orse, or Viking
element spread far and wide in mediaeval Europe--Iceland, Normandy
(Northman's Land), the Isle of Man, the Hebrides, the east of
Ireland, the Danelagh of East Anglia, and the Cumberland dales all
show traces of the conquering Danish race; and raider after raider
came to England and stayed, until half of our island was Danish, and
even our royal family became for a time one with the royal line of
Denmark. The acceptance of Christianity by the Danes in England when
Guthrum was baptized rendered much more easy their amalgamation with
the English; but it was not so in Ireland, where the Round Towers
still stand to show (as some authorities hold) how the terrified
native Irish sheltered from the Danish fury which nearly destroyed the
whole fabric of Irish Christianity. The legends of Ireland, too, are
full of the terror of the men of "Lochlann," which is generally taken
to mean Norway; and the great coast cities of Ireland--Dublin, Cork,
Waterford, Wexford, and others--were so entirely Danish that only the
decisive battle of Clontarf, in which the saintly and victorious Brian
Boru was slain, saved Ireland to Christendom and curbed the power of
the heathen invaders.

A second wave of Norse invasion swept over England at the Norman
Conquest, and for a time submerged the native English population. The
chivalrous Norman knights who followed William of Normandy's sacred
banner, whether from religious zeal or desire of plunder, were as
truly Vikings by race as were the Danes who settled in the Danelagh.
The days when Rolf (Rollo, or Rou), the Viking chief, won Normandy
were not yet so long gone by that the fierce piratical instincts of
his followers had ceased to influence their descendants: piety and
learning, feudal law and custom, had made some impression upon the
character of the Norman, but at heart he was still a Northman. The
Norman barons fought for their independence against Duke William with
all the determination of those Norse chiefs who would not acknowledge
the overlordship of Harold Fairhair, but fled to colonise Iceland when
he made himself King of Norway. The seafaring instincts which drove
the Vikings to harry other lands in like manner drove the Normans to
piratical plundering up and down the English Channel, and, when they
had settled in England, led to continual sea-fights in the Channel
between English and French, hardy Kentish and Norman, or Cornish and
Breton, sailors, with a common strain o