36 chapters
10 hour read
Selected Chapters
36 chapters
PREFACE.
PREFACE.
Mr. Worsaae informs us in his Introduction that the following pages were not written solely for the learned. They were designed as a popular contribution to a branch of historical and antiquarian knowledge, which, though highly interesting both to Scandinavians and Englishmen, has been hitherto very imperfectly investigated. The English reader will find in Mr. Worsaae’s work not only many facts concerning the early history of this country that are either entirely new to him, or placed at least i
2 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
AUTHOR’S PREFACE.
AUTHOR’S PREFACE.
In the spring of 1846, his late Majesty Christian VIII. of Denmark determined that an inquiry should be made respecting the monuments and memorials of the Danes and Norwegians which might be still extant in Scotland and the British Islands. His Majesty was the more confirmed in this design as two distinguished British noblemen, his Grace the Duke of Sutherland, and his brother Lord Francis Egerton (now Earl of Ellesmere), had repeatedly stated in their letters to the Royal Society of Northern An
2 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Section I.
Section I.
Scandinavia’s greatest Memorials.—Those of Denmark and Norway at Sea.—Of Sweden on Land.—The Influence of Climate. The greatest, and for general history the most important, memorials of the Scandinavian people are connected, as is well known, with the expeditions of the Normans, and with the Thirty Years’ War. In the Norman expeditions the North, mighty in its heathenism, poured forth towards the east, the west, and the south, its numerous warriors and shrewd men, who subverted old kingdoms, and
11 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Section II.
Section II.
Russia, Poland, and particularly Germany, were, as we have seen, the theatre of the greatest victories of Sweden. The glory of Denmark and Norway, on the contrary, was founded in the West, over the sea, in America, Iceland, the British Isles, and France. Denmark’s conquests of the southern and eastern coasts of the Baltic in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, under the Waldemars, terminate, however, the times of the Vikings. The victories of Sweden are of a modern date, and since the last two
3 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Section I.
Section I.
The greater part of England consists of flat and fertile lowland, particularly towards the southern and eastern coasts, where large open plains extend themselves. Smiling landscapes, with well-cultivated fields, beautiful ranges of forest, and small clear lakes everywhere meet the eye. One would often be led to fancy oneself in some Danish province, if the splendid country seats, with their extensive parks, the numerous towns, the smoking factories, and the locomotive engines, with their trains
7 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Section II.
Section II.
A fate similar to that which the Anglo-Saxons had formerly brought upon the Britons, now partly became the lot of the Anglo-Saxons themselves. The same sea, the North Sea, or, as the old inhabitants of Scandinavia called it, “England’s Sea,” which in the fifth century had borne the Anglo-Saxons to England, and which had afterwards served to maintain the peaceful connections of trade, and the intercourse between kinsmen in England and in their northern fatherland, now suddenly teemed with the num
6 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Section III.
Section III.
London, and its wealthy neighbourhood, was naturally the main object of the Danish attacks in the south-east part of England. Under the Romans it had already become considerable as a commercial mart; but afterwards, under the Anglo-Saxons, it increased so much in wealth and importance, that it was, if we may use the expression, the heart of England. It was for this reason that the old northern bards used the term “Londons Drot ” in their songs about the kings of England. From the first London is
13 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Section IV.
Section IV.
In the heart of the city of London, near St. Paul’s Cathedral, is a street called “Watling Street.” Anciently it was connected with the great high road of the same name (or more properly Watlinga-Stræt), which had been made by the Britons from the Channel and London through the midst of England to the north-east of Wales, Chester, and the Irish Channel. On account of the importance of this road, as communicating with the interior of England as well as with Ireland, the Romans improved it. But, l
14 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Section V.
Section V.
The Thames certainly brought many Danes in ancient times to the country south of Watlinga Stræt; but the large bay on the eastern coast of England, called the “Wash,” and the rivers Humber, Tees, and Tyne, attracted still more of them to the eastern and northern districts. The Wash especially seems to have been one of the landing places most in favour with them. Whether it were its situation, directly opposite to Jutland on the one side, and on the other, on a line with the fruitful midland dist
12 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Section VI.
Section VI.
If even the old Saxon south England is distinguished by its richness in legends and still-existing memorials of the Danes, it is natural that they should be met with in still greater numbers in the old Danish districts to the north and east of Watlinga-Stræt. Here also the Norwegian saint, “St. Olave,” has been zealously worshipped, both in the country and in the towns. In Norfolk (East Anglia) there is a bridge called “St. Olave’s Bridge.” In itself it is a remarkable monument of a time when br
36 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Section VII.
Section VII.
On the extremity of the tongue of land which borders on the north the entrance of the Humber, there formerly stood a castle called Ravnsöre (raven’s point—in old Scandinavian, Hrafnseyri), and afterwards Ravnsere. Öre is, as is well known, the old Scandinavian name for the sandy point of a promontory. Ravn (or Raven) may possibly have been either the name of the man who first conquered the surrounding district and built the castle; or, what is certainly far more probable, the Northmen, on erecti
16 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Section VIII.
Section VIII.
The present English people is certainly composed, as we have seen, of the most heterogeneous elements. The Englishman reckons among his ancestors Britons, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, and Northmen, especially Danes and Normans. All these people, who successively reigned over England for centuries, must naturally have left numerous descendants behind them. But as in ancient times it was a combat of life and death for dominion, the conquered and their posterity could not immediately amalgamate with the c
20 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Section IX.
Section IX.
It is thus shown, by numerous and incontestable proofs, that the Danes held dominion in England for a short period, and that they also exercised, in conjunction with the Normans, so important and lasting an influence for centuries before and after the time of Canute the Great, at all events in that portion of England lying to the north of Watlinga Stræt, that even a great part of the population there may be safely assumed to be of Danish extraction. Nevertheless, the generally received opinion i
12 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Section X.
Section X.
The Northmen, who in ancient times sailed to foreign shores, were far from always being Vikings, bent only on rapine and plunder, and the conquest of new possessions. They were very often peaceful merchants. The remote situation of Scandinavia, and the dangers which the natives of more southern countries pictured to themselves as attendant upon a voyage to that ultima Thule and its heathenish inhabitants, must in ancient days, when navigation was very limited, have deterred foreign merchants fro
22 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Section XI.
Section XI.
At the period when the Danes were making their conquests in the West, art and literature did not occupy any very high position in Europe. The severe shock which the fall of the Roman Empire had given to all the more elevated pursuits was still far from being overcome. Christian art was in its childhood, and groped its way with weak attempts, and imitations of Roman models; whilst literature, confined for the most part to one-sided theological inquiries, or to the inditing of dry and annalistic c
16 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Section XII.
Section XII.
The supposition that the Danes in England devoted themselves to study both earlier, and to a greater extent, than the Normans in France, is not founded only on loose conjectures. The English chronicles of the earlier middle ages contain traces of the Danes having not unfrequently entered into the English Church, in which they sometimes obtained the highest preferment. On this point we still possess an important source of information, which has, besides, the advantage of being for the most part c
32 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Section XIII.
Section XIII.
The Anglo-Saxons were the teachers of the Danes in several ways; above all they made them Christians, and thus communicated to them a new and higher civilization. The Danes in England reaped advantage from the civilization of the Anglo-Saxons, just as the Anglo-Saxons themselves had once begun their own, by building on that refinement which their predecessors, the Romans, had disseminated in England. But as the Anglo-Saxons did not become Romans, because they adopted and remodelled the Roman civ
41 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Section XIV.
Section XIV.
The various kinds of Danish and Danish-Norwegian memorials which I have alluded to, such as names of places, coins, and peculiarities of language (not to mention contemporary letters-patent and laws), afford so many incontrovertible proofs that the Danish influence in England was neither of short duration, nor, on the whole, of a transient nature. Future and more successful investigations and comparisons, more particularly in England itself, will undoubtedly much extend the circle of known Danis
13 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Section I.
Section I.
