Section X.
Commerce and Navigation.
The Northmen, who in ancient times sailed to foreign shores, were far from always being Vikings, bent only on rapine and plunder, and the conquest of new possessions. They were very often peaceful merchants. The remote situation of Scandinavia, and the dangers which the natives of more southern countries pictured to themselves as attendant upon a voyage to that ultima Thule and its heathenish inhabitants, must in ancient days, when navigation was very limited, have deterred foreign merchants from visiting it regularly, and bartering their wares. The Scandinavian tribes, on the contrary, were at that time almost the only seamen. From the want of all that belonged to the exterior comforts and conveniences of life in Scandinavia, the business of a merchant who bartered the products of the north and south, and who brought home with him a knowledge of distant and unknown lands, must early have become a profitable, and, from the dangers connected with it, an honourable profession. The trading voyages of the merchant were not, indeed, held in such esteem as those of the Vikings; yet from the most ancient times certain established customs were observed in the north for the protection of merchant vessels; and the merchant who, as was frequently the case, had distinguished himself by warlike qualities and shrewdness of understanding, was neither despised in the company of Vikings, nor in the King’s hall. Even chiefs of royal descent did not regard it as anything dishonourable to exercise the mercantile profession. Already, in the most ancient times, a number of trading places were scattered round the north, and large annual fairs were held. Once a year the ships of the merchants assembled together from the whole of Scandinavia, perhaps even from the other nearest situated countries, in the Sound of Haleyri, or, as it is now called, Elsinore. Booths were erected along the shore; foreign wares were bartered for fish, hides, and valuable furs; whilst various games, and all sorts of merry-making, took place.
During the Roman dominion in England, and probably even in far earlier times, a tolerably brisk commerce appears to have been kept up between England and the countries of Scandinavia, especially Jutland, Vendsyssel, and the districts round the Limfjord; where also, as a consequence of this, genuine Roman antiquities have been dug up at various times. After the conquest of England by the Jutes, the Angles, and the Saxons, and still more after the Danes and Norwegians had begun to settle there, this intercourse became still more frequent. We may safely assert that, so early as the close of the ninth and beginning of the tenth century, a very brisk trade must have existed between England and the North. The Scandinavian element was then so well established, that not only did Scandinavian kings reign, and coin money, in the north of England, but even that extremely important old Saxon city, “North-weorig,” which lay in the very heart of England, was called by the Saxon kings themselves, on their coins, by the foreign name of “Deorabui” (Deoraby, Dyreby, Derby); although this name, according to the English chroniclers’ own statements, was first given to it by the immigrant Danes. Some will even recognise Derby in the name of “Doribi,” which stands on a coin of King Ethelwulf of the middle of the ninth century (837-857). At all events it is a certain and remarkable proof of the early and wide-extended influence of the Scandinavian settlers, even in places far in the interior of the country, that “Deorabui” appears repeatedly on coins of King Athelstane (924-940), and of his immediate successors. It was this same Athelstane who is said to have visited Scandinavia, where he learned the language; and who afterwards educated at his court Hagen Adelsteen, the law-giver, who subsequently became the first Christian king in Norway. This fact also indicates the wide-spread and peaceful connection between England and the North, which not long afterwards induced the Norwegian King’s son, Olaf Trygvesön, in his treaty of peace with the English king, Ethelred, whose lands he had long harried, expressly to stipulate for certain rights and privileges in favour of the Scandinavian merchant ships in the English harbours.
