The viking was at first simply a bold adventurer, but a mixture of trading and raiding became a settled practice with large numbers of Norsemen, who, when work at home was slack and the harvest was sown or reaped, filled up the time by pirate inroads on their own or neighbouring lands. Hardy sailors and fearless fighters they were; and life would have seemed too tame had it meant a continuous course of peaceful farming or fishing. New possessions and new conquests were the salt of life. “Biorn went sometimes on viking but sometimes on trading voyages,” we read of a man of position in Egil’s Saga, and the same might be said of hundreds of his fellows. It was out of these viking raids that the Dano-Norse Kingdoms of Dublin and Northumbria grew, the Dukedom of Normandy, and the Earldom of Orkney and the Isles. The Danish descents seem to have been more directly for the purpose of conquest than those of the Norse, and they ended by establishing on the throne of England a brief dynasty of Danish kings in the eleventh century, remarkable only from the vigour of Canute’s reign. The intimate connexion all through this period between Scandinavia, Iceland, and Britain can only be realized by reading the Northern Sagas side by side with the chronicles of Great Britain and Ireland, and it is from Norse sources chiefly that I propose to tell the story. Contents THE AGE OF THE VIKINGS CHAP. PAGE I. THE FIRST COMING OF THE NORTHMEN 11 II. THE SAGA OF RAGNAR LODBROG, OR “HAIRY-BREEKS” 15 III. THE CALL FOR HELP 22 IV. ALFRED THE GREAT 29 V. HARALD FAIRHAIR, FIRST KING OF NORWAY, AND THE SETTLEMENTS IN THE ORKNEYS 36 VI. THE NORTHMEN IN IRELAND 45 VII. THE EXPANSION OF ENGLAND 52 VIII. KING ATHELSTAN THE GREAT 56 IX. THE BATTLE OF BRUNANBURH 65 X. TWO GREAT KINGS TRICK EACH OTHER 78 XI. KING HAKON THE GOOD 82 XII. KING HAKON FORCES HIS PEOPLE TO BECOME CHRISTIANS 85 XIII. THE SAGA OF OLAF TRYGVESON 91 XIV. KING OLAF’S DRAGON-SHIPS 100 XV. WILD TALES FROM THE ORKNEYS 108 XVI. MURTOUGH OF THE LEATHER CLOAKS 117 XVII. THE STORY OF OLAF THE PEACOCK 122 XVIII. THE BATTLE OF CLONTARF 135 XIX. YULE IN THE ORKNEYS, 1014 144