Chapter I: Front Matter

Transcriber’s Note: Italic text is enclosed in _underscores_. Other notes may be found after the Index.

THE
NORTHMEN
IN BRITAIN

“_There is no man so high-hearted over earth, nor so good in
gifts, nor so keen in youth, nor so brave in deeds, nor so loyal
to his lord, that he may not have always sad yearning towards the
sea-faring, for what the Lord will give him there._

“_His heart is not for the harp, nor receiving of rings, nor
delight in a wife, nor the joy of the world, nor about anything
else but the rolling of the waves. And he hath ever longing 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

_Turnbull & Spears, Printers, Edinburgh_

Foreword

Two great streams of Northern immigration met on the shores of Britain during the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries. The Norsemen from the deep fiords of Western Norway, fishing and raiding along the coasts, pushed out their adventurous boats into the Atlantic, and in the dawn of Northern history we find them already settled in the Orkney and Shetland Isles, whence they raided and settled southward to Caithness, Fife, and Northumbria on the east, and to the Hebrides, Galloway, and Man on the western coast. Fresh impetus was given to this outward movement by the changes of policy introduced by Harald Fairhair, first king of Norway (872–933). Through him a nobler type of emigrant succeeded the casual wanderer, and great lords and kings’ sons came over to consolidate the settlements begun by humbler agencies. Iceland was at the same time peopled by a similar stock. The Dane, contemporaneously with the Norseman, came by a different route. Though he seems to have been the first to invade Northumbria (if Ragnar and his sons were really Danes), his movement was chiefly round the southern shores of England, passing over by way of the Danish and Netherland coast up the English Channel, and round to the west. Both streams met in Ireland, where a sharp and lengthened contest was fought out between the two nations, and where both took deep root, building cities and absorbing much of the commerce of the country.

The viking was at first simply a bold adventurer, but a mixture of trading and raiding became a settled practice with large numbers of Norsemen, who, when work at home was slack and the harvest was sown or reaped, filled up the time by pirate inroads on their own or neighbouring lands. Hardy sailors and fearless fighters they were; and life would have seemed too tame had it meant a continuous course of peaceful farming or fishing. New possessions and new conquests were the salt of life. “Biorn went sometimes on viking but sometimes on trading voyages,” we read of a man of position in Egil’s Saga, and the same might be said of hundreds of his fellows.

It was out of these viking raids that the Dano-Norse Kingdoms of Dublin and Northumbria grew, the Dukedom of Normandy, and the Earldom of Orkney and the Isles.

The Danish descents seem to have been more directly for the purpose of conquest than those of the Norse, and they ended by establishing on the throne of England a brief dynasty of Danish kings in the eleventh century, remarkable only from the vigour of Canute’s reign.

The intimate connexion all through this period between Scandinavia, Iceland, and Britain can only be realized by reading the Northern Sagas side by side with the chronicles of Great Britain and Ireland, and it is from Norse sources chiefly that I propose to tell the story.

