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Table of Contents

Early antiquities of the North—Literature: English and Frankish chronicles—Early civilisation—Beauty of ornaments, weapons, &c.

A study of the ancient literature and abundant archæology of the North gives us a true picture of the character and life of the Norse ancestors of the English-speaking peoples.

We can form a satisfactory idea of their religious, social, political, and warlike life. We can follow them from their birth to their grave. We see the infant exposed to die, or water sprinkled,¹ and a name bestowed upon it; follow the child in his education, in his sports; the young man in his practice of arms; the maiden in her domestic duties and embroidery; the adult in his warlike expeditions; hear the clash of swords and the songs of the Scald, looking on and inciting the warriors to greater deeds of daring, or it may be recounting afterwards the glorious death of the hero. We listen to the old man giving his advice at the Thing.² We learn about their dress, ornaments, implements, weapons; their expressive names and complicated relationships; their dwellings and convivial halls, with their primitive or magnificent furniture; their temples, sacrifices, gods, and sacred ceremonies; their personal appearance, even to the hair, eyes, face and limbs. Their festivals, betrothal and marriage feasts are open to us. We are present at their athletic games preparatory to the stern realities of the life of that period, where honour and renown were won on the battle-field; at the revel and drunken bout; behold the dead warrior on his burning ship or on the pyre, and surrounded by his weapons, horses, slaves, or fallen companions who are to enter with him into Valhalla;³ look into the death chamber, see the mounding and the Arvel, or inheritance feast.

These Norsemen had carriages or chariots, as well as horses, and the numerous skeletons of this animal in graves or bogs prove it to have been in common use at a very early period. Their dress, and the splendour of their riding equipment for war, the richness of the ornamentation of their weapons of offence and defence are often carefully described. Everywhere we see that gold was in the greatest abundance. The descriptions of such wealth might seem to be very much exaggerated; but, as will be seen in the course of this work, the antiquities treasured in the museums of the North bear witness to the truthfulness of the records. The spade has developed the history of Scandinavia, as it has done that of Assyria and Etruria, but in addition the Northmen had the Saga and Edda literature to perpetuate their deeds.

We are the more astonished as we peruse the Eddas and Sagas giving the history of the North, and examine the antiquities found in the country, for we hear hardly anything about the customs of the people from the Roman writers, and our ideas regarding them have been thoroughly vitiated by the earlier Frankish and English chronicles and other monkish writings, or by the historians who have taken these records as a trustworthy authority.

Some writers, in order to give more weight to these chronicles, and to show the great difference that existed between the invaders and invaded, and how superior the latter were to the former, paint in a graphic manner, without a shadow of authority, the contrast between the two peoples. England is described as being at that time a most beautiful country, a panegyric which does not apply to fifteen or twenty centuries ago; while the country of the aggressor is depicted as one of swamp and forest inhabited by wild and savage men. It is forgotten that after a while the people of the country attacked were the same people as those of the North or their descendants, who in intelligence, civilisation, and manly virtues were far superior to the original and effete inhabitants of the shores they invaded.

The men of the North who settled and conquered part of Gaul and Britain, whose might the power of Rome could not destroy, and whose depredations it could not prevent, were not savages; the Romans did not dare attack these men at home with their fleet or with their armies. Nay, they even had allowed these Northmen to settle peacefully in their provinces of Gaul and Britain.

No, the people who were then spread over a great part of the present Russia, who overran Germania, who knew the art of writing, who led their conquering hosts to Spain, into the Mediterranean, to Italy, Sicily, Greece, the Black Sea, Palestine, Africa, and even crossed the broad Atlantic to America, who were undisputed masters of the sea for more than twelve centuries, were not barbarians. Let those who uphold the contrary view produce evidence from archæology of an indigenous British or Gallic civilisation which surpasses that of the North.

The antiquities of the North even without its literature would throw an indirect but valuable light on the history of the earlier Norse tribes, the so-called barbarians, fiends, devils, sons of Pluto, &c., of the Frankish and English chronicles. To the latter we can refer for stories of terrible acts of cruelty committed by the countrymen of the writers who recount them with complacency; maiming prisoners or antagonists and sending multitudes into slavery far away from their homes. But the greatest of all outrages in the eyes of these monkish scribes was that the Northmen burned a church or used it for sheltering their men or stabling their horses.

