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viking" is a common phrase and one used before the
sagas were written down, for a Swedish runic stone
records a man who "died on the west voyage in
viking." The use of the word víking relates to
occupation: the peaceful merchant, though he came
from the same home and sailed into the same
waters as the pirate, was not called a viking ;
the distinction comes out in the description of one who
was both by turns (Egil’s saga, chap. 32) ; Björn was
a great traveller, var stundum i víking enn stundum í
kaupferðum—"he was sometimes in viking but sometimes
on trading voyages." At first the name was
honourable : "Naddodd was a great viking," says
Landnáma ; but gradually as things became more
settled it was possible for the pirate to be no hero ;
"Thorbjörn bitra was a viking and a rascal," says
Landnáma (ii. 32) of one who disgraced his calling
by plundering the wrong people. In the saga of
Cormac the Skald the transition is apparent : the
ancestors of the family were vikings of the good old
sort in the ninth and early tenth centuries, but towards
the close of the tenth century, when certain travellers
on a trip from Trondhjem to Denmark were taken by
"vikings," the word means simply pirates of no
heroic sort. Rauðavíkingr, a red pirate, is parallel to
rauða-rán, red robbery ; and when the literature of
the north began to be composed, and not only written
down, by churchmen, to whom the deeds of their
ancestors were as abhorrent as their heathenism,
viking came to mean any robber ; until at last, in the
story of David, the giant Goliath is called "this
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