Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: September 23, 2025
Both of us, methinks, date our lineage from the lands of the Norse. Suffer Siward to speak the language the sea-kings spoke. The old oak is not to be transplanted, and the old man keeps the ground where his youth took root."
Silent, with closed lips, as I fancy them, unconscious that they were specially brave; defying the wild ocean with its monsters, and all men and things; progenitors of our own Blakes and Nelsons! No Homer sang these Norse Sea-kings; but Agamemnon's was a small audacity, and of small fruit in the world, to some of them; to Hrolf's of Normandy, for instance!
At this time the western seas were covered with the vessels of pirates, who, not unlike the sea-kings of Denmark at an early period, sometimes settled and made conquests on the islands. Allan-a-Sop was young, strong, and brave to desperation.
It is easy to comprehend, by reference to his exploits upon the Baltic, the absence of the usual northern force from the Irish waters, during his lifetime, and that of his cotemporary, Flan of the Shannon. Yet the race of the sea-kings was not extinguished by the fair-haired Harold's victories over them, at home.
The Northmen loved no master, and a great multitude fled out of the country, some pushing as far as Iceland and colonizing it, some swarming to the Orkneys and Hebrides till Harald harried them out again and the sea-kings sailed southward to join Guthrum's host in the Rhine country or follow Hrolf to his fights on the Seine.
Dublin remained under the rule of the Danish Sea-kings, and their descendants, till they were conquered by the English, in the year 1170. They were, however, put down for a time in the year 1014, by a league of native princes, led by the great king, Brien-Boro. It was during this struggle that the famous battle of Clontarf was fought. Brien-Boro was a model monarch the King Alfred of Ireland.
As they trudged steadily onwards the men talked of the enemy whom they were soon to meet; the world-renowned Harold King of Norway, who had led his sea-kings to battle in many lands. 'Ay, said one, 'I've heard that he fought black heathen folk in an outlandish place called Egypt. Be there such a place?
The Sea-kings, as they often called these adventurers, lived on the ocean, never settling on shore, passing from the pillage of a castle to the burning of an abbey, devastating the coasts of France, ascending rivers, especially the Seine, as far as Paris, sailing over the Mediterranean as far as Constantinople, establishing themselves later in Sicily, and leaving traces of their incursions or their sojourn in all the regions of the known world.
Early in the evening we had beaten out from Oakland, and we were now off the mouth of Alameda Creek, a large salt-water estuary which fills and empties San Leandro Bay. "Men lived in those days," Paul said, so suddenly as to startle me from my own thoughts. "In the days of the sea-kings, I mean," he explained. I said "Oh!" sympathetically, and began to whistle "Captain Kidd."
Both of us, methinks, date our lineage from the lands of the Norse. Suffer Siward to speak the language the sea-kings spoke. The old oak is not to be transplanted, and the old man keeps the ground where his youth took root."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking