hardy Northmen attained the maritime preeminence of which we have spoken. Navigable rivers, like their own fjords from which their innumerable flotillas shot boldly out to cross the Northern sea, opened channels easy of access to the interior of the lands they invaded; and the Humber and the Thames, the Seine and the Loire were the rendezvous of their most frequent and important expeditions. It was one of the latest achievements of king Alfred, by a skilful manœuvre, to dislodge the invaders from a fortified camp on the river Lea, into which after ascending the Thames they had drawn their ships. London was thus saved from pillage. Favoured by its unrivalled position, it had become even in the time of the Romans an important mart of commerce; and when the Northmen became settled in England, they were not slow in availing themselves of its advantages, if we may judge from the numerous memorials which yet remain of their former occupation.

It would appear that here, as in other districts which will be afterwards noticed, the new settlers established themselves at first in communities neighbouring, but not forming part of, the Saxon towns and villages, a circumstance very likely to occur, but which, as far as we are informed, has not been hitherto noticed One of these settlements was planted on the southern shore of the Thames in the present borough of South-wark, which is said to derive its name, "Syd-virke," the southern fortification, from intrenched works thrown up, in the time of the Norwegian king Svend Tveskjæg, for the defence of this place of trade.* Afterwards the settlers erected a church in this burgh, which they dedicated to Saint Olave the patron saint of Norway, in whose honour churches were built in almost every place where the Northmen established themselves. The name of Tooley Street in the Borough, a corruption of St Olave street, marks to this day the site of a settlement, close to the river bank, so suited to a sea-faring and commercial community.

Scarcely less adapted to their purpose in those times was another settlement on the strand of the river, west of London, but beyond

Stow mentions the battle of Southwark,—which he calls a market-in the time of Ethelred the Second. The Danes, he says, fortified it with many defences,―a deep and broad ditch, with a rampart of stone, wood, and turf. The English under Ethelred attacked them in vain. The bridge over the Thames was also protected by fortifications and breast works, but Olave assailed and forced them.

the walls, in the parish now called St Clement's Danes. St Clement was the patron saint of seamen, and there are churches dedicated to him in the old commercial towns of Norway and Denmark, as well as one, that of Eastcheap, in the city of London. The Danes and Norwegians appear to have had a distinct burial-place of their own in St Clement's Danes from the earliest times of their settlement in London and its neighbourhood. In it the corpse of Harald Harefoot, the son and successor of Canute the Great, was buried, after Hardicanute had caused it to be disinterred from its tomb in Westminster abbey and thrown into the Thames.

But the foreign merchants and mariners appear to have gradually established themselves, as their numbers and their friendly relations with the inhabitants increased, within the city walls; where three churches dedicated to St Olave, and another to St Magnus the martyr, also a Norwegian Saint, attest their piety and influence. So considerable was the Norwegio-Danish population in London, that the citizens are said in one of the Chronicles, by means of their intercourse with "the barbarians," to have almost adopted their manners and customs. It would appear that the northern merchants had their own court of judicature, the most antient civic tribunal retaining to the present day its former name of " Hustings," a word of purely northern origin; and such was their political influence in the time of Canute the Great, that it decided the election of his successor Harold.

Not only in London, but in Derby, York, Grimsby, Whitby, and Hull, in the north and east of England, and Bristol in the west, the principal places of trade in those times, we find Danes or Norwegians established in considerable numbers. From the two latter ports especially a brisk commerce was carried on with those of Denmark and Norway and their colony in Iceland, a commerce naturally engrossed by the northern merchants settled in England, from their connections with their father-land, and also because, in its earliest stage, the naval supremacy of the Scandinavians excluded any other competitors. This commerce seems not to have been confined to the natural products of the northern regions, but to have included the far more valuable merchandize of the remote East.

It

We learn that from early times the Northmen maintained very intimate relations with eastern countries, and particularly with Constantinople. Their conquests in Russia and the possession of the important city of Novogorod opened to them a road, along the great rivers, to the shores of the Black sea, which, before the establishment of the trade of Venice and Genoa with the Levant and the discovery of the passage to the East Indies by sea, secured to the Northern merchants a considerable share of that commerce which has in all times enriched its successive possessors. appears, from the oriental coins found both in Russia and in the countries surrounding the Baltic sea, to have been most active from the eighth to the eleventh centuries. We are told that “in Sweden, and particularly in the island of Gothland, such an immense quantity of these coins has been found at various times, that in Stockholm alone, above twenty thousand pieces have been preserved, presenting more than a thousand different dies, and coined in about seventy towns in the northern and eastern districts of the dominions of the Caliphs. Together with the coins, a great mass of ornaments has been dug up, consisting of rings and other articles in silver, which are distinguished by a peculiar workmanship."|| The Northern Sagas and Arabian Annals concur in their accounts of this important commerce; in the prosecution of which, Eastern merchants are found to have visited the principal trading places in the north of Europe.

