 |
 |
 |
 |
GERMANY FROM THE EARLIEST PERIODPART VII
THE HISTORY
OF THE NORTH
CXVIII. Odin
The North, or Scandinavia, separated from Germany by
the Baltic, stretched far into the frigid zone. Denmark lay to its extreme
south. From time immemorial the fertile lowlands were cultivated by a hardy
population. Steep Alps separate Sweden from Norway. Ages ago, along the
extensive rocky coasts, called the Scheeren, and
along the streams flowing through the valleys, dwelt tribes of Fins, who, at an
unknown period, were driven into Finland, and amid the eternal snows of
Lapland, which they still inhabit, by Germans, who crossed the Baltic and took
possession of the countries lying to the North.
The most ancient sources of Northern history are the
legendary accounts of celebrated royal dynasties, which, as is usually the case
in these sort of legends, drew their origin, in the
fabulous ages from the supreme deity, and became the first rulers over the
people. Thus the Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, and
Anglo-Saxon kings claim as their common ancestor the great god, Odin, who is
said to have subdued the whole of Northern Germany and Scandinavia, which he
divided between his sons, giving Eastern Saxony to Vegdeg,
Western Saxony to Balldr, Franconia to Sigge, Denmark to Skiold, Norway
to Saming, and Sweden to Yngwi-Freyr.
With his own hands he raised the great temple at Upsala in Sweden, where he was
represented under the figure of a warrior standing before an enormous flaming
sun. Here was his earthly throne, whence he gave laws to the whole North, and
to him are ascribed the invention of religious ceremonies, magic, the Runic
letters, poetry, the institution of the popular assembly or Thing, and of the
administration of justice, heroism, the regulations of the warriors or warlike
retinue, which he composed of Berserkers, and every important popular
institution. For some time after the death of Odin, his sons appear to have
shared his divine attributes. They were called Drottar or lords, a word, in its full meaning, signifying God-kings, who possessed
power equalling that of Odin. The whole of Sweden was under the jurisdiction of
the temple-court at Upsala, the seat of government of the Ynglinger (from Yngwi-Freyr); the whole of Norway under that of
the sacred city of Trondheim, where the Saminger sat
enthroned; and Denmark, under that of the great temple of Lethra,
which was guarded by the Skioldunger. So far extend
the ancient traditions of the gods, which soon after assume a more worldly tone, and treat of men. The laws and institutions of ancient
Germany appear to have spread over the North as well as the South. The Swedish
legends record that Dygwe, the seventh Ynglinger after Yngwi-Freyr, was
the first who exchanged the title of Drottar for that
of king.
CXIX. The Kings
The lineal descendants of Odin maintained their
authority at Upsala, Trondheim, and Lethra, and even
after the extinction of their race, the ancient veneration for these sacred
cities gave to the districts to which they belonged, and to their kings, a sort
of pre-eminence over the other districts and their kings, which usually simply
consisted in the honour of presiding at the national festivals, except in cases
when this dignity chanced to be attained by some great warrior, who made use of
the superstition of his countrymen to increase his authority. Besides these
sacred monarchs, there arose numerous petty Fylker-kings,
so named from the independent Fylker or districts
over which they reigned. These kings were, at first, side-branches of the race
of Odin, and united in their persons the offices of Lagmenn or guardians of the laws, of Hofdingiar, presidents
of the popular assembly and administrators of justice (chiefs of the Thing),
and of Blotmenn, high priests of the altar; they were
also Heerkonige, or kings of the army by land, and
sea-kings by water.
The people consisted of free peasants or Bonden, who possessed a heritable and inalienable Allod or Odol, freehold. They had
the right of electing the king, and of holding their public councils or Things
under his presidency. Wealthy Bonden had their
vassals or feudal tenants (Lendirmenn), and servants
or slaves (Tralle). Individual warriors, who
assembled followers and practiced piracy, received the title of sea-kings, or,
when they fixed their abode on a small island or rock (Naes),
that of Naes-kings. Other warriors formed a republic
of pirates, each of whom enjoyed equal privileges and was subject to the same
regulations, which were often extremely severe. War and piracy were the daily
occupation of the people. The kings were ever at feud. Sometimes a king was
murdered for attempting to tyrannize over the people; or some mighty warrior
was, for a short time, successful in his attacks upon neighbouring kings; or
part of the people migrated to the South.
The state of the North, about the middle of the first
century after Christ, is thus described in numerous legends, in which, in the midst of the universal confusion, its three great
causes, the love of war, the attempts of the Tralle to escape from thralldom, and the sturdy opposition
of the Bonden to the arbitrary rule of the kings, may
ever be traced. This continual struggle necessarily produced a new order of
things; war was preferred to peace, the military ruled the civil power, and the
warriors tyrannized over the Bonden, whose Allods were alienated by the kings, and the feudal system
was introduced. Superstition gave the sacred kings the upper hand over the
minor rulers, and, finally, the introduction of Christianity tended to bring
the people into subjection and to fix the throne on a firmer basis.
It is remarkable that the change in the government of
the three kingdoms proceeded from totally different causes. In Denmark, where
war was the ruling passion, the people crowded beneath the banner of their
kings, who easily extended the authority they thus acquired. In Sweden, the
people were inthralled by superstition, and the
kings, unaided by the sword, exercised supreme power in Odin's sacred temple.
In Norway, the authority rested with the people, and the Bonden,
whose warlike deeds surpassed those of their monarchs, held royalty in check;
and it was only after a long and cruel struggle, which, like a pestilence, swept
away half the population, that they at length fell beneath the arbitrary rule
of one warrior king.
CXX. The Danes
The Danes bear a prominent part in the history of
ancient Germany. As early as a century before Christ, they appeared on the
other side of the Pyrenees and Alps, under the denomination of Cimbri, and, at a later date, sent forth the hardy Longobardi. Invincible
in their own country, they spread their conquering arms, at different periods,
over the whole of the North, where their power for some time equalled that
attained by the Franks in the South. Frotho, the
second king after Skiold, is said to have subdued
upward of a hundred of the minor kings who dwelt along the shores of the
Northern Ocean and the Baltic. He is described in the legends as a great
lawgiver, and as so beloved by his subjects, that, despairing to find his
equal, they bore his body about the country for three years; at length they
resolved to elect as his successor on the throne whoever composed the best
poem in his honour, and one Hiarne obtained the
prize. The sixth king after him was Dan Mykelati, who
gave his name to the country. Several new regulations are ascribed to him,
among others the abolition of the burning
The history of this period is very obscure. The kings
strove for supremacy, some of them favouring Christianity from interested
motives, while the rest defended their ancient gods. Christianity, cruelly persecuted,
spread but slowly, and the German priests, in order to curry favour with the people, either omitted part of the Catholic doctrine or
assimilated it with paganism. Thus the conversion was
always commenced with the primsignung, or first mark
with a cross. Whoever was marked in this manner could live as he chose, either
as a Christian or a heathen. The majority of the
people and their rulers still adhered to the worship of Odin, and Hamburg was
again destroyed during their destructive inroads into the German empire.
In 931, Gorm the Grim ruled Denmark, and persecuted
the Christians. His son Harald Blaatand (blue tooth)
favoured them, but, making himself hated by his despotism, was murdered by a
peasant. His successor, the pagan Svend, carried on
extensive wars, particularly against the Homsburger,
a republic of warriors and pirates on the island of Wollin near Pomerania, and against the Wendi. In his reign, another piratical horde,
the Ascomanni or Schachtelmanner (box-men), assembled and greatly endangered Saxony. They were so numerous that
the Saxons killed 20,000 of them in one battle.
Canute the Great, the most celebrated of the kings of
the North, the conqueror of Norway and England, was the promoter of
Christianity, which took firm root in Denmark. He left new laws, extended the
royal prerogative, and was the founder of a new era, that of the middle ages, in the North. Toward the close of the twelfth
century, the history of Denmark was written in Latin by an erudite Dane, named
Saxo Grammaticus.
CXXI. The Swedes
Dygwe, the seventh Ynglinger,
first assumed the title of king. During the reign of his tenth successor, Eigill, a civil war broke out; the Tralle,
headed by Tunni, one of their class,
revolted, and were in eight bloody battles victorious over the Bonden, whom they completely expelled, together with their
king, and Tunni became sole sovereign. Eigill fled to the court of Frotho,
the great king of Denmark, and the conqueror of the North, who, lending him his
aid, overran Sweden at the head of his veteran warriors, and, after nine
battles, in the last of which Tunni and the majority
of the brave Tralle were left dead on the field,
restored Eigill to the throne.