None of the seas of Europe are so rough and stormy as that which washes its northern and north-western coasts. Even in Jutland the effects of the cold north-west wind which sweeps down from the icy sea between Norway, Iceland, and Scotland, are severely felt. Along its west coast, for a distance of several miles inland, there are no woods, but only low stunted oak bushes, which in many places scarcely rise above the tall heather. Still farther eastward, and even in Funen and Zealand, which the n
9 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Section II.
Section II.
The same want of unity and the same internal disputes which had brought ruin on the Celts in other places, prepared the way for foreign conquerors in Scotland. An indomitable fate decreed that the newer and higher civilization of Christianity should here, as in the rest of Europe, be founded and promoted by a Teutonic people. But though the Anglo-Saxons had conquered almost all England, they were not able, by their own power, to subdue the Celts in Scotland. The Anglo-Saxon kings undertook, inde
6 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Section III.
Section III.
The boundaries between Scotland and England were anciently very unsettled. After the time of the Romans, the Anglo-Saxon and Danish kings speedily extended their dominion over the Cheviot Hills, and frequently to the Firths of Clyde and Forth; whilst considerable tracts of the north of England, particularly in the north-western districts, were sometimes united with the Scotch Lowlands, or with kingdoms which existed there. Until England and Scotland were at length united under one crown, the nor
7 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Section IV.
Section IV.
We cannot venture to conclude, from the few Scandinavian names of places found in the Lowlands, that the immigrant Scandinavian population was but inconsiderable; nor can we presume to infer either the extent or the period of the immigration from the numberless traditions respecting the Danes preserved throughout that district. For, although the Lowlands were far from being conquered by the Danes and Norwegians so early as England was, still the number of alleged Danish memorials, even of a remo
17 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Section V.
Section V.
We might expect that the most northern isles of Scotland, which lie exposed in a stormy sea, should possess the same wild and mountainous character as the Faroe Isles and Iceland. Such a belief gains strength when, for the first time, in passing from Scotland, we obtain a view of the southern Orkneys, especially the considerable mountain heights of the Isle of Hay. Indeed Hay obtained its name (originally “Haey,” or the high island) from the old Northmen, on account of the mountains which distin
11 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Section VI.
Section VI.
9 . Partly from S. Hibbert, P. A. Munch, and Chr. Plöyen. If the present originally Norwegian population in the Orkneys and Shetland Islands possessed, on the whole, any strongly-marked Scandinavian characteristics, they would naturally occur most in the islands farthest towards the north. But the oppressions and political changes that have occurred there have done their work so thoroughly, that even the Shetlanders no longer bear in their character and natural disposition any strongly-marked fe
15 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Section VII
Section VII
The Orkneys, on account of their greater fertility, and of their lying nearer to Scotland, were in ancient times, as indeed they are at present, of much more importance than the distant Shetland Isles. As the chief seat of the Norwegian jarls, they formed the central point of the Norwegian power in the north of Scotland. According to the Sagas, most of the many Danes and Norwegians who settled on the islands to the north of Scotland, resorted to the Orkneys; by which means, the jarls who governe
18 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Section VIII.
Section VIII.
The Orkneys are separated towards the south from the most northern part of the Scotch Highlands by a firth about eight miles in breadth, called Pentland Firth ( Old N. , Petlandfjörðr, the fiord of the land of the Picts?). The maelstrom, or whirlpool, in this firth, where the currents from the North Sea and Atlantic Ocean meet, is at least as violent and dangerous as the “Röst,” so famed in ancient times, between the Orkneys and Shetland. Even in calm weather the meeting currents raise the waves
22 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Section IX.
Section IX.
The rocky western coast of the Highlands south of Sutherland was not, as I before mentioned, permanently inhabited by the Norwegians. They had, indeed, regular settlements on the west coast, but these were on the islands. They were here secure from the sudden attacks of the Gaels, or Highlanders, who, generally speaking, would scarcely have ventured out on a sea which then swarmed with Vikings. The farther, therefore, the islands were from the mainland, so much the more secure would the Norwegia
14 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Section X.
Section X.
