There has been much arguing to and fro of the question as to the
respective shares taken by Danes and Norwegians in the Viking movement.
That of the Swedes can fortunately be determined with a good deal more
certainty. The Swedes were for the most part interested only in Eastern
Europe and there by way of trade rather than of battle: we learn
from runic inscriptions and other sources that some Swedes did visit
England and the West, but these visits were due to individual rather
than national activity. The question as between Dane and Norwegian
has been to some extent made more difficult of settlement through the
national prejudices of Scandinavian scholars; e.g. Danes for the most
part decide in favour of the Danish origin of Rollo of Normandy, while
Norwegians decide in favour of his Norwegian birth. Such differences
of opinion are unfortunately only too often possible owing to the
scantiness of the material upon which we have to base our conclusions.
Medieval chroniclers were for the most part unable or unwilling
to distinguish between Danes and Norwegians; they were all alike
'Nordmanni' to them and the term 'Dani' is practically interchangeable
with it. The vagueness of their ethnographical knowledge is manifest
when we find the Norman Dudo at the beginning of the 11th century
tracing back the Dani (or Daci) to an original home in Dacia. The
Irish annalists did, however, draw a very definite distinction between
Norwegians and Danes--Finn-gaill and Dubh-gaill as they called them,
i.e. White and Black Foreigners respectively[2]. They seem never
to confuse them, but exactly on what grounds they gave them their
distinguishing epithets it is now impossible to determine. They do not
correspond to any known ethnographical differences, and the only other
reasonable suggestion which has been offered is that the terms are used
to describe some difference of armour or equipment as yet unknown to
us. The Irish annals also distinguish between Daunites or Danes and
Lochlanns or men from Lochlann, i.e. Norway; but again the origin of
the term Lochlann as applied to Norway is obscure. The writers of the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle seem to use the term _Norðmenn_ very definitely
of Norwegians, just as Alfred does in his translation of Orosius, but
the term _Dene_ came to be used more vaguely and uncertainly. It is
only very rarely that the chroniclers vouchsafe us precise information
as to the home of any particular group of Viking raiders. We have
already mentioned the presence of Norwegians from Hörðaland in England
at the very opening of the movement[3]: once we hear of 'Westfaldingi,'
i.e. men from Vestfold in South Norway, in an account of attacks on
Aquitaine, and in one passage the Vikings are called 'Scaldingi,' but
it is disputed whether this means Vikings who had been quartering
themselves in the valley of the Scheldt, or is a term applied to the
Danes from the name of their royal family, viz. the Skjöldungar[4].
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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