The Viking expeditions were always undertaken by free men, and were in the North, from remotest times, considered not only an honest but an honorable occupation. Slaves and freed men were excluded. The leaders--often kings or their sons--were always men of noble descent or of importance. As the Viking expeditions took on larger proportions, they became more and more organized; from random expeditions, undertaken by individuals, they developed into national undertakings, led by the king or his chieftains, not for a pastime, but in completion of a national policy. On account of this latest aspect, it is but just to divide the field in which the Northmen were active according to their respective nationalities. With such a division applied, the Viking expeditions to the West, to Britain, France, Portugal and Spain do not pertain to Swedish history, for they were planned and undertaken principally by Danes and Norwegians. It is true that there were many Swedish participants also in these expeditions, as the sagas and the memorial stones on Swedish soil tell us; also true that some of the later Swedish provinces, like Bohuslæn[1] and Scania, sent out their large contingents of Vikings and sea-kings to the West, and that one of the oldest Swedish homes of culture, West Gothland, had an appropriate channel to the West, by way of the mighty Gotha River, through which without doubt many a Viking expedition was sent; yet the leaders were in a majority of cases Danish or Norwegian chieftains. For similar reasons the Viking expeditions to the East belong by right to Swedish history. In them the participants and chieftains were Swedes, to an overwhelming majority, and, from time immemorial, Swedish districts from which the expeditions were started. To Russia the Swedes first went on marauding expeditions; but after the countries of the North had been shaped into three large monarchies, they came to Russia upon special invitation, in order to found there a realm of strong and consistent government. This becomes evident from the testimony of the Russian historian Nestor, a monk in Kief, who lived in the latter part of the eleventh century. About the founding of the Russian empire by the Swedes he has the following remarkable statements: