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Their union was the result of no direct policy of fusion; on the contrary Dunstan's policy preserved to the conquered Danelaw its local rights and local usages. But he recognized the men of the Danelaw as Englishmen, he employed northmen in the royal service, and promoted them to high posts in Church and State. For the rest he trusted to time, and time justified his trust.
By this time fifteen hundred or so of the Imperial troops had collected, and against them stood, perhaps, four hundred men in all, so that the odds were great. Still, they had no horsemen or archers, and our position was very good, also we were Northmen and they were Grecian scum. On came the Byzantines, screaming "Irene!
His banishment had not been self-imposed. He had fled before the fierce persecutors. They managed to slay the old man's wife, however, before they made him take to flight and seek that refuge and freedom of conscience among the Pagan Northmen which were denied him in Christian Europe.
The Roman calender shows so many names of Irish hermits, priests, and nuns, that we do not wonder Erin once was known as the Isle of Saints. The Northmen made their cruel inroads on Ireland, and swept away much of the beginnings of civilization.
The annalists of Ulster barely record the fact, that "Magnus, King of Lochlan and the Isles, was slain by the Ulidians, with a slaughter of his people about him, while on a predatory excursion." They place the event in the year 1104. Our account with the Northmen may here be closed. Borne along by the living current of events, we leave them behind, high up on the remoter channels of the stream.
In the latter part of Egbert's reign the Danish Northmen appeared in the estuaries and rivers of England, sacking and burning the towns along their banks.
It is not easy to describe peculiarities which can be appreciated in all their details only by the eye; nor dare I implicitly conclude that in the above-named cases I have really met with persons descended in a direct line from the old Northmen.
In the early homes of those Northmen who had long before ravaged the coasts of England and France and southern Italy and had colonized Iceland and Greenland, were situated in 1500 three kingdoms, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, corresponding generally to the present-day states of those names.
To England these Northmen came in great swarms, and chiefly from Denmark, so that they were generally call "the Danes." They burnt the houses, drove off the cows and sheep, killed the men, and took away the women and children to be slaves; and they were always most cruel of all where they found an Abbey with any monks or nuns, because they hated the Christian faith.
When their vessels were descried, they were supposed to be Jewish traders according to some, African according to others, and British in the opinion of others; but the gifted monarch, perceiving by the build and lightness of the craft, that they bare not merchandise but foes, said to his own folk, 'These vessels be not laden with merchandise, but manned with cruel foes. At these words all the Franks, in rivalry one with another, run to their ships, but uselessly; for the Northmen, indeed, hearing that yonder was he whom it was still their wont to call Charles the 'Hammer, feared lest all their fleet should be taken or destroyed in the port, and they avoided, by a flight of inconceivable rapidity, not only the glaives, but even the eyes of those who were pursuing them.
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