The petty Fylker-kings
subsequently asserted their independence. Eigill's sixth successor, Ingialldr, desiring to regain the
supreme authority, invited six of these kings to a banquet, and, after inducing
them to carouse deeply, set fire to the house in which they slept. His
punishment did not tarry long. Ivar Widfadmi, the
Dane, marched victoriously through the North and arrived in Sweden. Ingialldr, sensible of the futility of opposition, but too
proud to yield, invited all his followers to a great banquet, and when they
were helpless from inebriety, set fire to the palace in which they sat, and was
destroyed with them. His son, Olaf, meanwhile, accompanied by numbers of the
people, took refuge in the northern mountains, and discovering a fertile and uninhabited
country, settled there, and named it Wermeland. Soon
after their settlement, a famine, occasioned by the bad cultivation of the
ground, broke out among them, and they offered up their king as an expiatory
sacrifice to the gods. The descendants of Olaf, by their bravery and by their
intermarriages with the noblest families of Norway, rose ere long to great
power, and finally seized the monarchy.
Sweden was, meanwhile, long governed by kings of Danish
origin, during whose reigns Christianity was first introduced from Denmark. In
839, St. Anscar visited the country, but the new
doctrine met with violent opposition. In 865, St. Rimbert made another short but useless attempt, and paganism was not eradicated until
930, when Unno, bishop of Bremen, who was succeeded
in his pious mission by other Germans, visited Sweden for that purpose. The last
pagan king of Upasana was Eric the Victorious.
About the year 1000, Olaf, sumamed the Schoos, or bosom king, on account of his having
been proclaimed and raised in the arms of the people, was the founder of a new
era in Sweden. He was unanimously elected by the Fylker-kings
as their common sovereign. During his reign, Christianity was firmly
established throughout his dominions.
CXXII. The Norwegians
Norway was subdivided among a crowd of Fylker, army, sea, and Naes kings, who strove with each other by sea and land. The independent spirit of
the Bonden was long an invincible obstacle to union;
in no other country has the people been possessed of so much power, in no other
has it been so difficult for the kings and the military to bring the free
peasantry into subjection. In the ninth century, one of the petty kings,
Harald Harfagra (with the beautiful locks), who is
said to have been a descendant of the expelled Ynglingers,
succeeded, after a long and desperate struggle, in usurping dominion over the
whole of Norway. His proffered love being treated with contempt by Gyda, the
most beautiful and the proudest of the maidens of Norway, who had vowed that
she would alone bestow her hand on him who presented her with the whole of her
country as a morning-gift, he swore that he would not comb his beautiful hair
until he had gained the sole sovereignty, and, assembling a crowd of youthful
warriors beneath his standard, unexpectedly attacked and subdued his
neighbours, one by one. The fame of his irresistible prowess quickly spread,
and some of the provinces voluntarily submitted to him. One of the petty kings,
rather than incur disgrace by flight or by defeat, buried himself alive with
his dependents and friends. At length, the kings who still
remained unsubdued made common cause, and a great battle was fought, in
which Harald was victorious. Subsequent rebellions proved vain; Harald's power
became gradually more firmly secured, and, after the lapse of a few years, he
grasped the sceptre of Norway. He now combed his locks and espoused the
beauteous Gyda. His throne, raised upon ruin and bloodshed, could alone be
supported by treachery and violence, and while he caused the nobler and more
resolute of the petty kings to be murdered, he cajoled the more cowardly with
rich gifts and high but empty honours. He deprived them of their thrones and
their independence, placed them, in the capacity of Stadtholders or Jarls, over
the provinces they formerly governed, and by his despotic violence obtained for
them far greater power over the Bonden, whom he
transformed into vassals, and richer revenues than they had hitherto enjoyed.
Popular freedom was annihilated at a blow; every Odol (freehold) was declared crown property, and for the future held in fief by its
original possessor. This destruction of the old German Allod and Gau system was unprecedentedly sudden and
violent, and the more astonishing from its happening
to the German tribe most jealous of its freedom; nor was this revolution in any
way aided by the obedience inculcated by the precepts of Christianity, Harald
and the Norwegians being still idolaters. Unwearied by the ceaseless warfare,
Harald ever pursued his aim with unremitting perseverance. Rebellion was
foreseen and crushed in the bud, and flight alone secured the rebel from death;
hence it naturally resulted that the continual migrations gradually reduced
the population of Norway to half its original number. On the death of Harald,
his empire, erected at the cost of so much bloodshed, fell to pieces, but the
people were too enfeebled by tyranny to raise themselves entirely from their
state of subjection. The Bonden assembled for the
purpose of electing a new king, and strife was about to ensue, when Hakon, surnamed the Good, the son of Harald, who had been
bred up as a Christian in England, appeared, and peaceably addressing them,
promised to revoke the tyrannical impositions of his father, and especially to
restore to each man the free tenure of his Odol.
