For the Story of Olaf the Peacock and Unn the Deep-minded: _Laxdæla Saga_. Translated by Mrs Muriel Press For the Story of the Burning: _Nial’s Saga_. Translated by G. W. Dasent For the Battle of Clontarf: _Wars of the Gael and Gall_. Edited by J. H. Todd; _Nial’s Saga_, and _Thorstein’s Saga_ For Murtough of the Leather Cloaks: The bard Cormacan’s Poem. Edited by J. O’Donovan (Irish Arch. Soc.) _English Chronicles_: The English Chronicle; William of Malmesbury’s, Henry of Huntingdon’s, Florence of Worcester’s Chronicles; Asser’s _Life of Alfred_ _Irish Chronicles_: Annals of the Four Masters; of Ulster; _Chronicum Scotorum_; Three Fragments of Annals, edited by J. O’Donovan I desire to thank Mrs Muriel Press and Mr W. C. Green for kind permission to make use of portions of their translations of Laxdæla and Egil’s Sagas; also Mr W. G. Collingwood for his consent to my adoption in my map of some of his boundaries from a map published in his _Scandinavian Britain_ (S.P.C.K.); and to the Secretary of the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge for giving his sanction to this. The Northmen in Britain THE AGE OF THE VIKINGS Chapter I The First Coming of the Northmen The first actual descent of the Northmen is chronicled in England under the year 787, and in Ireland, upon which country they commenced their descents about the same time, under the year 795; but it is likely, not only that they had visited and raided the coasts before this, but had actually made some settlements in both countries. The Ynglinga Saga tells us that Ivar Vidfadme or “Widefathom” had taken possession of a fifth part of England, _i.e._ Northumbria, before Harald Fairhair ruled in Norway, or Gorm the Old in Denmark; that is to say, before the history of either of these two countries begins. Ivar Vidfadme is evidently Ivar the Boneless, son of Ragnar Lodbrog, who conquered Northumbria before the reign of Harald Fairhair. There are traces of them even earlier, for a year after the first coming of the Northmen to Northumbria mentioned in the English annals we find that they called a synod at a place named Fingall, or “Fair Foreigners,” the name always applied to the Norse in our Irish and sometimes in our English chronicles. Now a place would not have been so named unless Norse people had for some time been settled there, and we may take it for granted that Norse settlers had made their home in Northumbria at some earlier period. We find, too, at quite an early time, that Norse and Irish had mingled and intermarried in Ireland, forming a distinct race called the Gall-Gael, or “Foreigners and Irish,” who had their own fleets and armies; and it is said that on account of their close family connexion many of the Christian Irish forsook their religion and relapsed into the paganism of the Norse who lived amongst them. We shall find, as we go on in the history, that generally the contrary