Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Scandinavian Britain - I. The Earlies Raids
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has been proofread at least once.
(diff)
(history)
Denna sida har korrekturlästs minst en gång.
(skillnad)
(historik)
centuries: now at last they found new worlds to
conquer. It was not that they had never heard of
Gaul and Britain, but that they had not been induced
or emboldened to venture so far in small parties for
the sake of robbery under arms.
What, then, was the reason, or occasion, of this
sudden outburst? Steenstrup thought that
overpopulation, through polygamy, had made emigration
necessary: but the earlier raids were not emigration; and
K. Maurer argued that Harald Fairhair’s attempts to
check emigration showed that Norway was not too
crowded. J. R. Green, in his Conquest of England,
suggested that as the unification of the small Scandinavian
kingdoms had already begun, the more independent
spirits preferred adventure and exile to alien
rule; adding that it is needless to look further for
a reason than the hope of plunder. But attempts at
unification had begun long before this period in Denmark
and Sweden, and in Norway Harald Fairhair’s
domination came after the Viking Age had already
set in. The hope of plunder was no doubt the motive,
but why should this date stand as the moment when
such hopes were formed? Others have supposed that
heathendom was making reprisals for Charlemagne’s
war on the Saxons; but this idea involves a solidarity
among the Scandinavians, and a sentiment of religion,
wholly foreign to all we know of them. The Viking
raids may have been prompted partly by hate of the
Christian invader, but they were not analogous to
the Crusades; they simply meant that the people
of the Baltic awoke to the possibility of successful
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