Pleased with these promises, the people elected him at Trondheim, and he was
subsequently proclaim king throughout the Fylker. A new source of contention arose from his
attempting to introduce Christianity, which the Bonden successfully resisted, and forced their king to preside at their sacrificial
feast, and to eat of the flesh of the sacred horse.
In the latter part of the tenth century, Olaf
Tryggvason, who had been a bold pirate in his youth, and had become a convert
to Christianity, was elected king, and undertook the work of conversion with a
zeal worthy of Charlemagne. At the great Things or assemblies, the Bonden, headed by their Blotmenn,
and sometimes by their idols, now confronted the monarch, surrounded by the
Christian bishops, and his brilliant train of warriors. The debate upon
religion usually lasted several days, and terminated
in violence. Olaf finally had recourse co arms, and the most dreadful scenes of
slaughter ensued. He would sometimes unexpectedly invade secluded valleys, or
isolated tracts, whose inhabitants obstinately rejected Christianity, and lay
them waste by fire and sword. The Bonden, meanwhile,
were not idle; the arrow, the signal for a general rising, flew through the
country, and Hakon, one of the most powerful of the
Jarls, who was scarcely inferior to the king in talent and bravery, placed
himself at their head; but his success was rendered null by his ambition,
arrogance, and licentiousness. The Bonden, deeply
injured by his forcible abduction of their wives and daughters, or offended by
his haughty demeanour, revolted against and murdered him; an event that proved
little favourable to Olaf, who, being defeated by Eiric,
the son of Hakon, and by his allies, the Danes and
Swedes, in a great sea-fight, threw himself, together with all his followers,
into the sea, rather than incur the disgrace of captivity. Norway was
partitioned by the victors, but, in the beginning of the eleventh century, was
again united under the sceptre of Olaf the Holy, who was canonized on account
of his zeal in the work of conversion. His first attempts for the conversion of
his heathen subjects, by means of instruction, failing, he had recourse to
persecution, and emulated his predecessor, Olaf Tryggvason, in cruelty, laying
whole villages of unbelievers waste with fire and
sword. At length, a casual occurrence was the means of effecting a general
conversion. A great Thing was being held at Trondheim, as usual, by moonlight.
The Bonden stood, in immense
numbers, forming a half circle, armed and with threatening aspect, opposite the
king and his warriors. Olaf exerted his utmost eloquence in the cause of
Christianity, but the Bonden replied to his arguments
by saying, "A God whom we can neither see nor touch, is no God," and
pointing to a gigantic wooden image of Thor, richly ornamented with gold,
called upon the monarch to show them his god. The king mocked the wooden god,
which had not the power of motion, and must be carried by his worshipers. At
that moment, the rising sun illumined the eastern horizon. "Behold!"
exclaimed the enthusiastic monarch, "Behold! our God approaches!" as
he uttered these words, one of his followers split the image with one blow of
his battle-ax, and snakes and mice, which had nestled inside, came rushing out,
and the Bonden, mute with awe, turned from the
prostrate idol to bend in adoration to the sun, which that day shone upon a
Christian land.
Olaf was the founder of a new era in Norway, but did not escape the punishment he merited for his
numerous deeds of cruelty. At that period, Canute the Great undertook the
conquest of the North, and some of the Norwegians, thirsting to revenge their
slaughtered brethren, some ambitious Jarls, and all, in fact, who hoped to
profit by a revolution, invited him into their country. Olaf, after being
defeated in a great sea-fight, fell a victim to treachery, and Norway became a
Danish province.
Snorri Sturleson, the great
Norwegian historian, compiled his work in the Icelandic tongue, in the earlier
half of the thirteenth century.
CXXIII. Christianity and the Feudal System in the
North
Subsequently to this period, the history of the North
presents little worthy of remark until the time of the Reformation,
and will for the future be merely referred to in this work when in
relation with the affairs of Germany. The three kingdoms, or generally two of
them, appeal to have been sometimes forcibly united under one sovereign, at
others again ruled by independent kings, and a long list of bloody broils
between monarchs, and of contentions for the succession to the throne, blacken
the page, which is alone rendered interesting by the repeated attempts made by
the peasantry, at different periods, in each of the three kingdoms, to rescue
their privileges from the deadly grasp of their kings or stadtholders, to
abolish the tithes exacted by the clergy, and to check the rising power of the
vassals of the crown, and the growing importance of the cities; but, although
these revolutions often proved fatal to the monarchs, the authority of the
state, the church and the nobility was already too firmly based on the
superstitious belief of the Middle Ages to be shaken by the futile attempts of
a body of peasants for the restoration of the ancient German system of
government, which, however, still pervaded the constitution of the three
kingdoms, founded upon that of the Franks.
