ds, and histories earlier
than the date when Dante walked and mused in the streets of Florence
survive for us now in some hundreds of works, for the most part of rare
and absorbing interest. The "Heimskringla," or chronicle of Snorro
Sturleson, written about 1215, is one of the greatest history books in
the world.[176]

[Footnote 169: The proper division of this Old Norse word is
not into _v[=i]-king_, but into _v[)i]k-ing_. The first
syllable means a "bay" or "fiord," the second is a patronymic
termination, so that "vikings" are "sons of the fiord,"--an
eminently appropriate and descriptive name.]

[Footnote 170: Curtius (_Griechische Etymologie_, p. 237)
connects [Greek: pontos] with [Greek: patos]; compare the
Homeric expressions [Greek: hygra keleutha, ichthyoenta
keleutha], etc.]

[Footnote 171: The descendants of these Northmen formed a very
large proportion of the population of the East Anglian
counties, and consequently of the men who founded New England.
The East Anglian counties have been conspicuous for resistance
to tyranny and for freedom of thought. See my _Beginnings of
New England_, p. 62.]

[Footnote 172: They were the Varangian guard at Constantinople,
described by Sir Walter Scott in _Count Robert of Paris_. About
this same time their kinsmen, the Russ, moving eastward from
Sweden, were subjecting Slavic tribes as far as Novgorod and
Kief, and laying the foundations of the power that has since,
through many and strange vicissitudes, developed into Russia.
See Thomsen, _The Relations between Ancient Russia and
Scandinavia_, Oxford, 1877.]

[Footnote 173: Fealty to Norway was not formally declared until
1262.]

[Footnote 174: The settlement of Iceland is celebrated by
Robert Lowe in verses which show that, whatever his opinion may
have been in later years as to the use of a classical
education, his own early studies must always have been a source
of comfort to him:--

[Greek: Chaire kai en nephelaisi kai en niphadessi bareiais
Kai pyri kai seismois nese saleuomene
Enthade gar basileos hyperbion hybrin alyxas
Demos Hyperboreon, kosmou ep' eschatie,
Autarke bioton thei