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people to go and inhabit them. With the same earnestness did this prince apply himself for many years to increase his subjects and enlarge his empire."*

[In the year 1266 King Magnus Lagabätter sold the Hebrides and the Isle of Man to Alexander III. of Scotland for 4000 marks sterling, but the Norwegian sovereignty over the Orkney and Shetland islands continued until the year 1468, when it was mortgaged to James III., by Christian I., king of Norway, Denmark and Sweden, for 50,000 Rhenish florins, this sum being part of the dowry he had stipulated to give his daughter Margaret on her marriage with the Scottish monarch. In 1549 an assessment was levied in Norway to redeem the mortgaged sovereignty, and after that period several Danish kings asserted their right to redeem it; but it is needless to observe that the Scotch were unwilling to listen to any proposals that tended to deprive them of these important dependencies. The islands continued to be governed by the laws and customs of Norway, and their inhabitants to speak the Norse language, until the seventeenth century; and the substitution of the Scotch weights and measures for the Norwegian, together with the augmentation of the public burdens, formed a subject of complaint down to a much later period.

The Scandinavian sea-rovers began very early to ravage the coast of Ireland. In the annals of Ulster they are termed Lochlanach, and the country they came from Lochlin, and we find them in the ninth century in possession of Dublin, Limerick and Waterford, and other towns of minor importance, which became the capitals of petty maritime states, governed by the laws and customs of Norway.

The eastern coasts of the Baltic were as much infested by Swedish, as those of the British Isles and France were by Danish and Norwegian marauders. In the ninth century, Oskold, the leader of one of these piratical bands, established himself at Kiew, on the Dneiper, and Rurik, the

The expedition alluded to by Odericus Vitalis took place in 1096, and it was after fighting a battle with two earls of Norman descent, who had established themselves in Anglesey, that Magnus gained possession of that island. In 1102 Magnus, in conjunction with a king of Connaught, overran Leinster and Ulster, but as he was preparing to embark on St. Bartholomew's Day in the following year, to return to Norway, was treacherously attacked by his Irish allies, and lost his life in the conflict.-See Heimsk. xi. 27.-Ed.

leader of another band, took possession of Novgorod, and became the founder of the Russian empire, and the ancestor of a long line of princes, Feodor I., the last czar of his dynasty, dying in 1598 *. When the Scandinavians had obtained a footing in Russia, they began to infest the shores of the Black Sea, and in the year 866 appeared before Constantinople, which was, however, too strongly fortified for them to think of attacking with any chance of success, though their retreat was ascribed by the Byzantines to the sacred homophorion, or chemise of the Virgin, which the priests carried in solemn procession and dipped in the seat. This, however, did not prevent the pagans from returning, and although the Byzantines were protected not only by the Virgin's chemise, but also by their celebrated Greek fire, the hardy sea-rovers seldom failed in extracting considerable sums from the degenerate emperors. An obscure account of one of their expeditions to the Caspian Sea, during the reign of Rurik's son

* Rurik and his followers are said to have come from a district in Sweden called Roslagen, Rodeslagen, Roden, whence, according to the supposition of several eminent northern writers, they were called by the Slavonic tribes they subdued Russians, a name which was afterwards applied to the inhabitants of the country, who had previously been called Slavonians. Be this as it may, for we have no great confidence in such etymological disquisitions, it is certain that Constantine Porphyrogenitus designated by these names (ρωσιστι and σκλαβινιστι), the two races and languages in the middle of the tenth century, and it would appear that to this day the Finns have continued to call the Swedes Ruotsolaiset. See Geijer's Ges. Schw. i. 36, and a note to the Preface of Rask s Icelandic Grammar.

↑ The Virgin's chemises appear to have been regarded in those ages as the most efficacious arm that could be employed against the worshippers of Odin. The inhabitants of Chartres, for instance, ascribed the somewhat dubious victory which they gained over Rollo, in the year 911, to the wonder. working properties of one of these chemises, which had long been the chief object of veneration in their cathedral, and which they had borne before them, suspended on a lance like a banner, when they sallied forth, with their bishop, to attack the Northmen :

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Quant Rou si grant gent vei, si s'en est esbahi,

De la procession ki de Chartres issi,

Des relikes k'ils portent, è des cants k'il oï.

De la Sainte Kemise ke la Dame vesti,

Ki mere è virge fu quant de lié Dex naski,

Ont Rou si grant poor, è tant s'en esbahi,
N'i osa arester, verz sis nés tost s'enfui ;"

says old Wace in his Roman de Rou. See Depping, lib. iii. c. 3.

In this ex

Igor (Ingvar)*, has also been transmitted to us pedition they carried their light barks from one river tc another-from the Don to the Volga-as was frequently done by the Normans and Danes in France and England.

The Scandinavian sea-rovers in the Baltic were known under the name of Varæger, which corresponds to the Væringjar of the Icelandic Sagas and the Varangi (Baçayyo) of the Byzantine writers. In the year 902 the Emperor Alexis took seven hundred of these Varæger from Kiew in his pay, and from that period down to the fall of Constantinople the Byzantine emperors committed the care of their persons to a body-guard chiefly, if not wholly, composed of Scandinavian adventurers, at first of Russian Varæger, and, at a later period, of Danes, Norwegians and Icelanders. The Codex Flatoyensis gives the number of men in this guard, in the eleventh century, at three hundred, and distinguishes it from another corps of Franks and Flemings, also in the imperial service t. This celebrated Varangian body-guard, to use the words of Gibbon, "with their broad and double-edged battle axes on their shoulders, attended the Greek emperor to the temple, the senate, and the hippodrome; he slept and feasted under their trusty guard; and the keys of the palace, the treasury, and the capital, were held by the firm and faithful hands of the Varangians." Our great historian might have added that

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The widow of this Czar, Olga, who was distinguished for what we are sorry to say appear to have been the two principal traits of the old Scandinavian character-craft and cruelty-was baptized at Constantinople in 957, and introduced Christianity into Russia, which about thirty years later was firmly established by Vladimir, surnamed, like Canute, and with equal propriety, the Great. Vladimir, on his marriage with the Byzantine princess, Anna, caused the image of Perun-the Slavonic god of thunder-to be tied to a horse's tail, and after being dragged through the town to be thrown into the Dnieper. Shortly afterward, when another image of the same deity was thrown into the Volga at Novgorod, we are told-every superstition has had its speaking images-that it began to complain bitterly of the ingratitude of the people it had so long protected. See Grimm. Deut. Mythol. 733.

+ Cod. Flat. col. 507, quoted by Müller in his Sagabib. ii. 149.

Gibbon. Dec. and Fall, ch. 55. When Gibbon further says that the Varangians "preserved till the last age of the empire the inheritance of spotless loyalty, and the use of the Danish or English language," he can only mean the Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon, two distinct languages, which the writers of the last century were too apt to confound. (See note, page 181). And we presume that "the inheritance of spotless loyalty" is merely one of those

on.

these adventurers also plundered the palaces as well as guarded them, for it would appear that at the death of an emperor the Varangians were allowed to go through all the imperial palaces and take whatever they could lay their hands It was thus that the celebrated Harald Hardráda, who commanded the Varangians in the time of the Empress Zoe, was fortunate enough to be at Constantinople at the deaths of three of the nominal emperors whom that ambitious woman had placed on the throne; and what with the plunder of the palaces and the booty he acquired in his campaign against the Saracens, he amassed a treasure that enabled him to marry the daughter of the Russian czar, and gain possession of the throne of Norway *.]

CHAPTER X.

OF THE CUSTOMS AND MANNERS OF THE ANCIENT NORTHERN NATIONS t.

WHOEVER attempts to delineate the manners of the ancient inhabitants of the north, will find their love of war and passion for arms amongst the most characteristic and expresssive lines of the portrait. Their prejudices, their customs,

stereotype phrases which historians frequently make use of to give due weight to a sentence.

* Snorri tells us some strange stories respecting the adventurous life Harald led when he was in the service of the yzantine emperors, which, although they cannot be regarded as historical facts, have at least furnished Ehlenschläger with excellent materials for his tragedy entitled "The Varangians in Constantinople;" Væringerne i Miklagord." See Heimsk. ix. 1-17. Harald, as is well known, lost his life in the battle of Stamford Bridge, but it has not, we think, been sufficiently remarked that his alliance with Tostig, by draw ing off the forces of our last Anglo-Saxon monarch to the north, greatly facili tated the Norman conquest.

We have omitted a chapter in which Mr. Mallet gave an account of the discovery of Greenland and america by the Scandinavians, the sources which were available when his work was published (in the year 1755) being too meagre and defective to furnish him with correct information on the subject. The reader will find an account of this discovery, taken from the most recent and authentic works that have been published relating to it, in our first supplementary chapter.-ED.

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their daily occupations, their amusements, in short, every action of their lives, were all impressed with this passion. They passed the greatest part of their time either in camps or on board their fleets, employed in real engagements, in preparations for them, or in sham fights; for whenever they were constrained to live in peace, the resemblance of war furnished out their highest entertainment. They then had reviews, mock battles, which frequently ended in real ones, tournaments, the bodily exercises of wrestling, boxing, racing, &c. The rest of their time was commonly spent in hunting, publie business, drinking and sleeping. "The Germans," says Tacitus, "when not engaged in war, pass their time in indolence, feasting and sleep. The bravest and most warlike among them do nothing themselves; but transfer the whole care of the house, family and possessions to the females, the old men and such as are infirm among them: and the same people, by a strange contradiction of nature, both love inaction and hate peace. All the Celtic nations lie under the same reproach from the Greek and Roman authors; and it is easy to conceive, that a people who affixed ideas of contempt to all labour of body and mind, had for the most part nothing else to do but to carouse and sleep, whenever the state did not call them to arms. This was the badge and noblest privilege of their liberty; every free man placed his glory and happiness in being often invited to solemn entertainments; and the hopes of partaking of eternal feasts filled, as we have seen, the north with heroes. Other pleasures and other rewards have been conceived under the influence of other climes: all nations have in their infancy been governed by the force of climate; and their first legislators, far from endeavouring to stem this torrent, but borne away with it themselves, have ever by their laws and institutions enlarged and increased its natural prevalence. We find remarkable instances in the Icelandic Sagas of frequent and excessive feastings. Tacitus observes, that the plentiful tables of the chiefs, were, among the Germans, the wages of their dependents. Nor could a great lord or chieftain take a readier way to attract a numerous train of followers, than by often making magnificent entertainments. It was at table that the Germans consulted together on their most important concerns, such as the electing of their princes,

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