First came the Northmen from Norway and Denmark. Like the
Saxons of the fourth century they were unrivalled seamen. Their fleets
transported them from point to point faster than land forces could follow in
pursuit; the great rivers served them as natural highways; and if beaten in a descent
upon the land, they had always their ships as a safe refuge. To make treaties
and to offer blackmail was a worse than useless policy; the Vikings came in
bands which operated separately, or united in this year to scatter and form new
combinations in the next.
One leader could not bind another; to buy off one
fleet was merely to invite the coming of a second. These pirates had begun to
molest the British Isles and Frisia before the death of Charles the Great; but
after the first partition of his Empire they fell on the whole coastline from
the Elbe to the Pyrenees. Originally attracted by the hope of plunder they soon
aimed at conquest; when, at the close of the ninth century, there was a sudden
pause in the flood of armed emigration from the North, the Danelaw in England
and Normandy on the opposite side of the Channel remained as alien colonies
which the native rulers were obliged to recognise.
