Under the name of “Normans” are included all those swarms of Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes, which, from the close of the eighth until far into the eleventh century, either laid waste or settled on the eastern and southern coasts of the Baltic, as well as the coasts of the west and south of Europe. “Norman” signifies neither more nor less than a man from the north. The Danish conquest of England was therefore just as fully Normanic as the conquest, by the Norwegians and Danes, of a part of France, called, after them, Normandy. Hence there was a natural reason why the Danish conquerors, and Svend Tveskjæg in particular, concluded an alliance with the dukes of Normandy, in order that they might find a reception among these kinsmen in case they should not be able to make themselves masters of England; and hence, in like manner, Canute the Great obtained the more readily the hand of Emma, the daughter of a Norman (and consequently nearly related) duke. But between the above-mentioned conquests there was this difference, that the Danish conquest of England, together with the Norwegian conquests in Scotland and Ireland, was of far greater extent, and of quite a different and more extensive importance for the British Isles, than the Norwegian-Danish conquest of so small a district as Normandy was for France. Whilst the Northmen principally brought thither only a number of powerful chiefs, who, at the expense of the natives, constituted themselves into an imperious feudal nobility, and who afterwards for the most part went over with William the Conqueror into England, in search of still greater feudal possessions, the Danish expeditions to and conquest of England were, on the contrary, the means of bringing an entirely new population into a very considerable portion, perhaps even the half, of that kingdom.