Start ||| The Philosophical Europe ||| The Political Progress ||| European Witness ||| EU News Blog ||| Special Homages: Meister Eckhart / David Copperfield

THE MAKING OF EUROPE / EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY

From Hutton Webster's, Early European History (1917); edited for this on-line publication, by ELLOPOS

XIV. THE NORTHMEN AND THE NORMANS TO 1066 A.D.

Em. Macron, Rediscovering the Path to Europe

» Contents of this Chapter

Scandinavia and the Northmen   * The Viking Age   * Scandinavian Heathenism   * The Northmen in the West   * The Northmen in the East   * Conquest of England by the Danes; Alfred the Great   * Norman Conquest of England; William the Conqueror   * Results of the Norman Conquest   * Norman Conquest of Southern Italy and Sicily   * The Normans in European History

Page 5

SUBJECT MATTER OF THE SAGAS

The sagas belong to different classes. The oldest of them relate the deeds of Viking heroes and their families. Others deal with the lives of Norwegian kings. Some of the most important sagas describe the explorations and settlements of the Northmen and hence possess considerable value as historical records.

THE NORTHMEN AS SEEN IN THE SAGAS

The sagas throw much light on the character of the Northmen. Love of adventure and contempt for the quiet joys of home comes out in the description of Viking chiefs, who "never sought refuge under a roof nor emptied their drinking-horns by a hearth." An immense love of fighting breathes in the accounts of Viking warriors, "who are glad when they have hopes of a battle; they will leap up in hot haste and ply the oars, snapping the oar-thongs and cracking the tholes." The undaunted spirit of Viking sailors, braving the storms of the northern ocean, expresses itself in their sea songs: "The force of the tempest assists the arms of our oarsmen; the hurricane is our servant, it drives us whithersoever we wish to go." The sagas also reveal other characteristics of the Northmen: a cruelty and faithlessness which made them a terror to their foes; an almost barbaric love of gay clothing and ornament; a strong sense of public order, giving rise to an elaborate legal system; and even a feeling for the romantic beauty of their northern home, with its snow-clad mountains, dark forests of pine, sparkling waterfalls, and deep, blue fiords.

EDDAIC POEMS

It is to the Viking Age also that we owe the composition of the poems going by the name of the Elder Edda. These poems, as well as the prose sagas, were collected and arranged in Iceland during the later Middle Ages. The Elder Edda is a storehouse of old Norse mythology. It forms our chief source of knowledge concerning Scandinavian heathenism before the introduction of Christianity.

 

Previous / First / Next Page of this Chapter

THE MAKING OF EUROPE / EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY: Table of Contents

url: www.ellopos.net/politics/european-history/default.asp

IN PRINT

Cf. The Ancient Greece * The Ancient Rome
Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) * Western Medieval Europe * Renaissance in Italy