of
feudalism in Japan. The little Isle of Man, almost in sight of the
English coast, has retained an old Norse form of government. Here
survives the primitive custom of orally proclaiming every new law from
the Tynwald Hill before it can take effect,[922] and the other ancient
usage of holding the court of justice on the same hill under the open
sky. The Faroe Islands and Iceland are museums of Norse antiquities. The
stamp of isolation and therefore conservatism is most marked in the
remoter, northern islands. Surnames are rare in Iceland, and such as
exist are mostly of foreign origin. In their place, Christian names
followed by the patronymic prevail; but in the Faroes, these patronymics
have in a great many cases become recognized as surnames. So again,
while the Faroese women still use a rude spinning-wheel introduced from
Scotland in 1671, in Iceland this spinning-wheel was still an innovation
in 1800, and even to-day competes with spindles. Hand-querns for
grinding wheat, stone hammers for pounding fish and roots, the wooden
weighing-beam of the ancient Northmen, and quaint marriage customs give
the final touch of aloofness and antiquity to life on these remote
islands.[923]

[Sidenote: Effects of small area in islands.]

As all island life bears more or less the mark of isolation, so it
betrays the narrow area that has served at its base. Though islands show
a wide variation in size from the 301,000 square miles (771,900 square
kilometers) of New Guinea or the 291,000 square miles (745,950 square
kilometers) of Borneo to the private estates like the Scilly Isles,
Gardiner and Shelter islands off Long Island, or those small, sea-fenced
pastures for sheep and goats near the New England coast and in the
Aegean, yet small islands predominate; the large ones are very few.
Islands comprise a scant seven per cent. of the total land area of the
earth, and their number is very great,--nine hundred, for instance, in
the Philippine group alone. Therefore small area is a conspicuous
feature of islands generally. It produces in island people all those
effects which are characteristic of small, naturally defined areas,
especially early or precocious social, political and cultural
development. The value of islands in this respect belongs to the youth
of the world, as seen in the ancient Mediterranean, or in the
adolescence of modern primitive races; it declines as the limitations
rather than the advantages of restricted terr