The Vikings were guilty of two besetting sins--immoderate love of wine and of women. Of their relations to women enough has been said already. Their drunken revelry is best illustrated by the story of the orgie which led up to the death of St Alphege in London in 1012, when, after drinking their fill of the wine they had brought from abroad, they pelted the bishop with bones from the feast, and finally pierced his skull with the spike on the back of an axe. Of sin in the Christian sense the Vikings had no conception. An Irish chronicler tells us indeed that the Danes have a certain piety in that they can refrain from flesh and from women for a time, but a truer description is probably that given by Adam of Bremen when he says that the Danes can weep neither for their sins nor for their dead. The chief occupations of the Vikings were trade and war, but we must beware of drawing a too rigid distinction between adventurers and peaceful stay-at-homes. The Vikings when they settled in England and elsewhere showed that their previous roving life did not hinder them in the least from settling down as peaceful traders, farmers, or peasant-labourers, while the figure of Ohthere or Óttarr, to give him his Norse name, who entered the service of king Alfred, may serve to remind us that many a landed gentleman was not above carrying on a good trade with the Finns or undertaking voyages of exploration in the White Sea. Trading in those days was a matter of great difficulty and many risks. The line of division between merchant and Viking was a very thin one, and more than once we read how, when merchants went on a trading expedition, they arranged a truce until their business was concluded and then treated each other as enemies. Trade in Scandinavia was carried on either in fixed centres or in periodical markets held in convenient places. The chief trading centres were the twin towns of Slesvík-Hedeby in Denmark, Skiringssalr in S.W. Norway, and Björkö, Sigtuna and the island of Gothland in Sweden, while an important market was held periodically at Bohuslän on the Götaelv, at a place were the boundaries of the three northern kingdoms met. A characteristic incident which happened at this market illustrates the international character of the trade done there. On a certain occasion a wealthy merchant named Gille (the name is Celtic), surnamed the Russian because of his many journeys to that country, set up his booth in the market and received a visit from the Icelander Höskuldr who was anxious to buy a female slave. Gille drew back a curtain dividing off the inner part of the tent and showed Höskuldr twelve female slaves. Höskuldr bought one and she proved to be an Irish king's daughter who had been made captive by Viking raiders.