A hardy and a daring race were these old Vikings. There were no ‘wasters’ and few ‘slackers’ among them. When a Viking’s son was born, the babe was shown to its father for his approval or disapproval. If the father liked the look of his babe, and thought that it showed signs of growing up into a manly and sturdy boy, it was taken back to its mother to be ‘raised.’ But woe betide the babe that looked puny and sickly, or that showed signs of deformity! The father’s orders were that it should be taken outside his dwelling and exposed to the cold so that it died.
‘What a cruel custom!’ you will think. Yes, so it was. But the Vikings lived in an age when men looked upon things very differently from the way in which we look upon them. In a cruel age the Northmen were so cruel, and the fear that they inspired in the hearts of the people whose lands they plundered was so great, that the monks inserted in their Litany the prayer:—
A furore Normannorum, libera nos, Domine!
(From the fury of the Northmen, O Lord, deliver us!)
There is little wonder that, with such a rearing as the children of the Vikings received, a race of warriors grew up among whom was the unwritten law that ‘a Dane who wished to acquire the character of a brave man should always attack two enemies, stand firm and receive the attack of three, retire only one pace from four, and flee from no fewer than five.’
Social distinctions among the Danes were similar to those among the Angles. In place of the Anglian eorl, ceorl, and theow were the Danish jarl,[[16]] karl, and thrall; with this difference—that the Danish jarl was a military commander and not a man who could pride himself on being descended from the gods. It is from the word ‘jarl’ that our English word ‘earl’ has arisen.
Like their cousins the Angles, the Northmen were heathens when they invaded our shores.
The Wōden, Tīw, and Frīg of the Angles were the Odin, Tȳr and Freya of the Danes. But their greatest god was Thor, the Thunderer, whose name will be recognised in the name for the fifth day of the week.