That this commercial intercourse with the East was extended to England seems also to follow from a number of Arabian coins, in conjunction with silver ornaments similar to those found in Scandinavia and Russia, having been discovered in England, particularly at Cuerdale in Lancashire, mixed with coins of AngloSaxon kings; of which eight hundred were those of Alfred, § and the hoard contained a still greater number of coins of DanishNorwegian kings and jarls. On the other hand, a prodigious number of Anglo-Saxon coins have been dug up at the principal trading places in the islands and districts on the eastern coasts of the Baltic, exhibiting the reciprocity of this commercial intercourse; for, as they are found intermixed with a still greater

Warsaae's DANES AND NORWEGIANS IN ENGLAND, Sect. x, p. 103: and see an account of ornaments and coins in the soil of a drained lake in Norway, Forester's RAMBLES, p. 231. § See "Sketch of the Anglo-Saxon mint"; p. 134 of this vol.

number of oriental coins, and many of the English ones are of dates when the hostile inroads from the north had ceased, they can hardly be considered as having been derived from the plunder of the Anglo-Saxons. Nor is it very likely that the pirates of the ninth century brought with them the Arabian coins discovered at Cuerdale and other places in England. It is far more reasonable to consider the continual interchange of foreign coins as the fruit of that extensive commerce, the existence of which other evidence concurs in establishing.

We have been the more particular in considering the maritime superiority of the Northmen in Anglo-Saxon times, and endeavouring to account for their early distinction as a seafaring and commercial people, because in this important element of our own national greatness we are disposed to admit their claims to have essentially contributed to our subsequent preeminence. Historic truth must not be disregarded even in a work which professes to regard the administration of Alfred as the foundation of almost all that we boast in arts, in institutions, and in power. We may consider him as the first of our kings who paid any attention to naval architecture, and the founder of what may be called a national fleet; but, while the rivalry of a bold and hostile race, then masters of the sea, impelled the Anglo-Saxon king to these enlightened measures, it is to the practised skill and the spirit of enterprise introduced by the intermixture of that race, when they became settled in England, that we are probably in great measure indebted for our triumphs, both in peace and war, on that element which they were the first of the nations of the north to call their own.

Though preeminent in all that was connected with the building and navigation of ships, the Northmen had much to learn in other useful as well as ornamental arts from those among whom they came as pagans and conquerors. When the kindred tribes of the same race, the Angles, Jutes, and Saxons, first established themselves in Britain, they too were heathens, and their condition was, probably, even ruder than that of the people, who, in the decay of the Anglo-Saxon power, became for a time the predominant race in England. But when the German tribes first came over. there is reason to believe that all traces of the Roman

civilization had not been lost in Britain; and subsequently the gradual conversion of the kingdoms of the Heptarchy to Christianity had not only produced its due effect in controlling the passions and softening the manners of a wild and sensuous population, but had engrafted them with some degree of taste for those arts, amongst others, which followed in the train of the pompous ceremonial of the Roman Church,-and which was fostered by the frequent communications maintained with the capital of Christendom.

The northern museums exhibit in their collections of antient weapons and domestic utensils a state of native art which was at least equal to that of other contemporary nations of Europe. It has been remarked, however, that it had the peculiar character of some imitation of articles of this class introduced by commerce from the East. When the Northmen settled in England, they mingled with a people who, though far relapsed, as Alfred himself lamented, into ignorance and barbarism, were in a stage of civilization superior to their own. They too speedily felt the humanizing influence of Christianity, and to the glimmerings of art which they had caught from their connection with the East was now added the fuller light derived from Western models. The fine original genius of the Scandinavian race expanded itself freely when it was transplanted to more genial climates. Every where the Northmen adapted themselves to their new position, and the terror of their arms was forgotten in their meliorating influence on society and the success with which they cultivated the arts of peace. One or two instances will suffice to exhibit the vigour and ability with which they adopted and improved upon models of artistic skill-such as it was in those times-in departments which were entirely new to them.

We have spoken of the early proficiency of the Northmen in the art of ship-building. Their dexterity probably extended to every description of work in wood. Ingenuity in carving seems to be a peculiar and natural talent with the Norwegians; for at this day it is not confined to a particular class of artisans, but the peasants in general not unfrequently work the timber frames and gables of their houses into bold and grotesque forms, and employ the long winter evenings in ornamenting their domestic utensils and articles of household furniture with delicate