Part 71 (1/2)

[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