The divine right of kings was the more easily
recognized from its accordance with the legendary superstition anciently
attached to the Drottars, the descendants of Odin. A
brilliant court, composed of a noble band of scalds or bards, and of a warlike
retinue, added splendour to royalty. The monarch nominated his Jarls as
stadtholders over the Fylker and subordinate Herses over lesser tracts; the former of whom corresponded
to the Grafs, the latter to the Centners, of the
Franks. Sometimes it happened that a more powerful Jarl was placed over several
others, and eventually received the Frankish title of duke. At the side of the
temporal governor or Jarl stood his spiritual colleague, the bishop. The Fylker still retained the privilege of holding popular
assemblies, which the king, the Jarl, or the bishop attended in person. At a
time when the royal prerogative was still held in check by these assemblies,
the Lagmann, or guardian of the national laws and
privileges, confronted the monarch at the head of the Bonden,
by whom he was chosen as the representative of their class; a dignity at once sacred and formidable.
The formation of a new class of nobility, composed of
the vassals of the crown, and the gradual rise of cities and communities,
greatly checked the power of the Bonden, and a
struggle naturally ensued, in which the peasantry, although vanquished, finally
retained, through their brilliant exploits and unwearied perseverance, an
honourable position in the state. The great council of state—which in each of
the three kingdoms replaced the general popular assemblies and greatly
diminished the authority of the sovereign—was composed of deputies, the
representatives of the clergy, the nobility, the communities, and the
peasantry; a prerogative that was never enjoyed by the peasantry of the German
empire.
CXXIV. Iceland and Greenland
During the reign of Harald Harfagra,
AD 863, the island of Iceland, with its show-capped mountains, one of which,
Hecla, was at that time vomiting fire—was discovered by a Norwegian vessel,
driven northward out of its course, which bore news of the discovery to Norway,
where it was hailed with delight by the people, who, oppressed by tyranny, were
at that period quitting their homes in thousands to seek elsewhere an asylum
for their threatened liberty. The first settler, Ingolf,
was speedily followed by such crowds of fugitives that the island,
notwithstanding its size, seemed likely to be overpopulated, and it was
accordingly enacted AD 873, that each new-comer should
receive the portion of land covered by the smoke arising from a burning heap of
fagots.
At first each tribe was headed by its own chief or
elder (Godar), but at a later period they were all
included in four provinces (Fiordungen), independent
of each other, according to the ancient German system, and answering to the
four cardinal points in their position on the island.
The fraudulent plans of Olaf Tryggvason, for the
possession of the island, were foiled by the decided refusal returned to his
flattering proposals by the national assembly. Christianity was first
introduced in 981, by a Saxon priest named Frederich,
and in the year 1000 it had already become so widely diffused that the
Christian party succeeded in causing their religion to be proclaimed, in the
public assembly, that of the state; this led to the dissolution of the Gau system, and to the union of the island into one state,
governed by a Lagmann, whose dignity was not
hereditary, and who presided over the general assembly or Althing. This simple
republican form of government continued until 1261, when the union of the
island with Norway was managed by the clergy and the Norwegian kings, with the
concurrence of the people, who were allowed to retain their own laws. Since
this period the island has sunk into insignificance. The ancient German system
of government was maintained for a longer period and in greater purity in
Iceland, while she retained her independence, than in any other part of Europe,
and her historical importance now alone consists in her possessing the only
records in existence of the language (which is still spoken by the
inhabitants), the poetry, religion, and legends of the ancient North, by which
the obscurity of its history can be elucidated. The influence and fame of
Rome, which spread over Germany, casting into oblivion remote and pagan times,
scarce echoed to that distant shore, whose hardy sons and cold ungenial clime
alike disdained the culture of the South, and where whose gods, now no longer
adored, still live in song.
Shortly after the discovery of Iceland, Greenland, the northeastern part of the continent of America, was
discovered by the Norwegians, who thus claim the honour of the discovery of
America about five centuries earlier than that of Columbus. Greenland, so named
on account of the verdure of the land and forests, must, at that period, have
been a fine country. The Norwegians, who had settled there in great numbers,
were carrying on a great traffic with Norway, and the Jarls, placed over the
new country by the Norwegian monarchs, had become great and powerful, when
sudden destruction fell upon the colony; a fearful frost spread from the north
pole, and covered the country with snow and ice, as it is to be seen at the
present day. The land, deserted by the Norwegians, was soon completely
forgotten, and entirely disappeared from history, until the second discovery of
America.
