Introduction

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       of a large foreign element to the population, and though this had no permanent effect upon the southern Danelaw between the Thames and the Welland, it was not without considerable influence upon the social structure of East Anglia, and was of even greater significance in the northern Danelaw of Northumbria where, until the Norman conquest and even later, a peaceable and semi-foreign rural society contrived to hold themselves apart from the rest of the English, aware of their individuality and differing from their neighbours in law and custom. For though the original Danelaw lasted only half a century as an independent Danish colony and though the Anglo-Danish kingdom of Cnut was likewise short-lived, neither the re-conquest of the Danelaw by Edward the Elder nor the collapse of Cnut's realm meant the actual expulsion of the unambitious resident country-folk of Danish blood. To them the fall of the Danelaw in 920 was but a change of overlord, and the coming of the Normans no worse than the arrival of new masters; so they survived as only half-English folk, possessors of their ancient wapentakes, until at last they disappear in the Norman world of the Middle Ages, leaving behind them a rich legacy of Old Norse personal names and place-names as witness to the foreign blood in them.
       As to the effect of the expansion of the Northmen upon the march of civilization, it is easy to exaggerate the harm done by the pillaging and destruction of the monasteries that was the first result of the viking invasion; for although it is now a commonplace of history that the vikings checked and finally crushed the Carolingian renaissance on the fringes of the western empire and in Britain and Ireland, though it is indubitably true that the destruction of manuscripts and the flight of monks were consequences of their early raids, yet it is questionable whether the increased activity in the world of art and learning that had been encouraged by Charles the Great had had, or was likely to have, any appreciable effect on the remote country-folk whose lands were now attacked by vikings; moreover, it is open to doubt whether the destruction of the monasteries, or even of Frankish towns, really interrupted the progress of learning, inasmuch as it was only for a very short time that the monkish studies were checked and the influence of monastic life denied to the layman. One of the most surprising features of this short and horrible period in history is the extraordinary recuperative powers of the ransacked ruined monasteries and the plundered towns; only a few religious houses were destroyed utterly and only one town Quentovic, on the south shore of the Channel, blotted out of existence. The story of the little monastery of
      
      
      
      
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       Noirmoutier in Francia shows how the monks returned again and again to rebuild their homes and how most of their precious belongings had been taken away or hidden before the vikings arrived; for this was several times plundered in the period 814 to 819, and in 834 the monks, fearing further attack, removed the relics of their patron St. Philibert to safety on the mainland; in 835 the new onslaught came; the place was plundered and many monks slain; in 843 the vikings seized the island and wintered there, but by 846 the monks were back, for in that year the abbey was burnt again. Noirmoutier now became one of the viking strongholds, but still some monks stayed on and did not finally abandon the monastery until 871, when the bones of St. Philibert were translated to St. Pourçain (Allier), where these much-harassed ecclesiastics possessed henceforth a new and safer home. So, too, in Ireland, the monasteries of both Armagh and Clonmacnois were sacked nine or ten times and yet survived, while that of Kildare was not abandoned even after being pillaged on sixteen occasions. And like the monks, the townsmen too crept back to their burnt dwellings, for the chroniclers tell how both civilian and monk trusted loyally and faithfully in the might of the Christian arms to defend them from further peril. Thus Dorstad, the first butt of the Danes, was plundered in 834, again in 835, and again in 836, yet the town survived to pass into the hands of the invaders to be held as fief in 846, and it was rather as a result of viking mismanagement than because of their devastations that the fortunes of this great mart declined.
       It is also well to remember that the vikings did not remain for long the ferocious enemies of religion and learning that they certainly were at first; in England, for example, Wulfhere, the Archbishop of York when the Danish armies took possession of Deira in 867, returned to his archbishopric, though it was still under Danish rule, some ten or twelve years later; so too the see of Lindisfarne, though the monastery on Holy Island was destroyed in 875, was re-established with its headquarters at Chester-le-Street near Durham in 883, by which time the Danes had learnt not only to tolerate but to accept the Christian faith.
       After the middle of the tenth century instead of assessing the harm done to European civilization by the viking movement it is more profitable to ask in what degree the Northmen shared and assisted in the Ottonian renaissance. Perhaps not much; yet before the eleventh century had begun four determined princes, Harald Gormsson of Denmark, Olaf Tryggvason of
      
      
      
      
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       Norway, Olof Skotkonung of Sweden, and Vladimir of Kiev, had deliberately brought their realms within the embrace of Christendom by ordering the conversion of their subjects. There were still lonely and ignorant boors among the vikings, the buccaneering was not magically ended, but of the leaders of the Northmen it may be said that after about A.D. 950 their aim was definitely to rank themselves and their followers as equals of the Christian peoples whom previously they had pillaged. Thereafter they sought and welcomed all the benefits that civilization could bestow. Their ships spread its learning and its comforts more rapidly than these had ever before been propagated to the outlying parts of the empire and to the British Isles, to the Faroes and to Iceland, and to the viking countries themselves. Indeed the Northman who first had terrified the monk with sword and firebrand had now become his courier, his conveyor, and his defender. Therefore whatever debt they may have owed to Europe from the first century of the ravages, they now paid back to the full by providing the missionary and bookish world with a transport service so safe and so swift that the northern waters had never known the like before.
       But if the memorial to the vikings in the British Isles and in the western empire is indeed nothing more than a parcel of names and a few fossil customs, there is yet one contribution that they have made to western society of which no man can properly assess the value. For who is to say of what significance either in the past or even in the present is the Scandinavian or Danish blood pulsing in the veins of Saxon, Frank, or Celt? What stamp the vikings have left in countenance and colouring, what added zest for conquest and adventure, what new nobleness was born of them, what valour and what wisdom came of the crossing with their stock, all this is hidden from the historian. A final verdict upon them must reckon therefore with this unknown contribution to western society, and it may be that the judgement of the future will declare the vikings not only harmful and villainous guests in the lands of the Celt and Saxon and Frank and Frisian, but as lion-hearted visitors whose destiny it was to fan the embers of western Christian civilization with the cold winds of the north and kindle from them once more a bright and vigorous flame.