"No race of the ancient or modern world have ever taken to the sea with such heartiness as the Northmen. The great cause which filled the waters of Western Europe with their barks was that consolidation and centralization of the kingly power all over Europe which followed after the days of Charlemagne, and which put a stop to those great invasions and migrations by land which had lasted for centuries. Before that time the north and east of Europe, pressed from behind by other nationalities, and growing straitened within their own bounds, threw off from time to time bands of emigrants which gathered force as they slowly marched along, until they appeared in the west as a fresh wave of the barbarian flood. As soon as the west, recruited from the very source whence the invaders came, had gained strength enough to set them at defiance, which happened in the time of Charlemagne, these invasions by land ceased after a series of bloody defeats, and the north had to look for another outlet for the force which it was unable to support at home. Nor was the north itself slow to follow Charlemagne's example. Harold Fairhair, no inapt disciple of the great emperor, subdued the petty kings in Norway one after another, and made himself supreme king. At the same time he invaded the rights of the old freeman, and by taxes and tolls laid on his allodial holding drove him into exile. We have thus the old outlet cut off and a new cause for emigration added. No doubt the Northmen even then had long been used to struggle with the sea, and sea-roving was the calling of the brave, but the two causes we have named gave it a great impulse just at the beginning of the tenth century, and many a freeman who would have joined the host of some famous leader by land, or have lived on a little king at home, now sought the waves as a birthright of which no king could rob him. Either alone, or as the follower of some sea-king, whose realm was the sea's wide wastes, he went out year after year, and thus won fame and wealth. The name given to this pursuit was Viking, a word which is in no way akin to king. It is derived from 'Vik,' a bay or creek, because these sea-rovers lay moored in bays and creeks on the look-out for merchant ships; the 'ing' is a well known ending, meaning, in this case, occupation or calling. Such a sea-rover was called 'Vikingr,' and at one time or another in his life almost every man of note in the North had taken to the sea and lived a Viking life." _G. W. Dasent, Story of Burnt Njal, volume 2, appendix._