Post #2074070

In a few of the sagas about the settling of Iceland, there is a mention of throwing high-seat poles overboard, and claiming the land where they wash ashore. It's a will of the gods type thing. I'm going to assume it never actually happened, as fun as it is to imagine a bunch of cold and tired vikings searching hundreds of kilometers of coastline for where the pillars washed up, if they didn't just float out to sea. But there is another suggestion. The settlers would have had highly experienced captains, or were themselves. Such people would have been able to read the currents and the tides well enough to know with relative certainty where the poles would end up, and chose where to drop the poles accordingly. There's nothing like following the will of the gods when you know for certain what that will is going to be.