Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Introductory Chapters By the late Professor York Powell - II. Mother-Land and Peoples
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needed trained men, seamen, and fighters, and we
might even without express evidence be sure that
every small folk-king and nobleman kept up as
large and well-equipped a comitatus as he could
support.
The character of the people of the west coast of
Norway about the end of the eighth century is illustrated
in some measure by certain poems in the Eddie collection,
which we take to be of earlier date than the
rest, and which, unlike the rest, bear pretty plain
marks of Norwegian origin. From these it is
possible to get a picture of the population whence the
Wicking emigrant came; it is of a type which we pride
ourselves upon as essentially British–a sturdy, thrifty,
hard-working, law-loving people, fond of good cheer
and strong drink, of shrewd, blunt speech, and a stubborn
reticence when speech would be useless or foolish;
a people clean-living, faithful to friend and kinsman,
truthful, hospitable, liking to make a fair show, but
not vain or boastful; a people with perhaps little
play of fancy or great range of thought, but cool-thinking,
resolute, determined, able to realise the
plainer facts of life clearly and even deeply. Of course
some of these characteristics are those common to
other nations in their rank of development, but taken
together they show a character such as no other race
of that day could probably claim, and enable us to
understand how that quiet storage of force had gone
on which, when released, was capable of such results,
as the succeeding three centuries witnessed with
amazement. The following proverbs in verse are
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