Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Scandinavian Britain - I. The Earlies Raids
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similar expedition to the western seas from their
headquarters in Sjæland at Leira, where was the
royal hall, named, from the antlers of deer at its
gables, Heorot, or Hart. Here King Hrodgar (Roar),
son of Halfdan, and his nephew Hrolf Kraki, the
Skjöldungs, fought the Hadobards from the East
and drove them away; but in the end misfortune
came to the burg of the Skjöldungs, and Hrolf fell
with his men. Danes and Swedes in the folk-wandering
epoch were already conscious of some
collective nationality; race-union was begun; while
the inhabitants of Norway were scattered into separate
tribes and petty kingdoms until the beginning of
the true Viking age. The first steps to extension
of power westward must naturally have been taken
from Denmark as a centre, the Swedes pushing east
to Russia. But Professor A. Bugge also thinks,
agreeing with H. Zimmer, that the Norse of Norway
had found their way across the sea to the Orkneys and
Shetland a hundred years before the Viking attacks are
recorded in England and Ireland. There seems to
be no reason to doubt that they did adventure on the
high seas somewhat sooner than the usually assigned
date; for Dicuil, writing about 825, describes islands
divided by narrow channels and swarming with sheep,
which seem to be the Færoes (sheep-isles), as inhabited
a century before by Irish monks, but then
deserted on account of heathen pirates; and, in fact,
the colony of Grím Kamban was made in 825. But
by then the Viking Age had begun; and Prof. A.
Bugge would put their advent in Britain much earlier.
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