Noose. A running knot, which binds the closer the more it is drawn.
Nootkas, or Ahts. The generic name of the Indians residing on Vancouver Island and the shore of the mainland along the sound of the same name. They are subdivided into many tribes and number about 14,000, some of whom are partially civilized.
Nora. A mountain fortress of Cappadocia, on the borders of Lycaonia, on the northern side of the Taurus, noted for the siege sustained in it by Eumenes against Antigonus for a whole winter.
Norba, or Norbanus (now Norma). A strongly fortified town in Latium, on the slope of the Volscian Mountains, and near the sources of the Nymphæus, originally belonged to the Latin and subsequently to the Volscian league. The Romans founded a colony at Norba in 492 B.C. It espoused the cause of Marius in the civil war, and was destroyed by fire by its own inhabitants when it was taken by one of Sulla’s generals.
Nordlingen. A walled town of Bavaria, in the circle of Swabia, 48 miles southwest from Nuremberg. Here the Swedes under Count Horn were defeated by the Austrians, August 27, 1634; and the Austrians and allies by Turenne in 1645.
Noreia (now Neumarkt, in Styria, Austria). The ancient capital of the Taurisci, or Norici, in Noricum. It was situated in the centre of Noricum, a little south of the river Murius, and on the road from Virunum to Ovilaba. It is celebrated as the place where Carbo was defeated by the Cimbri, 113 B.C. It was besieged by the Boii in the time of Julius Cæsar.
Norfolk. A city and capital of Norfolk Co., Va., on the Elizabeth River, an arm of Chesapeake Bay, about 18 miles from Fortress Monroe, has a fine harbor, safe, commodious, and of sufficient depth to admit the largest vessels. It is the largest naval station in the United States. Its navy-yard was destroyed on April 21, 1861, by the Federals, to prevent the ships of war and naval stores that were there from being appropriated and used by the seceding States.
Noricum. A Roman province south of the Danube, was bounded on the north by the Danube, on the west by Rhætia and Vindelicia, on the east by Pannonia, and on the south by Pannonia and Italy. Its inhabitants, the most important of which were the Taurisci, also called Norici, were conquered by the Romans toward the end of the reign of Augustus, after the subjugation of Rhætia by Tiberius and Drusus, and their country was formed into a Roman colony.
Normandy (Fr. Normandie). Formerly a province in the north of France, bordering on the English Channel; now divided into the departments of Seine-Inférieure, Eure, Orne, Calvados, and Manche. In the time of the Romans, the country bore the name of Gallia Lugdunensis II. Under the Frankish monarchs it formed a part of Neustria. From the beginning of the 9th century it was continually devastated by the Scandinavians, termed Northmen, or Normans, from whose irruptions Charles the Simple of France purchased immunity by ceding the duchy to their leader, Rollo, 905. Rollo, the first duke, and several of his successors held it as a fief of the crown of France, until William, the seventh duke, acquired England in 1066; it was reunited to France in 1204; was reconquered by Henry V. 1418, and held by England partially till 1450.
Normans (the Northmen). Toward the end of the 8th century Western Europe began to be scourged by the inroads of Scandinavian pirates, known to the inhabitants of the British Isles as “East-men” and “Danes,”—to those of the continent as “North-men.” These Northmen were of Germanic stock, a vigorous, seafaring race, not yet Christianized, peopling the coasts of the Baltic and of the two peninsulas which form the Norway and Sweden and the Denmark of to-day. Need and the national thirst for adventure and for strife drove forth from the thickening population, down upon the sunnier, richer, weaker South, swarms of vikings,—i.e. warriors,—who scourged the coasts of England, Germany, and France, pressed with their small, sharp, open vessels up the narrowest streams, burned, slew, and plundered, and sailed away laden with booty and with slaves. About the middle of the 9th century these raids began to assume an altogether new character and importance. The consolidation of the three great Scandinavian kingdoms broke the power of the petty kinglets and independent nobles, and drove many a jarl forth with his followers to seek a freer life in some new home. Northmen threw themselves in larger bands upon England, which the Wessex kings had not yet fairly centralized; upon the Frankish kingdoms, fast falling asunder under the later Karlings; harried the country, besieged and sacked the cities, wintered at the mouths of the rivers, and by the end of the century had wrested from Alfred half his kingdom, and begun to plant colonies on the coasts of France. Northmen ravaged Spain and the shores of the Mediterranean, fell upon Western Italy, penetrated Greece and Asia Minor, and there met others of their countrymen, who had pressed down through Russia. For in the Russia of that day, under the name of Verangians, Northmen had become the ruling class, a military aristocracy; while those who made their way still farther south had formed the famous Verangian body-guard of the Byzantine emperors, which maintained its existence and its distinctive character for five centuries. During the latter half of the 9th century, also, Scandinavians, sailing westward, found and settled Iceland. With the establishment, early in the 10th century, of settlements upon the continent, with the occupation Scandinavian energy now found at home in wars between the three new kingdoms, and with the gradual triumph of Christianity in the North, Europe gained, at last, comparative rest. England’s period of misery and humiliation under Ethelred the Unready (979-1016), ended by the establishment of a Danish dynasty (1017-42), marks the last great outburst of the pent-up heathenism.