The Irish Race in the Past and the Present

by Augustus J. Thébaud

The better to understand the fierceness of the attack, let us first consider its origin:

The Baltic Sea and the various gulfs connected with it penetrate deeply the northern portion of the Continent of Europe. Its indentations form two peninsulas: a large one, known under the name of Norway and Sweden, and a lesser one on the southwest, now called Denmark. The first was known to the Romans as Scania; the second was called by them the Cimbric Chersonesus. From Scania is derived the name Scandinavians, afterward given to the inhabitants of the whole country. Besides these two peninsulas, there are several islands scattered through the surrounding sea.

The frozen and barren land which this people inhabited obliged them from time immemorial to depend on the ocean for their sustenance: first, by fishing; later on, by piracy. They soon became expert navigators, though their ships were merely small boats made of a few pieces of timber joined together, and covered with the hide of the walrus and the seal.

It seems, from the Irish annals, that they belonged to two distinct races of men: the Norwegians, fair-haired and of large stature; the Danes dark, and of smaller size. Hence the Irish distinguished the first, whom they called Finn Galls, from the second, whom they named Dubh Galls. By no other European nation was this distinction drawn, the Irish being more exact in observing their foes.

It is the general opinion of modern writers that they belonged to the Teutonic family. The Goths, a Teutonic tribe, dwelt for a long period on the larger peninsula. But whether the Goths were of the same race as the Norwegians or Danes is a question. Certain it is that the various German nations which first overwhelmed the Roman Empire bore many characteristics different from those of the Danes and Norwegians, though the language of all indicated, to a certain extent, a common origin.

The Swedes, the inhabitants of the eastern coast of Scania, do not appear to have taken an important part in the Scandinavian invasions; nor, indeed, have they ever been so fond of maritime enterprises as the two other nations. Moreover, they were at that time in bloody conflict with the Goths, and too busy at home to think of foreign conquest.

For a long time the Scandinavian pirates seem to have confined themselves to scouring their own seas, and plundering the coasts as far as the gulfs of Finland and Bothnia. At length, emboldened by success, they ventured out into the ocean, attacked the nations of Western and Southern Europe, and in the west colonized the frozen shores of the Shetland and Faroe Islands, and soon after Iceland and Greenland.

For several centuries the harbors of Denmark and Norway became the storehouses of all the riches of Europe, and a large trade was carried on between those northern peninsulas and the various islands of the Northern and Arctic Seas, even with the coast of America, of which Greenland seems to form a part.

Those stern and mountainous countries and the restless ocean which divides them were for the Scandinavian pirates what the Mediterranean and the coasts of Spain and Africa had long before been for the Phoenicians and Carthaginians. These peoples were clearly destined to introduce among modern nations the spirit of commerce and enterprise.

But here it is well to consider their religious and social state from which nations chiefly derive their noble or ignoble qualities. We shall find both made up of the rankest idolatry, of cruel manners and revolting customs.