[463] Bede places the final withdrawal of the Roman forces from England, and the consequent misfortunes which befell the native Britons, at just before the siege of Rome by Attila, A.D. 409. Eccles. Hist. i. c. 2. See also “Uriconium,” by T. Wright. 8vo., 1872.
CHAPTER XI.
The early Scandinavian Vikings settle on the coast of Scotland and elsewhere—Great skill as seamen—Discovery of ancient ship, and of other early relics—Incursions of the Saxons and Angles into Britain; and its state soon afterwards—London—Accession of Offa, A.D. 755—Restrictions on trade and commerce—Salutary regulations—Charlemagne’s first treaty of commerce with England, A.D. 796—Extension of French commerce, A.D. 813—Commerce of England harassed by the Danes—Their ships, and the habits of their owners—Increase of the Northern marauders—Language of the Northmen still spoken by mariners in the North—Accession of Alfred the Great, A.D. 871: his efforts to improve navigation, and to extend the knowledge of geography—Foundation of a royal and commercial navy—His voyages of discovery and missions to the East—Reign of Edward the Elder, A.D. 901-25, and of his son Athelstan, A.D. 925-41—Edgar’s fleet, and his arrangements for suppressing piracy—The wisdom of his policy—Ethelred II., A.D. 979-1016—Sufferings of the people—Charges on vessels trading to London—Olaf, king of Norway, his ships, and those of Swein—Love of display—Mode of navigating—Canute, A.D. 1016—Reduction of the English fleet—Prosperity of commerce—Norman invasion, A.D. 1066—Number of vessels engaged, and their form—State of trade and commerce—Exports—Manufactures—Wealth—Imports—Taxation—London specially favoured—Chester specially burdened—State of the people at the time of the Conquest.
The early Scandinavian Vikings settle on the coast of Scotland, and elsewhere.
Among the numerous tribes which overran Europe during the third, fourth, and fifth centuries, it would not be easy to give to any one a position of superiority over the others in the theory and practice of maritime commerce. Requiring wider fields for their energy, and a soil more suited for a superabundant population than could be found amidst the barren mountains of Scandinavia or in the northern portions of Germany, the first object of most of them, as was the case with the Goths and Vandals, was, doubtless, to obtain greater means of subsistence. But desolate hills, and a string of small islands along a deeply indented coast, with deep and narrow water between them and the mainland, afforded a natural home for the Vikings’ tribe; while the mainland itself became available as a great sea-fortress for countless fleets.
By the physical structure of the country, there run out from a solid centre of mountain-land a multitude of rocks, like great prongs, with deep gulfs between them filled from the sea. These are the celebrated Fiords, which send branches or inlets through the mountains on either side, some of them longer than the longest sea lochs of the West Highlands of Scotland. Except in the few places where large rivers make deltas of silt, the rocks run sheer down into deep water, so that vessels can lie close to the land in the smallest crevices or bays. The entrances to wide stretches of fiord are sometimes so narrow, and consequently so easily defended, that the people speak of the stones rolling from the tops of the high rocky banks, and bounding across the water, so as to strike the opposite shore. It was of little consequence to the Vikings that the soil around them was hard and barren, for the value to them of that soil was in protection, not in produce. The only articles they required for home industry were the timber, iron, and pitch, for the building of their vessels, and the fish which abounded in their narrow seas. All their other wants were provided by plunder from the industrious and affluent communities of other lands.
In the Hebrides and the sea-lochs of the Highlands they found harbours of retreat the same in character, though not in greatness, as those they left behind them; and we may fairly suppose that it was for these, not necessarily for any temptation in the prospect of plunder, that those districts were frequented by them. Hence it was that the Orkney and other Northern Isles, and even a great part of the north of Scotland, came in hand more naturally to the monarch ruling in Norway than to the king of the Scots.
When we find these sea-rovers in the north-west of Scotland and in Ireland, it becomes obvious, and is confirmed by facts, that they took the north-east coast of Scotland and the northern islands in their way. As the Shetland Islands are not more than two hundred miles distant from the mouths of two of their greatest fiords—the Hardanger and the Sogne, it may be inferred that these islands, or Caithness, was their first landfall, where they could swarm off to the Faroes or Iceland, on the one side, or to Scotland, England, and Ireland, on the other.
Great skill as seamen.
As the Vikings must have been thorough seamen, with a great capacity in the handling of their vessels, it is to be regretted, for the sake of arts and inventions, that we have not a fuller knowledge of the details of their craft, and of their method of working them. With, perhaps, the exception of the Phœnicians and Carthaginians, their achievements in navigation were on a scale unknown in the world of ancient history. Whether or not they were the first discoverers of Vinland (or North America), they quickly found their way to the Mediterranean, and were known on every European coast from Iceland to Constantinople. Their rapid movements directly across wide, stormy oceans show a start in seamanship passing at once beyond the capacity of the earlier navigators who crept along the shore. Their ordinary galleys were adapted to the Mediterranean, where they were used down to the seventeenth century. They had small square sails merely to get help from a stern wind, their chief mode of propulsion being oars; but it may be reasonably supposed that the Vikings, when they performed, as they so often did, the feat of sailing from their place of retreat straight across a stormy ocean, and of pouncing unexpectedly on the opposite shore, had made considerable advance in the rigging and handling of sailing vessels.