[654] Though this was often of the most brutal description, there were some comparatively "mild-mannered" pirates, who rarely "cut a throat or scuttled ship." See C.-F. Allen, Histoire de Danemark, i, 21.
[655] Geijer, History of Sweden, Eng. tr. p. 31.
[656] It is actually on record that the practice long subsisted in Iceland, despite the efforts of St. Olaf to suppress it. Hardwick, Church History: Middle Age, p. 119, note, citing Torfaens, Hist. Norveg. ii, 2, and Neander. Among the Slavonic Pomeranians in the twelfth century it was still common to destroy female children at birth. Id. p. 224, note.
[657] Cp. C.-F. Allen, Histoire de Danemark, Fr. tr. 1878, i, 20.
[658] "Qu'est-ce que c'est que l'Angleterre? Une colonie français mal tournée."
[659] Thus Rolf the Ganger fared forth to France because Harold Fairhair would not suffer piracy on any territory acquired by him.
[660] Essay on the Principle of Population, 7th ed. p. 139.
[661] Crichton and Wheaton, i, 254. Dr. Ph. Schweitzer (Geschichte der skandinavischen Literatur, § 19), makes the surprising statement that the quantity of old coins found in Scandinavia (over 100,000 within the last century) proves that the ancient Scandinavian commerce was very great (ein ganz grossartiger). His own account of the occasional barter of the Vikings shows that there was nothing "grossartig" about it, and the coins prove nothing beyond piracy.
[662] Crichton and Wheaton, i, 263, 287.
[663] Id. pp. 251, 252, 277, 377.