Contents

THE AGE OF THE VIKINGS

CHAP. PAGE
I. THE FIRST COMING OF THE NORTHMEN 11

II. THE SAGA OF RAGNAR LODBROG, OR “HAIRY-BREEKS” 15

III. THE CALL FOR HELP 22

IV. ALFRED THE GREAT 29

V. HARALD FAIRHAIR, FIRST KING OF NORWAY, AND THE
SETTLEMENTS IN THE ORKNEYS 36

VI. THE NORTHMEN IN IRELAND 45

VII. THE EXPANSION OF ENGLAND 52

VIII. KING ATHELSTAN THE GREAT 56

IX. THE BATTLE OF BRUNANBURH 65

X. TWO GREAT KINGS TRICK EACH OTHER 78

XI. KING HAKON THE GOOD 82

XII. KING HAKON FORCES HIS PEOPLE TO BECOME CHRISTIANS 85

XIII. THE SAGA OF OLAF TRYGVESON 91

XIV. KING OLAF’S DRAGON-SHIPS 100

XV. WILD TALES FROM THE ORKNEYS 108

XVI. MURTOUGH OF THE LEATHER CLOAKS 117

XVII. THE STORY OF OLAF THE PEACOCK 122

XVIII. THE BATTLE OF CLONTARF 135

XIX. YULE IN THE ORKNEYS, 1014 144

XX. THE STORY OF THE BURNING 157

XXI. THINGS DRAW ON TO AN END 166

THE DANISH KINGDOM OF ENGLAND

XXII. THE REIGN OF SWEYN FORKBEARD 179

XXIII. THE BATTLE OF LONDON BRIDGE 186

XXIV. CANUTE THE GREAT 191

XXV. CANUTE LAYS CLAIM TO NORWAY 198

XXVI. HARDACANUTE 211

XXVII. EDWARD THE CONFESSOR 221

XXVIII. KING HAROLD, GODWIN’S SON, AND THE BATTLE OF STAMFORD
BRIDGE 226

XXIX. KING MAGNUS BARELEGS FALLS IN IRELAND 237

XXX. THE LAST OF THE VIKINGS 244

CHRONOLOGY 249

INDEX 251

Illustrations

THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN _Frontispiece_

FACING PAGE
LADGERDA 16

ALFRED AT ASHDUNE 26

HARALD FAIRHAIR 42

OLAF CUARAN 62

THOROLF SLAYS EARL HRING AT BRUNANBURH 72

THE DYING KING HAKON CARRIED TO HIS SHIP 88

KING OLAF’S “LONG SERPENT” 102

MURTOUGH ON HIS JOURNEY WITH THE KING OF MUNSTER IN FETTERS 118

“OLAF TOOK THE OLD WOMAN IN HIS ARMS” 132

DEATH OF BRIAN BORU AT CLONTARF 152

“THE VISION OF THE MAN ON THE GREY HORSE” 166

“COME THOU OUT, HOUSEWIFE,” CALLED FLOSI TO BERGTHORA 172

THE BATTLE OF LONDON BRIDGE 188

KING CANUTE AND EARL ULF QUARREL OVER CHESS 214

KING MAGNUS IN THE MARSH AT DOWNPATRICK 240

MAP

BRITISH ISLES IN THE TIME OF THE NORTHMEN 176

Authorities

For the Sagas of the Norwegian Kings: _Snorri Sturleson’s
Heimskringla, or Sagas of the Kings of Norway_. Translated by S.
Laing and by W. Morris and E. Magnüsson

For Ragnar Lodbrog: _Saxo Grammaticus_ and _Lodbrog’s Saga_

For Ragnar Lodbrog’s Death Song: _Corpus Poeticum Boreale_. Vigfusson
and York Powell

For the Orkneys: _Orkneyinga Saga_

For the Battle of Brunanburh: _Egil Skallagrimson’s Saga_. Translated
by W. C. Green

For the Story of Olaf the Peacock and Unn the Deep-minded: _Laxdæla
Saga_. Translated by Mrs Muriel Press

For the Story of the Burning: _Nial’s Saga_. Translated by G. W.
Dasent

For the Battle of Clontarf: _Wars of the Gael and Gall_. Edited by
J. H. Todd; _Nial’s Saga_, and _Thorstein’s Saga_

For Murtough of the Leather Cloaks: The bard Cormacan’s Poem. Edited
by J. O’Donovan (Irish Arch. Soc.)

_English Chronicles_: The English Chronicle; William of Malmesbury’s,
Henry of Huntingdon’s, Florence of Worcester’s Chronicles;
Asser’s _Life of Alfred_

_Irish Chronicles_: Annals of the Four Masters; of Ulster; _Chronicum
Scotorum_; Three Fragments of Annals, edited by J. O’Donovan

I desire to thank Mrs Muriel Press and Mr W. C. Green for kind permission to make use of portions of their translations of Laxdæla and Egil’s Sagas; also Mr W. G. Collingwood for his consent to my adoption in my map of some of his boundaries from a map published in his _Scandinavian Britain_ (S.P.C.K.); and to the Secretary of the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge for giving his sanction to this.

The Northmen in Britain

THE AGE OF THE VIKINGS