Note 25 — GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
Reading edition
"Thus saith the holy priest Bede.... Therefore learned men think that it is Iceland which is called Thule.... But the holy priest Bede died dccxxxv. years after the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, more than a hundred years before Iceland was inhabited by the Northmen."—Antiquitates Americanæ, p. 202. This extract is followed by the statement of Ari Frode, and shows that the Irish Christians retired to Iceland at a very early day. The Irish monk Dicuil also refers to this solitary island, which, about the year 795, was visited by some monks with whom he had conversed.