10. _Germany, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Greece, &c._—During the Pagan age, the Northmen were on the coasts of all these countries, which they ravaged with success. Their visit to Italy, however, was but transient. Hastings, their leader, did no more than surprise a town at the mouth of the Tiber, and returned to Gaul, where a richer spoil invited him. In Spain, the Scandinavians abode for many years. The important city of Seville was in their power, and from it they made frequent and most disastrous incursions into the neighbouring provinces. They were long too powerful to be expelled by the monarch of Cordova, though that monarch was no other than the great Abderahman. On the coast of Galicia too, according to the ancient chroniclers of Castile, they abode for a season, and caused much mischief to the subjects of Pelayo’s successors. In Belgium and Spain their ravages were more frequent and more severe; in fact, there was no cessation to them until the north became Christianized. But though of their predatory expeditions a volume might be composed, they would little interest the reader, both because the description of one is the description of all, and because they left no permanent or important results behind them. In the expeditions which we have already contemplated, such results are to be found. In England they led to the formation of an independent kingdom in Northumbria, compelled even Alfred to retire into private life, and eventually placed Danish sovereigns on the throne. In France they occasioned the dismemberment of Normandy and Brittany from the crown. In Ireland they gave rise to many principalities, and continued, for centuries, to influence in the highest degree the fate of that country. In the Orkneys, they led to the establishment of a powerful dynasty, and produced a hardy race of men who still possess those islands. In Iceland there was the same result; and Iceland too became, what to literature is more important,—the refuge of the Norwegian language, religion, and learning. In Greenland, they called into existence a colony which subsisted above three hundred years. In Russia, they laid the foundation of the greatest empire which the world has yet seen. Even in North America, transient or unknown as were the results they produced, they exhibit a phenomenon as curious as it is interesting,—a handful of warlike shepherds, or adventurous mariners, traversing the wide Atlantic, and attempting to introduce their own institutions among the savages of another world. But those which were undertaken into the countries before us were not directed by master minds, and their motive was only sordid gain. The circumstances, therefore, which accompanied them may, for any thing we care, slumber in oblivion.[14] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAP. V.[15] COSMOGONY AND RELIGION OF SCANDINAVIA. INTRODUCTION.