Early European History Part 71

[30] See page 564.

[31] See the ill.u.s.tration, page 471.

[32] The Athenians had a similar practice. See page 257.

CHAPTER XVII

THE NORTHMEN AND THE NORMANS TO 1066 A.D. [1]

138. SCANDINAVIA AND THE NORTHMEN

A NEW SERIES OF MIGRATIONS

From the East we return once more to the West, from Asia to Europe, from Arabia to Scandinavia. We have now to deal with the raids and settlements of the Nors.e.m.e.n or Northmen. Like the Arabs the Northmen quitted a sterile peninsula and went forth to find better homes in distant lands. Their invasions, beginning toward the close of the eighth century, lasted about three hundred years.

A TEUTONIC MOVEMENT

The Northmen belonged to the Teutonic family of peoples. They were kinsmen of the Germans, the Anglo-Saxons, and the Dutch. Their migrations may be regarded, therefore, as the last wave of that great Teutonic movement which in earlier times had inundated western Europe and overwhelmed the Roman Empire.

SCANDINAVIA

The Northmen lived, as their descendants still live, in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. The name Scandinavia is sometimes applied to all three countries, but more commonly it is restricted to the peninsula comprising Sweden and Norway.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SWEDISH ROCK CARVING Shows a man plowing.]

SWEDEN

Sweden, with the exception of the northern highlands, is mostly a level region, watered by copious streams, dotted with many lakes, and sinking down gradually to the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Bothnia. The fact that Sweden faces these inland waters determined the course of her development as a nation. She never has had any aspirations to become a great oceanic power. Her whole historic life has centered about the Baltic.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A RUNIC STONE A stone, twelve feet high and six feet wide, in the churchyard of Rok, Ostergotland, Sweden. The runic inscription, which contains more than 760 letters, is the longest known.]

NORWAY

Norway, in contrast to Sweden, faces the Atlantic. The country is little more than a strip of rugged seacoast reaching northward to well within the Arctic Circle. Were it not for the influence of the "Gulf Stream drift,"

much of Norway would be a frozen waste for the greater part of the year.

Vast forests of fir, pine, and birch still cover the greater part of the country, and the land which can be used for farming and grazing does not exceed eleven per cent of the entire area. But Norway, like Greece, [2]

has an extent of sh.o.r.e-line out of all proportion to its superficial area.

So numerous are the fiords, or inlets of the sea, that the total length of the coast approximates twelve thousand miles. Slight wonder that the Vikings, [3] as they called themselves, should feel the lure of the ocean and should put forth their frail barks upon the "pathway of the swans" in search of booty and adventure.

PREHISTORIC TIMES IN SCANDINAVIA

The Swedes and Norwegians, together with their kinsmen, the Danes, probably settled in Scandinavia long before the beginning of the Christian era. During the earlier part of the prehistoric period the inhabitants were still in the Stone Age, but the use of bronze, and then of iron, was gradually introduced. Excavations in ancient grave mounds have revealed implements of the finest polished stone, beautiful bronze swords, and coats of iron ring mail, besides gold and silver ornaments which may have been imported from southern Europe. The ancient Scandinavians have left to us curious records of the past in their picture writing chiseled on the flat surface of rocks. The objects represented include boats with as many as thirty men in them, horses drawing two-wheeled carts, spans of oxen, farmers engaged in ploughing, and warriors on horseback. By the close of the prehistoric period the northern peoples were also familiar with a form of the Greek alphabet (the "runes" [4]) and with the art of writing.

139. THE VIKING AGE

DAWN OF HISTORY IN SCANDINAVIA

The Viking Age, with which historic times begin in northern Europe, extends from about 800 A.D. to the introduction of Christianity in the tenth and eleventh centuries. This was the period when the Northmen, or Vikings, realizing that the sea offered the quickest road to wealth and conquest, began to make long voyages to foreign lands. In part they went as traders and exchanged the furs, wool, and fish of Scandinavia for the clothing, ornaments, and other articles of luxury found in neighboring countries. But it was no far cry from merchant to freebooter, and, in fact, expeditions for the sake of plunder seem to have been even more popular with the Northmen than peaceful commerce.

THE NORTHMEN AS SAILORS

Whether the Northmen engaged in trade or in warfare, good ships and good seamanship were indispensable to them. They became the boldest sailors of the early Middle Ages. No longer hugging the coast, as timid mariners had always done before them, the Northmen pushed out into the uncharted main and steered their course only by observation of the sun and stars. In this way the Northmen were led to make those remarkable explorations in the Atlantic Ocean and the polar seas which added so greatly to geographical knowledge.

