least, in the first period of the colonisation. The people of Islay in the Middle Ages were Gaelic speakers.
Not a few of their slaves had Gaelic names, which shows that they were either Irishmen or Scottish Highlanders; some of the settlers themselves were even Irishmen, or inhabitants of the western coasts of Scotland and what is still more remarkable, and, perhaps, gives the best evidence of the state of things here supposed, is, that the rearing and pasturing of sheep, the national and most important branch of livelihood in Iceland, has never, not even in the times of the colonisation, been like to anything in Norway, the mother country, not even as far as regards the nomenclature; while, on the contrary, it has all the chief and characteristic features of the same national occupation in Western Scotland and the Isles. From this circumstance we are indeed justified in concluding, almost to a certainty, that those settlers, who set the first example of rural economy in Iceland, and gave to the whole way of living its chief and lasting features, had lived long enough on the Scottish coasts and the Isles, to become in a great measure nationalised there, and to adopt very much of the manners and customs prevailing among the inhabitants. Nor is it to be forgotten that very likely the greater part of their servants, as already hinted, were natives of these countries, and that no doubt to their care the chief arrangement of the household was confided.
The Western Islands and the north were possessed by the Norwegians. The north, meaning Tyrone where Niall became king of Meath at Tara apart from the Desmond seate of Eberian and Ithian members of the Southern Branch of Ó Neill, after 1066 AD, the Dunkeld nobility entered service in the northern wars. In the Saga itself for King Magnus having helped Muircertach (of the Leather Cloaks) to take Dublin, forasmuch as it is said that this was done in 1102, on the last expedition of Magnus to the West. The area of Derry called Kilrea which was a compact little parish lying along the River Bann, and like its neighbor Agivey, held a peculiar position (Erenaghs) being appropryated to the Abbey of SS. Peter and Paul of Armagh.
To the Icelanders, therefore, the Western Islands of Scotland, as in a certain degree the chief cradle of their race even more than the mother country Norway itself. Iceland, however, is not the only Norwegian settlement to which the Western Islands have been, as it were, a kind of stepping stone. As for Ireland, that is to say the Norwegian settlements and kingdoms at Dublin, Waterford, and Limerick, we would affirm this at once as a matter of course, if the proximity of Ireland and the Islands did not make it likely that both of them were visited by our ancestors at the same time, and settlements formed simultaneously on either side of the sea.
As the Islands were situated on the way of the Norwegians to Ireland, and therefore likely to be visited by them before the latter, although it seems to us evident, as shall be shown hereafter more circumstantially, that the Islands did not, at any period, contain large and lasting colonies, but rather an uncertain and fluctuating population of Norsemen, while in Ireland these became stationary for centuries, we think ourselves entitled to regard the Irish colonies as subsequent to, and chiefly issuing from, the first settlements made by Norwegians in the Isles west of Scotland. From both, the Isles as well as Ireland, or perhaps chiefly from the former, the Isle of Man evidently got its Norwegian population, which, however, although strong enough, as we shall see, to leave many traces, even in the local denominations, did never, as in the Orkneys and Shetland, entirely absorb the Gaelic population,which shows that this island was likewise more a stepping stone for other settlements on a larger scale, than such a settlement itself. And here it is not difficult to trace the direction which the flood of Norwegian emigrants took after resting for a while on Man.
From the middle of the ninth century. the eastern coasts of England, from East Anglia to the Scotch border, had been subjected to an incessant visitation by Vikings or emigrants from the Danish countries, belonging, it is true, to the same chief stem of nationality, as the Norwegians, but forming nevertheless a separate branch, with peculiarities characteristic enough to distinguish them from these. How these Danish emigrants at last succeeded, not only in subjugating a large portion, almost the northeastern half of England, but also in introducing their language and nationality, and in establishing kingdoms, one of which lasted for a couple of generations, and even after having submitted to the kings of England, continued still for a long time to form a separate part of the empire, with the laws, institutions, and to a great extent even the language imparted to it by the powerful warriors from the shores of the Cattegat and the Belt.
For a long time no distinction was made between these northern settlers on the east coast of England and the Norsemen in Ireland and Scotland, but they were named indiscriminately Danes or Normans, and were generally looked upon as belonging to one people. The more accurate study and knowledge of the Old German dialects, however, begun and carried out by the great scholars of our times, which have led to so many important ethnographical discoveries, unknown to and unlooked for by the linguists and ethnographers of the last century, have sufficiently pointed out the peculiar distinctions, however slight, between the two sister branches just mentioned, the Norsemen and the Danes, in the ninth and tenth century, and have enabled us to trace, in the north-western and more mountainous districts of the Danish settlement in the north of England, an influx of the Norwegian branch, from the shores of the Solway down to the eastern slope.
From the nucleus of Norwegian settlements in the Isles and Ireland, numbers of warriors poured over to the coasts of Cumberland, until at last they met with their Danish brethren, and then, with a nationality almost identical, and having interests in common with them against the former possessors of the soil, easily coalesced with them into one political and national body.
The Northmen in Cumberland and Westmoreland; while formerly, as just mentioned, no distinction was made between the Norwegian and Danish settlers in England, or if even some names characteristic of Norwegian nationality were pointed out, still the Norwegians were believed to have arrived together with, or from the same direction as, not only given many local names, as exclusively Norwegian, in the north western part of Northumberland and the north of Cumberland, but has also collected a list of words, still used in the dialects of those parts, the Norwegian origin. Among the Northumbrian kings named in the so-called Chronicon Saxonicum, and by the old English annalists, we find several who are said to have arrived from Ireland, and whom, indeed, we find in the Irish chronicles as kings of Dublin - viz. Olaf Kvaran, one Sigtrygg (Sitric), etc. In the celebrated battle of Brunanburgh, Irish warriors are expressly stated to have fought; and in the beautiful old English poem describing it, the beaten warriors from Ireland are said to have returned to Dublin. Man has formed the stepping stone, and that the possession of it must have been of the utmost importance to the Norwegian warriors, who came here partly to form new settlements, partly to earn fame and booty by piratical exploits.