"The northern pirates, variously called Danes or Normans, according as they came from the islands of the Baltic Sea or the coast of Norway, … descended from the same primitive race with the Anglo-Saxons and the Franks; their language had roots identical with the idioms of these two nations: but this token of an ancient fraternity did not preserve from their hostile incursions either Saxon Britain or Frankish Gaul, nor even the territory beyond the Rhine, then exclusively inhabited by Germanic tribes. The conversion of the southern Teutons to the Christian faith had broken all bond of fraternity between them and the Teutons of the north. In the 9th century the man of the north still gloried in the title of son of Odin, and treated as bastards and apostates the Germans who had become children of the church. … A sort of religious and patriotic fanaticism was thus combined in the Scandinavian with the fiery impulsiveness of their character, and an insatiable thirst for gain. They shed with joy the blood of the priests, were especially delighted at pillaging the churches, and stabled their horses in the chapels of the palaces. … In three days, with an east wind, the fleets of Denmark and Norway, two-sailed vessels, reached the south of Britain. The soldiers of each fleet obeyed in general one chief, whose vessel was distinguished from the rest by some particular ornament. … All equal under such a chief, bearing lightly their voluntary submission and the weight of their mailed armour, which they promised themselves soon to exchange for an equal weight of gold, the Danish pirates pursued the 'road of the swans,' as their ancient national poetry expressed it. Sometimes they coasted along the shore, and laid wait for the enemy in the straits, the bays, and smaller anchorages, which procured them the surname of Vikings, or 'children of the creeks'; sometimes they dashed in pursuit of their prey across the ocean." _A. Thierry, Conquest of England by the Normans, book 2 (volume 1)._ ALSO IN: _T. Carlyle, The Early Kings of Norway._ NORMANS: 8-9th Centuries. The Vikings and what sent them to sea.