The Coming

of the Wikings.

829. 858.

CHAP. II. with the Franks. But even this peace, and a civil war among the northmen which followed it, did not quiet the emperor's anxiety, for on the eve of his death in the autumn of 811 we find him visiting Boulogne to see the ships whose building he had ordered the year before; and after restoring the old Roman lighthouse which served to guide ships along the coast, he made his way thence to the banks of the Scheldt, where vessels were also in process of construction. During the early part of the reign of his son, the Emperor Lewis, a continuance of the civil war among the northmen served. even more than these fleets to secure the Frankish coast; and the aid of the emperor enabled Harold or Heriold, one of the claimants of the throne, again to detach Jutland from Westfold. But Harold's conversion to Christianity was at once followed by his expulsion from the land; and from this moment the old attacks were resumed as fiercely as ever, till the strife between Lewis and his sons broke down the barriers between the northmen and their prey, and the pirate-boats ravaged without hindrance from the mouth of the Elbe to the mouth of the Rhine.

The Wikings and Ireland.

It was a party of these marauders along the Frankish coast who at last pushed across the Channel to the mouth of the Thames and ravaged in 834 the Isle of Sheppey.1 But whatever influence the advance of the Wikings along the coast of Gaul may have had on the southern or eastern states of Britain, the attention of Ecgberht himself must have been fixed even more intently on their parallel line of 1 Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 832 (4).

advance to the west.1 Ireland was as yet a more

2

CHAP. II.

of the Wikings.

829

858.

tempting prey for the pirates than even Gaul. It The Coming was at the monasteries that these earlier raids were mainly aimed; and nowhere were the monastic houses so many and so rich. It was in these retreats indeed, sheltered as men deemed by their holiness from the greed of the spoiler, that the whole wealth of the country was stored; and the goldwork and jewelry of their shrines, their precious chalices, the silver-bound horn which king or noble dedicated at their altars, the curiously-wrought covering of their mass-books, the hoard of their treasure-chests, fired the imagination of the northern marauders as the treasures of the Incas fired that of the soldiers of Spain. News spread fast up dale and fiord how wealth such as men never dreamed of was heaped up in houses guarded only by priests and shavelings who dared not draw sword. The Wikings had long been drawing closer to this tempting prey. From the coast of Norway3 a sail of

1 Additional proof that the earlier attacks on southern Britain came from Ireland is given by a hoard of Anglo-Saxon coins, many of them Kentish, found at Delgany in Wicklow, to which attention has been drawn by Mr. John Evans. The latest in date are those of Beornwulf, from 820 to 824, while neither in Sweden nor Denmark have such coins been found of earlier date than 830.

2 For the Northmen in Ireland, see especially "The War of the Gaedhill with the Gaill," ed. by Dr. Todd, 1867; and its learned Introduction.

3 The earlier assailants of Ireland are called "White Loch lann," who are supposed to be Norwegians; the later “Danar” or Danes. But "we cannot be sure that the name 'Dane' is not sometimes given to the Norwegians." Todd, "War of Gaedhill and Gaill," Intr. xxxi. Geographical considerations

F

CHAP. II.

of the

Wikings.

829858.

twenty-four hours with a fair wind brings the sailor in

1

The Coming sight of the Shetlands; Shetlands and Orkneys furnished a base for the advance of the pirates along the western shores of Britain, where they found a land like their own in the dales and lochs of Ross and Argyll, and where the names of Caithness and Sutherland tell of their conquest and settlement on the mainland; while the physical appearance of the people still records their colonization of the Hebrides.2 Names such as that of the Orm's Head mark their entrance at last into the Irish Channel; and here they had for more than thirty years been ravaging along either coast, but seeking out and plundering above all the religious houses with which Ireland was studded.

The Wikings

and the Welsh.

In 832 however, but four years after the submission of all England to Ecgberht, these raids gave way to an organized invasion; for the host of a leader named Turgesius or Thorgils, establishing itself at however seem decisive as to the starting-point of the attack on the Isles and Ireland.

