d beat upon
the east and north and south of Ireland and the western coasts of
England and of "Bretland."

The second invasion ran along the North German coast, and on reaching
the Straits of Dover, fell upon both sides of the English Channel,
according as the resistance was stronger or weaker in Wessex or in
Frankland. The advanced guard reunited with Ostmen and Orkneyers in the
Scilly Isles, and in Cornwall, and pressed on to the plunder of the Bay
of Biscay and its coasts. The most restless of all were not long in
finding out the wealth of the Moslem Caliphate of Cordova, and trying to
force their way up the Douro and the Tagus.

The expansion on this side was not to stop till it had founded, from the
Norman colony on the Seine, a Norman kingdom of England, and a dominion
in the Two Sicilies, but this was the work of the eleventh century, the
time of organisation and settled empire.

On the third side of northern expansion, to east and north-east, there
were two separate roads from the first; one taking the Baltic for its
track, and dividing northwards to Finland, up the Gulf of Bothnia,
eastwards to Russia and Novgorod ("Gardariki" and "Holmgard"), the other
coasting along "Halogaland" to Biarmaland, along Lapland to Perm and the
Archangel of later time.

Of these three lines of movement by far the most vital to our subject is
the first, which is also the earliest; the second, to south and
south-west, hardly gives any direct results for our story; and the
third, to east and north, is mainly concerned with Russian history.
While King Alfred was yet unborn, Norse settlements had been permanently
founded in the outlying points, coasts, and islands of Scotland and
Ireland, and in the years of his boyhood, about 860, Nadodd the Faeeroe
Jarl sighted Iceland, which had been touched at by the Irish monks in
795 but was now to be first added as a lasting gain to Europe, as a new
country, "Snowland"--something more than a hermitage for religious
exiles from the world. Four years later (in 864) Gardar the Swede
reached this new Ultima Thule, and re-named it from himself "Gardar's
Holm." Yet another Viking, Raven Floke, followed the track of the first
explorer in 867, before Iceland got its final name and earliest
colonisation from the Norsemen Ingolf and Leif and the sheep-farmers of
the Faeroes in 874, the third year of Alfred's reign in Wessex.

[Illustration: THE ANGLO-SAXON MAP. (SEE LIST OF MAPS)]

Three years later