But Norse law and usages and the Norse language
long lived on in Orkney and longer still in Shetland.
CHAPTER XI.
_Results and Conclusion._
Restless energy, and a religion that taught its followers that death
in combat alone conferred on the happy warrior a title to immortal
glory and a perpetual right to the unbroken joy of battle daily
renewed in Valhalla drove the Viking to war.
Headed off on the south by the vast army and feudal system of
Charlemagne, this energy in war could be exercised, and its religious
aims achieved, solely on the sea, which skill in shipbuilding and in
navigation as well had converted from a barrier into a highway to the
west.
As already stated, over-population in the sterile lands of Norway,
and famine probably increased by immigration from the east and south,
drove its people "at times in piracy and at times in commerce"[1]
forth from the western fjords and The Vik across the North Sea to
the opposite coasts of Scotland, and so to its western lochs and to
Ireland, where they found cattle to slaughter on the nesses, stores of
grain, and other booty.
War, in fact, paid; and, after generations of harrying, many of the
raiders concluded that the western lands in Britain were fairer and
more fertile than their native shores, and desired to settle in the
west.
Pages:
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197