Even in Alfred the Great’s time (A.D. 900) the seas and lands of Scandinavia were but very little known to the Anglo-Saxons; for which reason Alfred, chiefly with a view to trade and commerce, sent Ulfsten and the Norwegian Ottar on voyages of discovery to the Baltic, and along the coast of Norway to the White Sea. That according to the laws of his country an Anglo-Saxon merchant obtained the rank and title of Thane, or Chief, when he had thrice crossed the sea in his own ship, sufficiently attests how desirous the Anglo-Saxon kings were to awaken among their subjects, by means of large rewards, a desire for such voyages. Subsequently, however, during the expeditions of the Vikings and Normans, when the dangers attending long voyages had become still greater than before for the Anglo-Saxons, owing to the perfectly overwhelming force of the Northmen at sea, the trade, with Scandinavia at least, must have continued to remain in the hands of the Scandinavian merchants; who, as we learn from the Sagas, were continually making voyages, as well from Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, as from the still more distant Iceland, to England, and the other countries of the West. Wherever the Normans had won new settlements, Scandinavian merchants likewise established themselves in order to maintain a steady connection with their ancient home. It is for this simple reason that we find in those times so many Danes and Norwegians settled in the most important trading places, not only in England (in London, Southwark, Derby, Grimsby, York, Whitby, and other towns), but also, as we shall see in the sequel, in Ireland and in Normandy, where the city of “Ruda,” or Rouen, is spoken of as an important place of trade often visited by the Northmen.
The Scandinavian merchant vessels brought not only the wares of Scandinavia to the British Islands and other countries of the West; they likewise brought merchandise from the remote East. From the most ancient times, indeed, the Northmen had maintained connections with the eastern countries; which was a natural consequence of their having emigrated thence into the North, and left friends behind them there. By means of these connections, metals otherwise totally unknown in the North, and especially gold, were certainly brought thither at a very early period from the mountains of the East. Subsequently, in the fifth and sixth centuries, when fresh migrations from the East had taken place, a closer connection was opened with the eastern Roman Empire, and particularly with Constantinople, so that coins of that empire, and other valuables, began to be circulated in the North. After the Scandinavian colonists, too, had conquered kingdoms for themselves in the countries which now form modern Russia, and taken possession of the city of Novgorod, a regular commercial route appears to have been opened, through Russia, between Constantinople and the North, by which the Varangians passed, who entered as body-guards into the service of the Emperors of the East. But as far as regards trade, Novgorod and the Scandinavian colonists in Russia promoted a connection with Asia, which was of far greater extent and importance.
Before the passage to the East Indies by sea was discovered, and particularly before the Genoese and Venetians began to trade in the Black Sea and on the coasts of Asia, the main road from Arabia and the countries round the Caspian Sea to the Baltic and Scandinavia, lay through Russia, along the great rivers. To judge from the Oriental coins found both in Russia and in the Scandinavian countries, this commercial road must have been used from the eighth until far in the eleventh century, when it was broken up by internal disturbances in Asia, and by contemporary revolutions in Russia and the North. The road ran either from Transoxana (in Turan) to the countries north of the Caspian Sea, whence the merchandise was then brought along the river Volga to the Baltic; or else from Khorasan (in Iran), through Armenia, to the Black Sea; whence the Khazars and other people again conveyed it up the rivers farther towards the North. How considerable this trade must have been may be seen from the numerous hints in the Sagas, as well as from the still-existing Arabian accounts of merchants who in those days visited the coasts of the Baltic for the sake of trade, where considerable trading places, such as Sleswick and many others, are mentioned; but still more than all these, from the very great number of Arabian coins that have been dug up both in Russia and Scandinavia. In Sweden, and particularly in the island of Gothland, such an immense quantity of these has been found at various times, that in Stockholm alone above twenty thousand pieces have been preserved, presenting more than a thousand different dies, and coined in about seventy towns in the eastern and northern districts of the dominions of the Caliphs. Five-sixths of them were coined by Samanidic Caliphs. Together with the coins, a great mass of ornaments has been dug up, consisting of rings and other articles in silver, which are distinguished by a peculiar workmanship. On the whole, it appears that silver first came by this way into the North, where it was not generally circulated before the ninth and tenth centuries, and consequently at the time when the trade with Arabia was in full activity.
