In them we see the forerunners of the buccaneers, and the ancestors of those naval heroes, voyagers, and discoverers—those Drakes and Dampiers, Nelsons and Dundonalds, Cooks and Franklins, who have won for Britain the proud title of sovereign of the seas—a title which she is still ready to uphold against all comers.
In Shetland, we still find the same skilled seamanship, and the same light open boat, like a Norwegian yawl; indeed, planks for building skiffs are generally imported from Norway, all prepared and ready to put together. There the peace-loving fishermen, in pursuit of their perilous calling, sometimes venture sixty miles off to sea, losing sight of all land, except perhaps the highest peak of their island-homes left dimly peering just above the horizon-line. Sometimes they are actually driven, by stress of weather, within sight of the coast of Norway, and yet the loss of a skiff in the open sea, however high the waves run, is a thing quite unknown to the skilled Shetlander. The buoyancy of the skiff (from this word we have ship and skipper) is something wonderful. Its high bow and stern enables it to ride and rise over the waves like a sea-duck, although its chance of living seems almost as little, and as perilous, as that of the dancing shallop or mussel-shell we see whelmed in the ripple. Its preservation, to the onlooker from the deck of a large vessel, often seems miraculous. It is the practice, in encountering the stormy blasts of the North Sea, to lower the lug-sail on the approach of every billow, so as to ride its crest with bare mast, and to raise it again as the skiff descends into the more sheltered trough of the wave. By such constant manœuvering, safety is secured and progress made. When boats are lost—and such tragedies frequently occur, sometimes leaving poor lonely widows bereft, at one fell swoop, of husband, father, and brothers, for the crews are too often made up of relatives—it is generally when they are caught and mastered by strong currents running between the islands, which neither oar nor sail can stem. Such losses are always on the coasts—never at sea.
Of the Scandinavian powers of colonising:—There is ample evidence of their having settled in Shetland, Orkney, and on our coasts, long before those great outgoings of which we have authentic historical records. To several of these latter we shall briefly advert, viz., the English, Russian, Icelandic, American, and Norman.
We may first mention that, in remote ages, this race swept across Europe from the neighbourhood of the region now called Circassia, lying between the Black Sea and the Caspian, to the shores of the Baltic, settling on the north-west coast of Europe. Their traditions, and numerous eastern customs—allied to the Persians and the inhabitants of the plains of Asia Minor in old Homeric days—which they brought along with them, all go to confirm their eastern origin. Nor did they rest here, but, thirsting for adventure in these grim warrior ages, sailed forth as pirates or settlers, sometimes both, and, as can be shewn, made their power and influence felt in every country of Europe, from Lapland to the Mediterranean.
They invaded England in A.D. 429, and founded the kingdoms of South, West, and East Seaxe, East Anglia, Mercia, Deira, and Bernicea; thus overrunning and fixing themselves in the land, from Devonshire to North of the Humber. From the mixture of these Angles, or Saxons, as they were termed by the Britons, with the previous Belgian settlers and original inhabitants, we have the Anglo-Saxon race. The Jutes who settled in Kent were from Jutland. In A.D. 787, the Danes ravaged the coast, beginning with Dorsetshire; and, continuing to swarm across the sea, soon spread themselves over the whole country. They had nearly mastered it all, when Alfred ascended the throne in 871. At length, in A.D. 1017, Canute, after much hard fighting, did master it, and England had Danish kings from that period till the Saxon line was restored in 1042.
In the year A.D. 862, the Scandinavian Northmen established the Russian empire, and played a very important part in the management of its affairs, even after the subsequent infusion of the Sclavonic element. In the “Mémoires de la Société Royale des Antiquaries du Nord,” published at Copenhagen, we find that, of the fifty names of those composing Ingor’s embassy to the Greek Emperor at Constantinople in the year A.D. 994, only three were Sclavic, and the rest Northmen—names that occur in the Sagas, such as Ivar, Vigfast, Eylif, Grim, Ulf, Frode, Asbrand, &c. The Greeks called them Russians, but Frankish writers simply Northmen.
In the year A.D. 863, Naddodr, a Norwegian, discovered Iceland,[[60]] which, however, had been previously visited and resided in at intervals for at least upwards of seventy years before that time, by fishermen, ecclesiastics, and hermits, called Westmen, from Ireland, Iona and other islands of the Hebrides. Of these visits Naddodr found numerous traces.
In A.D. 874, Ingolf with followers, many of whom were related to the first families in Norway, fleeing from the tyranny of Harold Harfagra, began the colonisation of Iceland, which was completed during a space of sixty years. They established a flourishing republic, appointed magistrates, and held their Althing, or national assembly, at Thingvalla.
Many of the Northmen who at various times had settled on our shores, accompanied by their acquired relatives, also set sail and joined their brethren; thus making use of Britain as a stepping stone between Scandinavia and Iceland. Many traces of these early links yet remain. We heard of a family in the island that can trace its descent, in a direct line, from a royal ancestor of Queen Victoria.
Thus, in this distant volcanic island of the Northern Sea, the old Danish language was preserved unchanged for centuries; while, in the various Eddas, were embodied those folk-songs and folk-myths, and, in the sagas, those historical tales and legends of an age at once heroic and romantic, together with that folk-lore which still forms the staple of all our old favourite nursery tales, as brought with them from Europe and the East by the first settlers.[[61]] All these, as well as the productions of the Icelanders themselves, are of great historical and literary value. They have been carefully edited and published, at Copenhagen, by eminent Icelandic, Danish, and other antiquarians. We would refer to the writings of Müller, Magnusen, Rafn, Rask, Eyricksson, Torfæus, and others. Laing has translated “The Heimskringla,” the great historical Saga of Snorro Sturleson, into English.[[62]] Various other translations and accounts of these singularly interesting Eddas, sagas, and ballads, handed down by the scalds and Sagamen, are to be met with; but by far the best analysis, with translated specimens, is that contained in Howitt’s “Literature and Romance of Northern Europe.”[[63]] We would call attention, in passing, to that Edda, consisting of the original series of tragic poems from which the German “Niebelungen-lied” has been derived. Considered as a series of fragments, it is a marvellous production, and, to our thinking, absolutely unparalleled in ancient or modern literature, for power, simplicity, and heroic grandeur.