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the skill of a chess-player on the field of empire. It
was not for nothing that the Vikings on board their
ships played draught-games ; one finds their travelling
chessboards and tenoned pieces, showing how they
beguiled the time in rough weather with something
more intellectual than drinking and horseplay. The
same tendency marks their art and literature.
Anglo-Saxon poetry has imagination ; the verse of the
Northmen, in its intricate metres and rhymes, its
elaboration of synonyms and "kennings," has in
genuity to equal any art of the kind before or since.
Anglo-Saxon sculpture has grace and charm learnt
from abroad, but soon degenerating; while Scandinavian
ornament develops from simple models into
labyrinths of intricacy compared with which even the
cobweb lace of Celtic design, being regular and needing
more patience than thought, is easy to follow. The
success of the Vikings was by no means a success of
rude and savage force ; it was a triumph of mental
power as well as of moral endurance and physical
bravery.
Their armour and weapons are noted in The Wars
of the Gaedhil and the Gaill as superior to those of
the Irish, who were no mean craftsmen. At the siege
of Paris they seem to have used machines and methods
of assault as good as those employed for several centuries
to follow ; and in the campaign of Ivar they
fortified themselves in earthworks—not mere boundary
dykes like the Danework—the use of which was
unusual in Scandinavia until the burg of the Jómsvikings
gave an example of the skill they learnt in their
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