[31] See the illustration, page 471.
[32] The Athenians had a similar practice. See page 257.
CHAPTER XVII
THE NORTHMEN AND THE NORMANS TO 1066 A.D. [1]
138. SCANDINAVIA AND THE NORTHMEN
A NEW SERIES OF MIGRATIONS
From the East we return once more to the West, from Asia to Europe, from Arabia to Scandinavia. We have now to deal with the raids and settlements of the Norsemen or Northmen. Like the Arabs the Northmen quitted a sterile peninsula and went forth to find better homes in distant lands. Their invasions, beginning toward the close of the eighth century, lasted about three hundred years.
A TEUTONIC MOVEMENT
The Northmen belonged to the Teutonic family of peoples. They were kinsmen of the Germans, the Anglo-Saxons, and the Dutch. Their migrations may be regarded, therefore, as the last wave of that great Teutonic movement which in earlier times had inundated western Europe and overwhelmed the Roman Empire.