But under any circumstances, the regular voyages of the English to Iceland were certainly connected with the subsequent complete discovery of the New World. They had served to make them familiar with more extensive voyages on the open ocean, and thus essentially contributed to foster that daring Viking spirit, which they had inherited from their Scandinavian forefathers, and which in process of time was to become so important in cementing the connection between the Old and the New World. No sooner was the latter a second time discovered than the Vikings’ spirit again strongly displayed itself in a renewed form among the English people. There was the same lofty tranquillity, the same daring and contempt of danger, that characterised the Vikings of ancient times. But the English seaman had now more experience and knowledge, and quite other means were at his disposal than had ever before existed. He therefore entered on his first voyage to the New World with undaunted courage, and not only soon became familiar with that ocean which his Scandinavian forefathers had ploughed in the remote days of antiquity, but also opened a way to new lands over seas before unknown. Thus was established that maritime supremacy which has been one of the most important props of the wealth and power of England.
The first accidental discovery of America by bold adventurers from the remote north took place so early, and under such peculiar circumstances, that neither Scandinavia nor the rest of the world derived any use or benefit from it. After a transient glimpse, the golden treasure again sank beneath the waves. It lay, nevertheless, in the dispensations of Providence, that the descendants of those Scandinavian adventurers should bear an essential part in raising the re-discovered treasure, and in making it productive for mankind. And had not the Scandinavians, by their numerous settlements in the British Islands, engrafted on the population a skill in seamanship before unknown, together with a daring spirit of enterprise, England, in spite of its fertility, its wealth, and its favourable maritime situation, would scarcely have succeeded in solving such a problem as that of closely knitting together lands separated from each other by the Atlantic in all its breadth and vastness.
Section XI.
Art and Literature.
At the period when the Danes were making their conquests in the West, art and literature did not occupy any very high position in Europe. The severe shock which the fall of the Roman Empire had given to all the more elevated pursuits was still far from being overcome. Christian art was in its childhood, and groped its way with weak attempts, and imitations of Roman models; whilst literature, confined for the most part to one-sided theological inquiries, or to the inditing of dry and annalistic chronicles, could scarcely be said to deserve the name.
It was, however, a natural result of the long-continued domiciliation of the Romans in France and England, where they founded so many and such important works, and where Christianity was adopted at a comparatively early period, that a taste for art and literature should develop itself in no mean degree in those countries; particularly in comparison of the far North, where the Romans had never ruled, and where the darkness of heathenism still rested on the people.
Nevertheless we should be grievously mistaken if we imagined that the Scandinavian people was at that time entirely unfitted for the ennobling occupations of art and literature. It has been before stated that the Northmen early distinguished themselves not only by an extraordinary skill, for those times, in the art of ship-building, but that they had also developed, previously to the conquest of England, a taste, in some respects peculiar, in the manufacture of their ornaments, domestic utensils, and weapons, and which had principally sprung from characteristic imitations of the Roman and Arabian articles of commerce brought into the North. The Scandinavian antiquities that are dug up, belonging to the older period, or what is called “the age of bronze,” as well as those of the latest times of heathenism, or “the iron age,” may on the whole, with regard to form and workmanship, be even ranked with contemporary objects of a similar kind manufactured in England, France, or Germany. The Sagas, moreover, state that the carving of images was sometimes very skilfully practised in the North; and the English chronicles, which depict in such glowing colours the splendidly-carved figures on the prows of the Danish or Scandinavian vessels, confirm the truth of these statements. In Olaf Paas’ Hall, at Hjarderholdt, in Iceland, the walls were even adorned with whole rows of carvings, representing the ancient gods, and their exploits. On the other hand there could naturally as yet be no possibility of erecting such buildings in the North as those which the spirit of Christianity had already produced in other countries.
But no sooner were the Normans from Denmark and Norway settled in Normandy, and converted to Christianity, than they began to manifest a lively desire to erect splendid buildings, and particularly churches and monasteries. Scarcely had the first violent revolutions in that country been brought to a close when there sprang up such a number of great architectural works among the Normans, that Normandy can still show more such monuments of art, of the eleventh century, than any other district of France. After William’s conquest of England, the Normans also founded there a somewhat peculiar style of building, which, though only a branch of the Byzantine-Gothic, or a further development of the older Saxon, constantly bears in England the name of “Norman.”
Previous to the Norman conquest, the Danes settled in England were naturally unable to influence, in a like degree, the style of English architectural works. Their sway there was both too short and too unsettled for such a purpose: not to mention that the Danes had still much to learn from the Anglo-Saxons in the art of building; for the latter had long been Christians, and were besides settled in a country possessing abundant remains of the magnificent architectural works of the Romans. Nevertheless it is not incredible that several of the many churches and convents then and subsequently erected by Danish princes and chiefs, and especially in the northern parts of England, but which are now for the most part either rebuilt, or have entirely disappeared, may have borne the stamp of their Scandinavian origin. We are led to this opinion by the ruling inclination manifested by the ancient Northmen to let their own conceptions pierce through, even in their imitations of foreign objects. Numerous and contemporary evidences in England itself also sufficiently prove to what a remarkable extent the Danes must have devoted themselves to peaceful occupations, long before the Norman conquest. In these, indeed, which relate to only a single branch of art, the Anglo-Saxons were their teachers; still they will show that the Danes were neither wanting in a natural capacity for art, nor in faculty or will for its further development.