These discoveries of Arabian coins in the north of Europe, but which are confined to the shores of the Baltic, the German Ocean, and the Irish Sea, undoubtedly prove that Scandinavia, and particularly the countries on its eastern coasts, together with the islands of Gothland, Öland, and Bornholm, must have been the principal depôt for Arabian merchandise. It was the trade with the East that originally gave considerable importance to the city of Visby in Gothland; and it was subsequently the Russian trade that made Visby, in conjunction with Novgorod, important members of the German Hanseatic league. As long as the Arabian trade flourished, Gothland was the centre of a very animated traffic. Even now an almost incredible number of German, Hungarian, and particularly Anglo-Saxon coins, of the tenth and eleventh centuries, is dug up in the island. The collection of coins in Stockholm comprises an assortment of Anglo-Saxon coins, mostly the product of these discoveries, which, for extent and completeness, surpasses the greatest collections of the sort even in London and England.
The important and extensive commercial intercourse between Scandinavia and England, to which this so decidedly points, can also be traced in England itself. Oriental or Arabian coins, struck in the countries near the Caspian Sea, are dug up both in England and Ireland in conjunction with the very same kind of peculiar silver rings, and other ornaments of the same metal, that are also found with the Arabian coins in Scandinavia and Russia; nay, they are sometimes dug up, as in Cuerdale, in conjunction with coins of Danish-Norwegian kings and jarls; a fact which still further confirms the opinion that they were brought over to the British Isles by the Northmen. This connection with Arabia through the countries of Scandinavia may probably have brought to England, as well as to the North, such a mass of silver as enabled the Anglo-Saxon kings to mint that surprising number of silver coins, which appears at once in such forcible contrast to the want of silver in the preceding centuries. The ancient Britons had little or no silver before the Roman conquest. The Romans, who had large silver mines in Spain, certainly brought silver money with them into the British Islands; but after the overthrow of their dominion, a want of silver again prevailed, and continued, as the coins show, until far into the eighth and ninth centuries. Silver was consequently introduced into England and Scandinavia, generally speaking, about the same time; and there is undoubtedly far greater probability that it was brought into these countries in the same way—that is, from Asia through Russia—than that it should have come into England through the Moors in Spain; of whose caliphs there are very rarely any coins found in England, and between whom and the English the intercourse at that period seems to have been but very limited. In the treasure found at Cuerdale the rings and other silver ornaments were for the most part broken, and twisted, or even melted, together. Something similar has been observed in the treasure trove in the countries round the Baltic, and in Russia. This clearly proves that silver, as an article of commerce, was brought from Asia to the North, where it was melted and converted into ornaments and coins.
As long as the Norman expeditions lasted, and on the whole as long as the Scandinavian supremacy at sea sufficed to protect the Scandinavian merchants and their ships, they continued to make voyages on their own account to the countries colonized by the Northmen. Thus the Anglo-Saxon coins dug up in the island of Gothland indicate a brisk and uninterrupted commerce between Scandinavia and England from the time of the Anglo-Saxon king Edgar (959-975) down to the death of Edward the Confessor and the Norman conquest (1066). But from that time, and particularly after the year 1100, there is a remarkable decrease in the Anglo-Saxon coins found in Gothland; which is a natural result of the interruption of the previous connection, through the hostile relations that ensued between the descendants of William the Conqueror and the Scandinavian kings, who steadily continued to claim the crown of England. Later in the middle ages the countries of Scandinavia fell more and more under the commercial yoke of the German Hanse Towns; whilst in England, on the contrary, a freer and healthier state of commerce was continually developing itself. The Danish king, Canute the Great, made it a point of the utmost importance to conclude commercial treaties with various foreign nations; and the Scandinavian merchants settled in England essentially contributed to make these leagues profitable. Old authors expressly notice the influence of these merchants on British trade. We also find evidence of it not only in their great number, and the weight they possessed in several English towns,—especially London, where they had their own churches, markets, and courts of law, and where, as before stated, they even at times decided the election of a king, as in the case of Harald Harefoot,—but also in the names of money afterwards retained in the English language, as “March” and “Ora,” from the Scandinavian “Mark” and “Ore.” It was a natural consequence that commerce should at the same time make great progress, as the numerous Scandinavian settlers in England, and the Danish conquest, had infused a new and hitherto unknown life into everything relating to navigation, without which no animated trade could have flourished in the British Islands.
