Transcriber’s Note
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THE
NORTHMEN
IN BRITAIN
“There is no man so high-hearted over earth, nor so goodin gifts, nor so keen in youth, nor so brave in deeds, nor soloyal to his lord, that he may not have always sad yearningtowards the sea-faring, for what the Lord will give him there.
“His heart is not for the harp, nor receiving of rings, nordelight in a wife, nor the joy of the world, nor about anythingelse but the rolling of the waves. And he hath everlonging who wisheth for the Sea.”
“The Seafarer”
(Old English Poem).
THE NORTHMEN
IN BRITAIN
BY
Eleanor Hull
AUTHOR OF
‘THE POEM-BOOK OF THE GAEL’ ‘CUCHULAIN, THE HOUND OF ULSTER’
‘PAGAN IRELAND’ ‘EARLY CHRISTIAN IRELAND’
ETC.
WITH SIXTEEN FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS BY
M. Meredith Williams
NEW YORK
THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
5
Turnbull & Spears, Printers, Edinburgh
Foreword
Two great streams of Northern immigrationmet on the shores of Britain during the ninth,tenth, and eleventh centuries. The Norsemenfrom the deep fiords of Western Norway, fishing andraiding along the coasts, pushed out their adventurousboats into the Atlantic, and in the dawn of Northernhistory we find them already settled in the Orkney andShetland Isles, whence they raided and settled southwardto Caithness, Fife, and Northumbria on the east,and to the Hebrides, Galloway, and Man on the westerncoast. Fresh impetus was given to this outwardmovement by the changes of policy introduced byHarald Fairhair, first king of Norway (872–933). Throughhim a nobler type of emigrant succeeded the casualwanderer, and great lords and kings’ sons came over toconsolidate the settlements begun by humbler agencies.Iceland was at the same time peopled by a similar stock.The Dane, contemporaneously with the Norseman, cameby a different route. Though he seems to have beenthe first to invade Northumbria (if Ragnar and his sonswere really Danes), his movement was chiefly rou