854. The Normans, in addition to the very many evils which The Northmen burn the church of St. Martin at Tours they were everywhere inflicting upon the Christians, burned the church of St. Martin, bishop of Tours, where his body rests.
855. In the spring Louis, the eastern king, sent his son of the same name to Aquitaine to obtain possession of the heritage of his uncle Pepin.
856. The Normans again chose a king of the same name as the preceding one, and related to him, and the Danes made a fresh incursion by sea, with renewed forces, against the Christians.
857. A great sickness prevailed among the people. This produced a terrible foulness, so that the limbs were separated from the body even before death came.
858. Louis, the eastern king, held an assembly of the people of his territory in Worms.
859. On the first of January, as the early Mass was being said, a single earthquake occurred in Worms and a triple one in Mainz before daybreak.
860. On the fifth of February thunder was heard. The king returned from Gaul after the whole empire had gone to destruction, and was in no way bettered.
861. The holy bishop Luitbert piously furnished the cloister which is called the Freckenhorst with many relics of the saints, Sacred relics brought together at the Freckenhorst namely, of the martyrs Boniface and Maximus, and of the confessors Eonius and Antonius, and added a portion of the manger of the Lord and of His grave, and likewise of the dust of the Lord's feet as He ascended to heaven. In this year the winter was long and the above-mentioned kings again had a secret consultation on the island near Coblenz, and they laid waste everything round about.
27. The Northmen in the Country of the Franks.
Under the general name of Northmen in the ninth and tenth centuries were included all those peoples of pure Teutonic stock who inhabited the two neighboring peninsulas of Denmark and Scandinavia. In this period, and after, they played a very conspicuous part in the history of western Europe—at first as piratical invaders along the Atlantic coast, and subsequently as settlers in new lands and as conquerors and state-builders. Northmen was the name by which the people of the continent generally knew them, but to the Irish they were known as Ostmen or Eastmen, and to the English as Danes, while the name which they applied to themselves was Vikings ["Creekmen">[. Their prolonged invasions and plunderings, which fill so large a place in the ninth and tenth century chronicles of England and France, were the result of several causes and conditions: (1) their natural love of adventure, common to all early Germanic peoples; (2) the fact that the population of their home countries had become larger than the limited resources of these northern regions would support; (3) the proximity of the sea on every side, with its fiords and inlets inviting the adventurer to embark for new shores; and (4) the discontent of the nobles, or jarls, with the growing rigor of kingly government. In consequence of these and other influences large numbers of the people became pirates, with no other occupation than the plundering of the more civilized and wealthier countries to the east, west, and south. Those from Sweden visited most commonly the coasts of Russia, those from Norway went generally to Scotland and Ireland, and those from Denmark to England and France. In fast-sailing vessels carrying sixty or seventy men, and under the leadership of "kings of the sea" who never "sought refuge under a roof, nor emptied their drinking-horns at a fireside," they darted along the shores, ascended rivers, converted islands into temporary fortresses, and from thence sallied forth in every direction to burn and pillage and carry off all the booty upon which they could lay hands. So swift and irresistible were their operations that they frequently met with not the slightest show of opposition from the terrified inhabitants.