The ancient Britons were by no means a seafaring people. They appear to have confined themselves to short coasting voyages between the islands, and over the Irish and English channels. They had, therefore, no fleet to protect their coasts from the attacks of the Romans. Their vessels consisted either of the trunks of trees hollowed out, or of small frail boats formed of interwoven branches, or wicker-work, covered with hides. The Celtic nations have, on the whole, never been remarkable for their love of the sea, or of a seafaring life. On the contrary, they seem to have derived from nature a decided antipathy to it; and even to the present day it is very striking to observe how unwillingly their descendants venture out to sea. They prefer, under all circumstances, a landsman’s life, even in remote and barren mountain tracts; nay, their disinclination for everything relating to a seaman’s life is carried so far that they neglect, in a way almost incredible, the rich fisheries on the western coast of Scotland, and on the greater part of the coasts of Ireland; although, in the last-named country especially, famine carries off the inhabitants in shoals. In those villages where fishing is carried on to any extent, the inhabitants are in general descended from immigrant foreigners. Thus it is said that the fishermen on the west coast of Ireland are descended from Spaniards; and, to judge from their appearance, the assertion finds some confirmation.
Nor were the Anglo-Saxons a seafaring people, in the proper sense of the term. They comprised, it is true, Jutes, Angles, and Frisians; but the Saxons were the most numerous, and the Saxon disposition has always clung to a life ashore. It was natural, however, that the art of navigation should gradually develop itself among the Anglo-Saxons as they advanced in civilization and refinement. But how little they were at home on the sea, even in the time of Alfred the Great, is shown by the feeble resistance they were able to offer to the Danes. It is true that Alfred had large ships of war built in order to protect the coasts; but he was obliged to man them, in part at least, with Frisians. We are further told that these ships were much larger than those of the Danes. Yet the history of the tenth and eleventh centuries affords no proof that these ships were able in the long run to prevent the conquests of the Danes, or that they served to increase the Anglo-Saxon skill in seamanship.
Even the Greeks and Romans, however much they distinguished themselves in other ways, as in literature and art, did not make any remarkable progress in seamanship. Their navigation chiefly consisted of trips along the coast or voyages across the Mediterranean; and if an adventurer was now and then bold enough to pass the Pillars of Hercules, or Straits of Gibraltar, out into the Atlantic Ocean, in order to sail along the west coast of Europe to the British Isles, or countries still farther north, it was regarded as a great exploit. Regular voyages thither were scarcely known; nor do the Greek and Roman ships appear to have been well adapted to keep the sea in the wide and stormy Atlantic.
It was reserved for a land washed by the waters of that ocean—the Scandinavian North—to build the first large “sea-going” ships, capable not merely of successfully conveying, in calm weather, and under favourable circumstances, a solitary daring navigator over the Atlantic, but of affording, in spite of storm and tempest, a secure passage over its enormous waves. It is only by duly considering how much experience and talent must have been exerted, and, above all, how many calculations must have been made previous to the building of such a vessel, and before the art could be acquired of steering it with safety through breakers and in storms, that we shall perceive how much it redounds to the honour of Scandinavia to have made these great and most important advances; which, by founding modern navigation, by extending commercial intercourse to a degree before unknown, and by thus uniting parts of the globe which were previously separated, may be said in a manner to have changed the face of the world.
Even before the time when the Danes conquered England, the Northmen had long possessed large and splendid sea-going ships. The Norwegians, in particular, were then constantly making voyages across the Atlantic, to the Shetland Isles, Iceland, and Greenland; nay, they undoubtedly reached the continent of America several times; of which Scandinavian and German historical traditions, as well as internal probabilities, bear witness. For, first, it was a natural consequence that a people who could navigate the dangerous and ice-bound sea that surrounds the coast of Greenland, and who could establish considerable colonies both in north and south Greenland—traces of which are still preserved by runic inscriptions, ruins of churches, and the foundations of numerous houses—should also be able to sail to the coast of America, the navigation to which was always attended with less danger. And, again, it would have been very strange if the Northmen, who sailed without a compass, should always have succeeded in reaching Greenland, and never have been driven by storms to the neighbouring coast of America. It was, besides, just in this manner, according to the statements of history, that America was first discovered. It is quite another matter whether traces of these early visits of the Scandinavians could really be still found in America, which there is good reason to doubt.
