Author: Eleanor Means Hull

Publisher:

Published: 2015-06-29

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 9781330493823

Excerpt from The Northmen in Britain Two great streams of Northern immigration met on the shores of Britain during the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries. The Norsemen from the deep fiords of Western Norway, fishing and raiding along the coasts, pushed out their adventurous boats into the Atlantic, and in the dawn of Northern history we find them already settled in the Orkney and Shetland Isles, whence they raided and settled southward to Caithness, Fife, and Northumbria on the east, and to the Hebrides, Galloway, and Man on the western coast. Fresh impetus was given to this outward movement by the changes of policy introduced by Harald Fairhair, first king of Norway (872-983). Through him a nobler type of emigrant succeeded the casual wanderer, and great lords and kings' sons came over to consolidate the settlements begun by humbler agencies. Iceland was at the same time peopled by a similar stock. The Dane, contemporaneously with the Norseman, came by a different route. Though he seems to have been the first to invade Northumbria (if Ragnar and his sons were really Danes), his movement was chiefly round the southern shores of England, passing over by way of the Danish and Nether land coast up the English Channel, and round to 'the west. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.