Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Introductory Chapters By the late Professor York Powell - III. The Wicking Fleets
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There must be no feud or old quarrel taken up
while on board or on service.
Women were not allowed on board ship or inside a
fort.
News was to be reported to the captain alone.
(See Origines Islandicæ, Book II, sec. 2.)
The famous crew of King Anlaf’s Long Serpent (the
muster-roll of which reads like that of David’s mighty
men) and the 45 ships’ companies (last relics of the
buccaneer city of Iom) that followed Thor-cytel the
Tall to fight for or against Æthelræd, or his rival Cnut,
and afterward formed the nucleus of that renowned
guard, the house carles of the English kings, the peers
of the Warangians themselves,–these were but the
highest expression of a discipline, skill, and power,
that were present in more or less perfect form on
board every ship in the fleets that were the terror of
every European coast throughout the ninth century.
The fact is that ship life gave to every free North
man much of the training and skill that were in
England and France peculiar to the immediate following
of the prince, his gesiths, antrustiones, sajones, as
they are variously called in various Teutonic tribes.
Even the personal obligation of honour to the lord
that paid and fed him, so strongly felt by the comes,
was felt in some degree towards the captain of each
ship by the crew.
For warlike purposes, or external action of any
kind, the Scandinavian lands were organised like
other Teutonic lands, the country being divided into
districts, from each of which so many picked free
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