The above-mentioned voyages, in the ninth and tenth centuries, are sufficient proofs of the excellence of the Scandinavian ships. It is not, therefore, to be regarded as pure exaggeration if the Sagas use strong expressions in celebrating the war-ships of that time, particularly the galleys, or, as they were called, long ships; and amongst others that magnificent royal vessel “Ormen hin Lange” (the long snake), which bore the Norwegian king, Olaf Trygvesön, in the celebrated sea-fight of Svöldr (near Greifswald) in the year 1000. These long ships were also called “Dragons,” because the stems were frequently ornamented with carved, and even gilded, images of dragons; or else were beheld there figures of vultures, lions, and other animals, ornamented with gold. These long ships had sometimes crews of several hundred men. Other, and partly smaller, ships had different names, such as “snekken,” “barden,” “skeiden,” “karven,” “barken,” and several others. Both Scandinavian and English chronicles dwell on the description of the splendour with which the fleets of the Danish conquerors, Svend and Canute, were adorned. Magnificent images glittered on the prows; the sails were worked, or embroidered, with gold; the ropes were of a purple colour; and on the top of the gilded masts sat curiously-carved images of birds, which spread out their wings to the breeze.
[[++]] Sailing Ship
With the exception of very imperfect representations carved on rocks and runic stones, there are no images left in the countries of Scandinavia of these ships of the olden time. But the celebrated tapestry at Bayeux, in Normandy, on which the conquest of England by the Normans is depicted, is a contemporary evidence of the appearance of the Normanic ships; and the accompanying woodcut taken from it, representing probably the ship in which William the Conqueror himself sailed, will clearly prove how splendid they really must have been. Both this and the rest of the Norman ships in the tapestry perfectly agree with the contemporary Danish and Norwegian ships, just as we know them from the Sagas, even to the shields hung out along the bulwarks. This, however, is nothing more than what one might naturally expect, since the Normans and Danes, on the conquest of Normandy, must have brought such ships with them, as well as that art of ship-building which they afterwards carried to greater perfection. For this, however, they found no models in the wretched vessels of the Franks and Bretons. But their steady connection with the Scandinavian fatherlands, at all events through the Danes and Norwegians in England, communicated to them those improvements in the form and arrangement of ships which the very extensive ship-building of the Northmen, and their long and uninterrupted voyages to Iceland and Greenland, must gradually have produced. That influence on maritime affairs, which, on the whole, was exercised by the Scandinavian settlers in Normandy, showed itself also in the circumstance that Scandinavian names of ships, together with other maritime terms, passed into the Romance language; as, for instance, flotte (Dan., Flaade; Eng., fleet), verec (Dan., Vrag; Eng., wreck), bord (Dan., Skibsborde, Rand; Eng., ship-board), windas (Dan., Vinde, Spil; Eng., windlass) mast (Dan., Mast; Eng., mast), sigler (Dan., Seile; Eng., sails), esturman (Dan., Styrmand; Eng., steersman), eschiper (Old Northern, skipa; Eng., equip), from which are derived the now commonly used French words, équiper, équipage, (and with us Danes likewise, eqvipere, Eqvipage-mester; Eng., master of ordnance.)
