The celebrated German philologist and archeologist, Professor H. Zimmer, supposes that the Norsemen visited the Shetland Islands between the years 590 and 644. This supposition has been confirmed by the researches of Dr. Jacob Jacobsen, who lived for a long time in these islands in order to study there the Norse names of the villages and to pick up still other traces of the Norse language. This savant also concluded that the Norsemen must have already visited the Shetland Islands about the year 700. [Sidenote: II 75] If these facts be compared with what used to be done on the Mediterranean, where the endeavor was always made to land at night, it is impossible to repress a sentiment of admiration for the Norsemen who crossed the sea fearlessly as far as Iceland and Greenland. Their naval architecture must even then have reached an extraordinary degree of perfection, full proof of which is found in the construction of the superb ships “Oxberg” and “Gokstad”, found in the neighborhood of Sandefijord (Christiania Museum of Antiquities). Hence it is scarcely probable that the peoples of the North should have learned anything at all about shipbuilding during their expeditions across Western Europe. On the contrary, this part of Europe, including the Netherlands, must have borrowed the art of shipbuilding from them. It was also only very much later that a navy and fleet were spoken of in England. (See ~Holmes~, _Ancient and Modern Ships_, 1900.) Afterwards, the Norsemen extended their excursions more and more toward the South; they settled in Normandy and took possession of England. It was in the course of these expeditions that they became acquainted with the naval architecture of the Mediterranean. It is needless to say that they must then have appreciated the perfection which the latter had reached. Furthermore their interest demanded it. They borrowed, in particular from the nations of Southern Europe the anchor which these, in their turn, had learned from the Greeks. The Norse word “akkeri”, which means _anchor_, seems to be borrowed from the Anglo-Saxon “ancor” which owes its origin to the Latin word “ancora”. The word “forkr”, meaning a boathook, is also of foreign origin; it comes from the Anglo-Saxon “forca” and from the Latin “furca”.