1 Munch, "Det Norske Folks Hist." (Germ. trans.) pt. iv. p. 212.

2 Worsaae, "The Danes and Northmen," sec. ix.

3 The "Annals of Ulster" note their first appearance in 794 (really 795), "The burning of Rechru by the Gentiles, and its shrines were broken and plundered." Rechru is probably Lambay Island. From a passage in Caradoc of Lancarvan, this would seem to have been after their defeat in a descent on Glamorgan. Todd, "War of Gaedhill and Gaill," Intr. xxxii.-iii.

4 Snorro's Saga of Harald Fairhair (Laing's "Heimskringla," vol. i. p. 304) makes this Thorgils a son of Harald, sent by him to Ireland. But Harald did not begin his reign till thirty years later; and was then but a boy of ten years old.

Armagh, levied tribute from all the north of Ireland.

CHAP. II.

of the Wikings.

829. 858.

What must have given its main import to this The Coming settlement in Ecgberht's eyes was the fact that it brought with it a revival of the struggle with the Welsh. His conquest of Cornwall had seemed the last blow in a strife of more than four hundred years; but the blow was hardly struck when the action of the northmen in the Irish seas roused the West

The scanty traces

Welsh to fresh hopes of freedom.
of their presence show that the pirates attempted
little in the way of settlement on the eastern shores
of the Irish Channel; there was little indeed to tempt
them in the wild Bret-land. But behind it lay the
richer land of the Engle; and soon it was not as foes
but as friends that they were offering themselves to
the Welsh for a raid on their common enemy. Such
an offer could not fail to find a response; and thus
after encountering with varied fortunes the first stray
descents upon his coasts, the West-Saxon king found
himself face to face with a rising of the newly-won
land across the Tamar,' backed by armed aid from the
northmen. All Cornwall must have risen; for it was
at a spot but a few miles from its border that Ecgberht
met the forces of the league, on a lift of dreary
granitic upland just westward of its boundary, the
Tamar, the heights that bear the name of Hengest-
dun. But victory was still true to the king;
Cornwall was again recovered; and the fight won
rest for his own West-Saxon land from the northern

1 Cornwall had been conquered by Ecgberht in 823. See 'Making of England," p. 432. (A.S.G.)

CHAP. II.

The Coming

of the Wikings.

829858.

Political

of Wessex.

marauders through the last two years of Ecgberht's reign.1

But if the pirate descents failed to loose Ecgberht's hold upon the west, they had a far more momentous result in arresting at its very outset his work of organization consolidating the English peoples themselves. This work, it must be remembered, had hardly begun. That the vague supremacy which Ecgberht claimed might have been developed into a real national sovereignty by after efforts of the West-Saxon kings is indeed likely enough, if we compare the real strength of Wessex with that of its rival states. But with the coming of the Danes all effort after such a sovereignty was suddenly brought to an end; and the energy of Wessex had from that moment to be concentrated on the task of selfdefence. We have seen the strength which Ecgberht's kingdom drew from the physical characteristics and varied composition of the older and the newer Wessex that lay on either side of Selwood. But the But the power

1 Eng. Chron. a. 835-(7). In our own English chronicles "Dena" or Dane is used as the common term for all the Scandinavian invaders of Britain, though not including the Swedes, who took no part in the attack, while Northman generally means man of Norway." Asser however uses the words as synonymous, Nordmanni sive Dani." Across the channel "Northman was the general name for the pirates, and "Dane" would usually mean a pirate from Denmark. The distinction however is partly a chronological one; as, owing to the late appearance of the Danes in the middle of the ninth century, and the prominent part they then took in the general Wiking movement, their name tended from that time to narrow the area of the earlier term of "Nordmanni." See Munch, "Det Norske Folks Historie" (Germ. trans.), pt. iv. pp. 135-137.