The Norwegians also sailed to the southwest of Iceland
and Greenland, and landed in a new country, which they named Winland, from the
vine which there grew wild. They afterward made several expeditions to this
coast, which, doubtless, formed part of that of America, and returned richly
laden with its natural productions.
The Shetland, Orkney, and Faro Islands were, in the
ninth century, cultivated by the Norwegians, and governed by Jarls. The Faro
Islands are said to have been long retained in paganism, by the cunning of old Trund of Gote, a sorcerer of
legendary fame.
The distant expeditions undertaken by the Norwegians
prove their naval skill. They were the first who ventured into the open sea.
Other nations, until then, were only acquainted with the navigation of the
coasts. It is also evident, from their bold and distant voyages, that they
possessed a sort of compass. The Northern navigators who penetrated the
Mediterranean, and settled in Greece and Italy, taught their art to the Southerns. All the terms made use of in navigation at the
present day by all the nations of Europe may also be traced to a German origin.
CXXV. The Norsemen
The daring expeditions and armed fraternities of the
ancient Germans were common to all the Northern nations, and ceased only with the ancient system of government. They were continued to a
much later period among the Scandinavians, and figure in history as the
expeditions of the Norsemen, the general appellation for all the Scandinavian
nations among the people of more southern latitudes.
The whole of the North swarmed with sea and Naes kings, and piratical republics, who attacked alike
foreign and native ships, and landed indiscriminately on any coast for battle
or for plunder; nor was the authority of either the monarch or the Fylker-kings respected by their subjects, until some great
and piratical expedition had added lustre to their name. These warlike and
piratical expeditions received an additional impulse when the monarchical power
in each of the three kingdoms became almost despotic and drove the people, wild
as the element with which they strove, to seek refuge from tyranny at home on
the ocean wave. During the reign of Harald Harfagra,
half the population of Norway fled at tunes for safety to their ships. Immense
numbers of these pirates wandered about the Northern Ocean, striking their
native shores with terror, while others, as has been already related, colonized
the northern islands and Greenland. Others, again, devastated the coasts of
Saxony and France, ventured up the rivers, and fought many a hard battle with
the Germans and Neustrians. A great multitude of this
description, led by Rollo and flying from Harald Schonhaar,
took possession of the northern coast of France, hence named Normandy, and
voluntarily embraced Christianity. Rollo received the name of Robert, and took the oath of allegiance to the French
monarch as first duke of Normandy, AD 911, while his followers, a mere armed
multitude, naturally adopted the feudal system. Similar hordes and the Danish
kings, at the head of immense armies, invaded, and, at different times, took
possession of the whole of England, peopled some of the provinces, and,
although finally obliged to yield to the ancient Anglo-Saxons, made a deep and
lasting impression on the British language, manners, and constitution. At a
later period, a duke of Normandy conquered and reigned over England, where he
introduced the feudal system, AD 1066. Other hordes ventured into the Mediterranean, and opposed the Moors. Adventurers from the
North also founded a state in Sicily, and shortly afterward the powerful
kingdom of Naples. The expeditions of the Norsemen to the East are equally
remarkable. The Danish and Swedish kings waged bloody wars with the Wendi, whom
they often subdued and rendered tributary. All the Finnish races, on either
side of the Baltic and within the Gulf of Finland, were also subdued by the
Swedes. Indications of solitary expeditions having been made into Russia, even
in pagan times, for the purpose of discovering ancient Asgard,
or Caucasus, still exists the bodyguard of the Greek emperors was also formed
from similar wanderers who reached Constantinople, and who, like the Gothic bodyguard of earlier times, in the same city, were named Varingians, and were always recruited by fresh adventurers,
who traversed Russia or the seas. The Russians, at that period the most
barbarous of the Slavonian nations, became, by these means, acquainted with the
brave Norsemen: and their history, according to the Chronicle of the monk
Nestor, commences with a unanimous resolution, on the part of the people, to
elect a Knaes or ruler, but as none of the nation was
deemed worthy of the elevation, they invited the Norsemen into the country, and
elected a gigantic warrior, named Euric, a heathen,
for their Knaes, who in this manner became the
founder of the Russian empire. Like the rest of his countrymen throughout
ancient Russia, he was named a Warager, a term
synonymous with that of Varingian,
|
|
|