The writers of the English and Frankish chronicles were the worst enemies of the Northmen, ignorant and bigoted men when judged by the standard of our time; through their writings we hardly know anything of the customs of their own people. They could see nothing good in a man who had not a religion identical with their own.

Still allowance must be made for the chroniclers; they wrote the history of their own period with the bigotry, passions, and hatreds, of their times.

The striking fact brought vividly before our mind is that the people of the North, even before the time when they carried their warfare into Gaul and Britain, possessed a degree of civilisation which would be difficult for us to realise were it not that the antiquities help us in a most remarkable manner, and in many essential points, to corroborate the truthfulness of the Eddas and Sagas.

The indisputable fact remains that both the Gauls and the Britons were conquered by the Romans and afterwards by the Northern tribes.

This Northern civilisation was peculiar to itself, having nothing in common with the Roman world. Rome knew nothing of these people till they began to frequent the coasts of her North Sea provinces, in the days of Tacitus, and after his time the Mediterranean. The North was separated from Rome by the swamps and forests of Germania—a vague term given to a country north and north-east of Italy, a land without boundaries, and inhabited by a great number of warlike, wild, uncivilised tribes. According to the accounts of Roman writers, these people were very unlike those of the North, and we must take the description given of them to be correct, as there is no archæological discovery to prove the contrary. They were distinct; one was comparatively civilised, the other was not.

The manly civilisation the Northmen possessed was their own; from their records, corroborated by finds in Southern Russia, it seems to have advanced north from about the shores of the Black Sea, and we shall be able to see in the perusal of these pages how many Northern customs were like those of the ancient Greeks.

A view of the past history of the world will show us that the growth of nations which have become powerful has been remarkably steady, and has depended upon the superior intelligence of the conquering people over their neighbours; just as to-day the nations who have taken possession of far-off lands and extended their domain, are superior to the conquered.

The museums of Copenhagen, Stockholm, Christiania, Bergen, Lünd, Göteborg, and many smaller ones in the provincial towns of the three Scandinavian kingdoms, show a most wonderful collection of antiquities which stand unrivalled in Central and Northern Europe for their wealth of weapons and costly objects of gold and silver, belonging to the bronze and iron age, and every year additions are made.

The weapons found with their peculiar northern ornamentation, and the superb ring coats-of-mail, show the skill of the people in working iron. A great number of their early swords and other weapons are damascened even so far back as the beginning of the Christian era, and show either that this art was practised in the North long before its introduction into the rest of Europe from Damascus by the Crusaders, or that the Norsemen were so far advanced as to be able to appreciate the artistic manufactures of Southern nations.

The remnants of articles of clothing with graceful patterns, interwoven with threads of gold and silver, which have fortunately escaped entire destruction, show the existence of great skill in weaving. Entire suits of wearing apparel remain to tell us how some of the people dressed in the beginning of our era.

Beautiful vessels of silver and gold also testify to the taste and luxury of those early times. The knowledge of the art of writing and of gilding is clearly demonstrated. In some cases, nearly twenty centuries have not been able to tarnish or obliterate the splendour of the gilt jewels of the Northmen. We find among their remains—either of their own manufacture or imported, perhaps as spoils of war—repoussé work of gold or silver, bronze, silver, and wood work covered with the thinnest sheets of gold; the filigree work displays great skill, and some of it could not be surpassed now. Many objects are ornamented with niello, and of so thorough a northern pattern, that they are incontestably of home manufacture. The art of enamelling seems also to have been known to the artificers of the period.

Objects, many of which show much refined taste, such as superb specimens of glass vessels with exquisite painted subjects—unrivalled for their beauty of pattern, even in the museums of Italy and Russia—objects of bronze, &c., make us pause with astonishment, and musingly ask ourselves from what country these came. The names of Etruria, of ancient Greece, and of Rome, naturally occur to our minds.

Other objects of unquestionable Roman and Greek manufacture, and hundreds and thousands of coins, of the first, second, third and fourth centuries of the Christian era, show the early intercourse the people of the North had with the western and eastern Roman empire, and with Frisia, Gaul, and Britain.

A careful perusal of the Eddas and Sagas will enable us, with the help of the ancient Greek and Latin writers, and without any serious break in the chain of events, to make out a fairly continuous history which throws considerable light on the progenitors of the English-speaking people, their migrations northward from their old home on the shores of the Black Sea, their religion, and the settlement of Scandinavia, of England, and other countries.