VI.
OUR SCANDINAVIAN ANCESTORS.[[56]]

Few subjects possess greater interest for the British race than the Scandinavian North, with its iron-bound rampart of wave-lashed rocks, its deeply indented fiords, bold cliffs, rocky promontories, abrupt headlands, wild skerries, crags, rock-ledges, and caves, all alive with gulls, puffins and kittiwakes; and in short, the general and striking picturesqueness of its scenery, to say nothing of the higher human interest of its stirring history, and the rich treasures of its grand old literature.

The British race has been called Anglo-Saxon; made up however, as it is, of many elements—Ancient Briton, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Dane, Norman, and Scandinavian—the latter predominates so largely over the others as to prove by evidence, external and internal, and not to be gainsaid, that the Scandinavians are our true progenitors.

The Germans are a separate branch of the same great Gothic family, industrious, but very unlike us in many respects. The degree of resemblance and affinity may be settled by styling them honest but unenterprising inland friends, whose ancestors and ours were first cousins upwards of a thousand years ago.

To the old Northmen—hailing from the sea-board of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark—may be traced the germs of all that is most characteristic of the modern Briton, whether personal, social, or national. The configuration of the land, and the numerous arms of the sea with which the north-west of Europe is indented, necessitated boats and seamanship. From these coasts, the Northmen—whether bent on piratical plundering expeditions, or peacefully seeking refuge from tyrannical oppression at home—sallied forth in their frail barks or skiffs, which could live in the wildest sea, visiting and settling in many lands. We here mention, in geographical order, Normandy, England, Scotland, Orkney, Shetland, Faröe, and Iceland. Wherever they have been, they have left indelible traces behind them, these ever getting more numerous and distinct as we go northwards.

Anglen, from which the word England is derived, still forms part of Holstein a province in Denmark; and the preponderance of the direct Scandinavian element in the language itself has been shewn by Dean Trench, who states, that of a hundred English words, sixty come from the Scandinavian, thirty from the Latin, five from the Greek, and five from other sources.

In Scotland many more Norse words, which sound quite foreign to an English ear, yet linger amongst the common people; while, as in England, the original Celtic inhabitants were driven to the west before the Northmen, who landed for the most part on the east. In certain districts of the Orkneys a corrupt dialect of Norse was spoken till recently, and the Scandinavian type of features is there often to be met with.

The Norse language is still understood and frequently spoken in Shetland, where the stalwart, manly forms of the fishermen, the characteristic prevalence of blue eyes and light flaxen hair, the universal observance of the Norse Yule, and many other old-world customs, together with the oriental and almost affecting regard paid to the sacred rites of hospitality, on the part of the islanders, all plainly tell their origin.