As a consequence of the Danish-Norwegian immigrations, the art of ship-building must also have necessarily developed itself in a similar manner in England, on whose eastern and north-western coasts the descendants of the Vikings had everywhere spread themselves, both by the sea and on the rivers. Christianity certainly put an end to the life of the Viking. “Söhaner” (sea-cocks) were no longer to be found, who scorned “to sleep by the corner of the hearth, or under sooty beams.” But the Vikings’ spirit was not therefore dead. The Scandinavian colonists could never entirely degenerate from their fathers, who had joyfully “ridden on the backs of the waves,” and who in the icy sea, and on the Atlantic Ocean, had greeted the storm only as a welcome friend, which assisted the oars and speeded the merry passage. Among the Vikings were many like the Danish chief made prisoner by King Athelstane at the siege of York in 927. The King treated him well, and retained him in his hall more as an equal than a prisoner. But in a few days the chief fled and put out again to sea; for it was, the chronicle adds, just as impossible for him to live on land “as for the fish to live out of the water.” The immediate descendants of such men, for whom a seafaring life was a necessity of their very nature, must have continued to dash through the water, particularly when, as in England, they were settled near seas and rivers. During all the internal dissensions and foreign wars that occupied England in the first centuries after the conquest by William the Norman—and which ended by binding more firmly together the various Celtic, Teutonic, and Scandinavian races which composed its population—the maritime affairs of the English were no longer confined, as in more ancient times, only to commerce with the nearest neighbouring countries. Through the mother countries of Scandinavia, and especially Norway, they continued during the early part of the middle ages to maintain a lively intercourse with the distant Scandinavian republics in Iceland and Greenland. But when, in the thirteenth century, the independence of these republics was overthrown, and they were placed as tributary countries under the Norwegian crown, the free trade that had previously flourished became much more restricted. The consequence of this was, that the navigation to Greenland from the north decreased more and more, until, in the fifteenth century, when the Scandinavian population of Greenland had been annihilated by sickness and by the assaults of the natives, it entirely ceased. What also much contributed to this was, that the trade which the Northmen themselves carried on with Iceland became gradually, and in the fifteenth century was almost entirely, although illegally, transferred to the English, who under the guidance of their Scandinavian kinsmen had found their way thither. Hull and Bristol—which latter place is named as early as the twelfth century as the port for ships from Norway (and Iceland?)—were the two English harbours whence this trade with Iceland was carried on. There are even some who think that Christopher Columbus during his stay in these harbours, through conversations with Iceland navigators, and possibly by a voyage to Iceland itself, obtained information of the ancient voyages of the Northmen to Greenland and America; and that he was thus first completely confirmed in his opinion, that a large and unknown continent must lie in the far west, across the Atlantic Ocean. But even if this supposition be unfounded, or destitute as yet of certain historical proof, may it not at least be probable that Columbus had heard in some other way of the Northmen’s former voyages to Greenland; and that this might have had some influence on the resolution he afterwards formed to set out across the Atlantic on a voyage of discovery towards the west?
But under any circumstances, the regular voyages of the English to Iceland were certainly connected with the subsequent complete discovery of the New World. They had served to make them familiar with more extensive voyages on the open ocean, and thus essentially contributed to foster that daring Viking spirit, which they had inherited from their Scandinavian forefathers, and which in process of time was to become so important in cementing the connection between the Old and the New World. No sooner was the latter a second time discovered than the Vikings’ spirit again strongly displayed itself in a renewed form among the English people. There was the same lofty tranquillity, the same daring and contempt of danger, that characterised the Vikings of ancient times. But the English seaman had now more experience and knowledge, and quite other means were at his disposal than had ever before existed. He therefore entered on his first voyage to the New World with undaunted courage, and not only soon became familiar with that ocean which his Scandinavian forefathers had ploughed in the remote days of antiquity, but also opened a way to new lands over seas before unknown. Thus was established that maritime supremacy which has been one of the most important props of the wealth and power of England.
The first accidental discovery of America by bold adventurers from the remote north took place so early, and under such peculiar circumstances, that neither Scandinavia nor the rest of the world derived any use or benefit from it. After a transient glimpse, the golden treasure again sank beneath the waves. It lay, nevertheless, in the dispensations of Providence, that the descendants of those Scandinavian adventurers should bear an essential part in raising the re-discovered treasure, and in making it productive for mankind. And had not the Scandinavians, by their numerous settlements in the British Islands, engrafted on the population a skill in seamanship before unknown, together with a daring spirit of enterprise, England, in spite of its fertility, its wealth, and its favourable maritime situation, would scarcely have succeeded in solving such a problem as that of closely knitting together lands separated from each other by the Atlantic in all its breadth and vastness.