SHIPS OF THE NORTHMEN

It was not uncommon for a Viking chieftain, after his days of sea-roving had ended, to be buried in his ship, over which a grave chamber, covered with earth, would be erected. The discovery of several of these burial ships enables us to form a good idea of Viking vessels. The largest of them might reach a length of seventy feet and hold as many as one hundred and twenty men. A fleet of the Northmen, carrying several thousand warriors, mail-clad and armed with spears, swords, and battle-axes, was indeed formidable. During this period the Northmen were the masters of the sea, as far as western Europe was concerned. This fact largely explains their successful campaigns.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A VIKING SHIP The Gokstad vessel is of oak, twenty-eight feet long and sixteen feet broad in the center. It has seats for sixteen pairs of rowers, a mast for a single sail, and a rudder on the right or starboard side. The gunwale was decorated with a series of shields, painted alternately black and gold. This ship, which probably dates from about 900 A.D., was found on the sh.o.r.e of Christiania Fiord. A still larger ship, of about the same date, was taken in 1904 A.D. from the grave of a Norwegian queen at Oseberg. With the queen had been buried a four-wheeled wagon, three sleighs, three beds, two chests, a chair, a large loom, and various kitchen utensils, in fact everything needed for her comfort in the other world.]

THE SAGAS

A very important source of information for the Viking Age consists of the writings called sagas. [5] These narratives are in prose, but they were based, in many instances, on the songs which the minstrels (_skalds_) sang to appreciative audiences a.s.sembled at the banqueting board of a Viking chieftain. It was not until the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that the sagas were committed to writing. This was done chiefly in Iceland, and so it happens that we must look to that distant island for the beginnings of Scandinavian literature.

SUBJECT MATTER OF THE SAGAS

The sagas belong to different cla.s.ses. The oldest of them relate the deeds of Viking heroes and their families. Others deal with the lives of Norwegian kings. Some of the most important sagas describe the explorations and settlements of the Northmen and hence possess considerable value as historical records.

THE NORTHMEN AS SEEN IN THE SAGAS

The sagas throw much light on the character of the Northmen. Love of adventure and contempt for the quiet joys of home comes out in the description of Viking chiefs, who "never sought refuge under a roof nor emptied their drinking-horns by a hearth." An immense love of fighting breathes in the accounts of Viking warriors, "who are glad when they have hopes of a battle; they will leap up in hot haste and ply the oars, snapping the oar-thongs and cracking the tholes." The undaunted spirit of Viking sailors, braving the storms of the northern ocean, expresses itself in their sea songs: "The force of the tempest a.s.sists the arms of our oarsmen; the hurricane is our servant, it drives us whithersoever we wish to go." The sagas also reveal other characteristics of the Northmen: a cruelty and faithlessness which made them a terror to their foes; an almost barbaric love of gay clothing and ornament; a strong sense of public order, giving rise to an elaborate legal system; and even a feeling for the romantic beauty of their northern home, with its snow-clad mountains, dark forests of pine, sparkling waterfalls, and deep, blue fiords.

EDDAIC POEMS

It is to the Viking Age also that we owe the composition of the poems going by the name of the _Elder Edda_. These poems, as well as the prose sagas, were collected and arranged in Iceland during the later Middle Ages. The _Elder Edda_ is a storehouse of old Norse mythology. It forms our chief source of knowledge concerning Scandinavian heathenism before the introduction of Christianity.

140. SCANDINAVIAN HEATHENISM

THE G.o.d ODIN

The religion of the Northmen bore a close resemblance to that of the other Teutonic peoples. The leading deity was Odin (German _Woden_), whose exploits are celebrated in many of the songs of the _Elder Edda_. Odin was represented as a tall, gray-bearded chieftain, carrying a shield and a spear which never missed its mark. Though a G.o.d of battle, Odin was also a lover of wisdom. He discovered the runes which gave him secret knowledge of all things. Legend told how Odin killed a mighty giant, whose body was cut into pieces to form the world: the earth was his flesh, the water his blood, the rocks his bones, and the heavens his skull. Having created the world and peopled it with human beings, Odin retired to the sacred city of Asgard, where he reigned in company with his children.

THE G.o.d THOR

Enthroned beside Odin sat his oldest son, Thor (German _Thunor_), G.o.d of thunder and lightning. His weapon, the thunderbolt, was imagined as a hammer, and was especially used by him to protect G.o.ds and men against the giants. The hammer, when thrown, returned to his hand of its own accord.

Thor also possessed a belt of strength, which, when girded about him, doubled his power.

THOR'S DEEDS OF STRENGTH

Many stories were told of Thor's adventures, when visiting Jotunheim, the abode of the giants. In a drinking-match he tried to drain a horn of liquor, not knowing that one end of the horn reached the sea, which was appreciably lowered by the G.o.d's huge draughts. He sought to lift from the ground a large, gray cat, but struggle as he might, could raise only one of the animal's feet. What Thor took for a cat, however, was really the Midgard serpent, which, with its tail in its mouth, encircled the earth.

In the last trial of strength Thor wrestled with an old woman, and after a violent contest was thrown down upon one knee. But the hag was in truth relentless old age, who sooner or later lays low all men.

MYTH OF BALDER