The Northmen in Britain

The first actual descent of the Northmen is chronicled in England under the year 787, and in Ireland, upon which country they commenced their descents about the same time, under...

According to the Danish and Norse accounts, the leader of the armies of the Northmen on the occasion we have just referred to was the famous Ragnar Lodbrog, one of the earliest...

It seemed, toward the close of the ninth century, that England would gradually pass into the power of the Danes and cease to be an independent country. They had established them...

It was in the midst of incessant warfare that Alfred ascended the throne of Wessex. Ethelred, his brother, died a few months after the battle of Ashdune, and in the same year, t...

There were yet other directions toward which the Norse viking-hosts had already turned their eyes. Not far out from the coasts of Norway lay the Orkney and Shetland Islands, and...

There is yet another direction to which we must turn our attention, if we would understand the grip that the Northmen at this time had taken on the British Islands, and the gene...

While Harald Fairhair was occupied in settling the Hebrides and Orkneys with inhabitants from Norway, and Rollo and his successors were possessing themselves of the larger part...

Athelstan, who came to the throne on the death of his father Edward, had been a favourite grandson of Alfred, and people said that he resembled his grandfather in many ways. Whe...

The account of the battle of Brunanburh in Egil’s Saga begins by describing the strong combination made against Athelstan by the princes of the north of England with the Scots a...

It was, as we saw, part of Athelstan’s policy of consolidation to ally his family with foreign princes. After marrying one sister to Sitric Gale, King of the Danes of Northumbri...

When he was fifteen years old news came to Hakon in England that his father Harald Fairhair had died. He had resigned his crown three years before his death, for he had become f...

It seemed that all would have gone well in Norway with King Hakon the Good after King Eric Bloodaxe left the country, but that he had it in his mind to make the people Christian...

One of the greatest Kings of Norway was named Olaf Trygveson (_i.e._ the son of Trygve), who became King of Norway in 995. He had an adventurous career, part of it being connect...

It does not concern us here to follow the story of Olaf Trygveson point by point. Much of his history is taken up with attempts to force Christianity upon his people, as King Ha...

The wildest of all the vikings were those who settled in the Orkney Isles and carried on their raids from there. After Ragnvald had given up his possessions in the Isles to Earl...

Ireland as well as Norway and the Orkneys had her saga-tales of the events of the viking period. About the middle of the tenth century two princes, one in the north of Ireland a...

Slavery was commonly practised in the days of which we are writing, and slaves taken in war were often carried from the British Isles to Iceland or Norway. There are many accoun...

We now come to a battle that is famous alike in Norse and in Irish story. It was the final effort made by the Norsemen to assert their supremacy over Ireland, and the last of se...

We will now turn to the Orkneys and see what was happening there. It is Yule or Christmas, and at Earl Sigurd the Stout’s Court a splendid feast is in progress. The long hall is...

Of all the sagas of Iceland the most famous and the best known is the saga of Njal, or, as it is sometimes called, the Story of the Burning. Njal or Nial is an Irish name, and t...

But Nial’s enemies were loth to wait for his clearing at law, and they planned to bring about his death and the death of his sons. A man Flosi was at the head of these conspirat...

Denmark became consolidated into a kingdom at a slightly earlier period than Norway, and there was constant strife between the two young nations. The first king of all Denmark w...

When it became known that Sweyn was dead, it was agreed at a meeting of the Angles to send for Ethelred out of Normandy; for the people thought it would be wiser to have their o...

Canute, or Knut, the son of Sweyn, was in England when his father died. The Danes immediately elected him king, and he lay at Lindsey with his fleet when Ethelred returned to cl...

For the first nine or ten years of his reign, Canute remained in England, only occasionally going over to Denmark to see that all was going on well there. He spent this time in...

We need not give much attention to the reign of Harald, the son and successor of Canute. Though he reigned for over four years, there is no good act told of him. The unfortunate...

We need not linger over the reign of Edward the Confessor, the weak and womanish king who came to the throne of England on the death of Hardacanute; in fact, the country can har...

The king who succeeded Edward was in every way unlike him. The fair hair and beard and blue eyes of Edward, described by our chroniclers, his long, feminine fingers, his florid...

Harald Hardrada was not the last King of Norway to visit these countries. Long after this the Norwegian kings tried at times to assert their rights over the Orkneys and other pa...

Though the viking period is generally spoken of as ending about A.D. 1100, it went on, as a matter of fact, long after that. The last of the great vikings--that is, of those who...