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"Hostages," suggested Estein laconically. When this motley company had come within a hundred yards of them, they stopped, and their leader advanced alone. As he drew near to the Norsemen, Estein stepped out a pace or two to meet him, but they stood so close that Helgi and Ketill could hear all that passed.
After some time they came upon a fair country where there were many trees. When Thorvald saw it he said, "It is so fair a country that I should like to make my home here." Until this time the Norsemen had seen no inhabitants of the land. But now as they returned to their ship they saw three mounds upon the shore.
For more than two hundred years during the Middle Ages the Christian countries of Europe were attacked on the southwest by the Saracens of Spain, and on the northwest by the Norsemen, or Northmen. The Northmen were so called because they came into Middle Europe from the north.
The war shouts of Norseman and South Saxon and Wessex men were in startling medley together here, and that terrified the Welsh yet more. It must have seemed to them that the Norsemen had called unheard of allies to their help. There was no order or rallying power among them.
The people of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark were increasing in number, but their rough, cold country could not support them all. As the Norsemen took to the sea in the ninth century, so the Scandinavian did in the nineteenth, but this time in a peaceful migration toward the setting sun. They began coming soon after the Civil War, and by 1882 they numbered thirteen per cent of the total immigration.
Making Rouen his headquarters and base of supplies, the Norsemen made expeditions up the Seine and established a great fortified camp near the confluence of the Seine and the Eure. Hither a French army, under the command of Regnault, Duke of France, was sent to drive them out of the country. But before risking a battle Regnault chose to negotiate.
When these rude Norsemen found themselves among the æsthetic treasures of Byzantium, and saw the fair Italian marbles, and the stately work of Theodoric and Justinian, they were inflamed with zeal for artistic expression, and began to hew and carve rough but spirited forms out of the Pisan and Carrara stones.
To contrary interests, it should be observed, the curse of Babel is here added; the Lews men are Gaelic speakers, those of Caithness have adopted English; an odd circumstance, if you reflect that both must be largely Norsemen by descent.
"The bear," said the old Norsemen, "had ten men's strength, and eleven men's wit; "and in some such light must the old hermits have looked on the hyaena, "bellua," the monster par excellence; or on the crocodile, the hippopotamus, and the poisonous snakes, which have been objects of terror and adoration in every country where they have been formidable.
The Norsemen, following in their tracks as always, found them there, and the earliest Icelandic writings record their departure, leaving behind them books, bells, and other souvenirs on an islet off shore which still bears their name. Did they keep before the Norsemen to America too? At least the Norsemen thought so.
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