The chapters that are devoted to the discussion of the duties and activities of the king’s guardsmen, to the manners and customs which should rule in the king’s garth, and to the ethical ideas on which these were largely based are of great interest to the student of medieval culture. They reveal a progress in the direction of refined life and polished manners, which one should scarcely expect to find in the Northern lands. The development of courtesy and refined manners may have been accelerated by the new literature which was coming into Scandinavia from France and Germany, a literature that dealt so largely with the doings of knights and kings;[62] but it was probably not so much a matter of bookish instruction as of direct imitation. The Northmen, though they lived far from the great centers of culture, were always in close touch with the rest of the world. In the earlier centuries the viking sailed his dreaded craft wherever there was wealth and plunder and civilized life. After him and often as his companion came the merchant who brought away new ideas along with other desirable wares. After a time Christianity was introduced from the southlands, and the pilgrim and the crusader took the place of the heathen pirate. And all these classes helped to reshape the life of courtesy in the Northern countries. Footnote 62: See above, pp. 2–3. It is difficult to overestimate the influence of the crusader as a pioneer of Christian culture in Scandinavia, but it seems possible that the pilgrim was even more important in this respect. It was no doubt largely through his journeys that German influences began to be felt in the Scandinavian lands, though it is possible that the wide activities of the Hanseatic merchants should also be credited with some importance for the spread of Teutonic culture. It is told in the _King’s Mirror_ that a new mode of dressing the hair and the beard had been introduced from Germany since the author had retired from the royal court.[63] It is significant that the routes usually followed by Norwegian pilgrims who sought the Eternal City and the holy places in the Orient ran through German lands. As a rule the pilgrims traveled through Jutland, Holstein, and the Old Saxon territories and reached the Rhine at Mainz. It was also possible to take a more easterly route, and sometimes the travelers would go by sea to the Low Countries and thence southward past Utrecht and Cologne; but all these three routes converged at Mainz, whence the journey led up the Rhine and across the Alps. It will be noted that a long stretch of the journey from Norway to Rome would lead through the German kingdom. Concerning the people of the Old Saxon or German lands an Icelandic scribe makes the following significant remark: “In that country the people are more polished and courteous than in most places and the Northmen imitate their customs quite generally.”[64] Footnote 63: C. xxx. Footnote 64: