Denmark is surrounded on all sides by the sea, which has indented the land with numberless bays and firths, and cut it up into small portions. Nor is it washed only by a confined sea like the Baltic, but also by the more open German Ocean. From the earliest times, therefore, necessity obliged the Dane to put to sea in order to keep up his connections with his friends on the surrounding coasts and islands. Subsequently—when commerce, and more especially when military honour, required it—he was compelled to learn how to navigate the open sea, to struggle with the foaming waves and rapid currents, and to defy the surf—which is still the constant terror of seamen—on the coasts of north and west Jutland. Thus the Dane early became a bold and daring Viking, and the Norwegian distinguished himself in the same manner. Norway turns her broad and rocky bosom towards the ocean. Her wild and broken coasts, split into deep fiords, or gulfs, bear witness to the never-ceasing and violent attacks of the Atlantic. Towards the east, Norway is separated from Sweden by rocks, forests, and large desert plains. The interior of the country is partly filled with mountains and immense forests, which anciently were still more extensive. The valleys alone, along the banks of rivers, are productive, and capable of cultivation. The greater part of the inhabitants settled therefore originally on the fiords, or in the neighbourhood of the sea, where the pasture land was neither so over grown with wood, nor so sequestered as in the interior, and where also the sea air rendered the climate considerably milder. The weather, however, was variable enough, and the products of the earth being, partly on that account, but scanty, fishing and the chase became important sources of maintenance for the continually-increasing population. The forests supplied them with abundance of timber, the soil was rich in iron; nor were the people wanting in a daring and enterprising spirit. Ships were soon built, capable not only of navigating the fiords, but of venturing beyond their mouths. The first voyages were coasting ones, but subsequently they were extended from the southern part of Norway to the Danish and Swedish shores.