Iona was not always accounted one of the northern isles. Farther towards the north, on the north-west coast of Mull, are the islands of Treshinish, and among them a steep rocky island, called Cairnburg, which is said to have formed, at all events at times, the boundary between the northern and southern isles, or Sudreyjar. Cairnburg is accessible only at one spot, and by its height above the sea it forms an important stronghold, which in former times was often numerously garrisoned. The Sagas, w
28 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Section I.
Section I.
Ireland may still be justly called the chief land of the ancient Celtic tribes. Long after the Britons and Caledonians had been driven out by the Romans and Anglo-Saxons, and obliged to fly to the remotest mountain districts of the west, their Irish kinsmen retained firm possession of the whole large and fertile country of Ireland. Subsequently, it is true, the Irish also were compelled to give way before the conquests of the Norwegians and English; yet they continued to inhabit the greater part
13 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Section II.
Section II.
One of the many complaints made by the Irish against the Danes, and particularly of late, is, that by destroying Irish civilization they likewise choked the vigorous germs of a national literature, which, in consequence of the early introduction of Christianity, had begun at a very early period to take root among the Irish people. The existence of a literature, particularly like the ancient Irish, in the vernacular language of the country, must of course always afford a strong proof of a certain
13 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Section III.
Section III.
According to trustworthy historical evidence, the Norwegians and the Danes, or the Ostmen, as they were called in Ireland (from having come originally from the east), principally fixed their abodes in Dublin, Waterford, and Limerick, where, as early as the ninth century, they had founded peculiar Scandinavian kingdoms. They were also settled in considerable numbers in Wexford, Cork, and several Irish cities, so that they had possessed themselves, by degrees, of the best-situated places in the ea
10 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Section IV.
Section IV.
The few Scandinavian names of places in Ireland are, with the exception of the previously-mentioned provinces, confined to the coasts, and there particularly to the names of islands and fiords. On the west coast there are only two rather doubtful ones; namely, Enniskerry, an island (the first part of which is the Irish Inis , an island, whilst the latter part seems to include the Scandinavian name “ Sker ,” or Skjær , a reef); and the harbour, Smerwick. Several places on rivers are still called
9 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Section V.
Section V.
Centuries before the introduction of Christianity into the Scandinavian North (in the tenth and eleventh centuries)—nay, centuries before the actual commencement of the Viking expeditions—the Irish people had been Christianized. At a very early period numbers of churches and convents were erected in Ireland, which was also celebrated for its many holy men. It was a common saying that the Irish soil was so holy that neither vipers, nor any other poisonous reptiles, could exist upon it. Numerous p
13 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Section VI.
Section VI.
The cause of the battle of Clontarf, so celebrated in song and legend, or, as it is called in the Sagas, “Briánsbardagi” (Brian’s battle, after King Brian, who fell in it in 1014), is not precisely known. All that we are acquainted with is, that Brian, who was connected by very close ties of relationship with the Norwegian royal family in Dublin, had long availed himself of the assistance of the Norwegians to subdue other Irish princes, until, at length, after gaining victories in that manner, h
17 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
APPENDIX I.
APPENDIX I.
“Pro Custumannis [11] Waterfordi in Hibernia. Rex Justiciario suo Hibernie et omnibus aliis Ballivis et fidelibus suis Hibernie ad quos, &c., salutem. Quia per inspeccionem carte Domini Henrici Regis, filii Imperatricis, quondam Domini Hibernie preavi nostri, nobis constat quod Custumanni nostri Waterford legem Anglicorum in Hibernia habere et secundum ipsam legem judicari et deduci debent. Vobis mandamus quod Gillecrist Makgillemory, William Makgillemory, et Johannem Makgillemory, et al
1 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
APPENDIX II.
APPENDIX II.
While this work was going through the press, a silver coin, forming an entirely new and highly remarkable contribution to our knowledge of the early Norwegian coinage in the capital of Ireland, was discovered among the collection bequeathed by the late Mr. Devegge to the Royal Cabinet of Coins in Copenhagen. It is represented in the annexed woodcut. [ ++ ] Coin: Olaf in Dublin. The legend on the obverse is “ Oolaf i divielin ,” or “Olaf in Dublin.” That on the reverse almost seems to be “ Oolafn
40 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter