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cope with these, but without much success. A small
engagement was won ; a fleet of twenty esks perished
on the south coast, and the attacks were abandoned.
The century closed with the great king’s
death, at peace with his former enemies.
And yet they were not all enemies who came to
England from the Northlands. We must not forget
"Ohthere, the old sea-captain, who dwelt in Halgoland,"
Ottar of the fjords north of Trondhjem, the
farmer and explorer, forerunner of Nansen as others of
his countrymen were of Nelson. Nor, again, must we
forget the voyage of Wulfstan (Ulfstein) to the eastern
shores of the Baltic, showing that even in this turbulent
age peaceable travel and traffic were not only
possible, but the normal condition of things. We
read of battle and murder in the chronicles, as we
read in newspapers of salient events abroad, mostly
tragic ; but underlying all the tumult, land was tilled,
trade was pushed, and human life was lived in that
age as in our own.
Before Ælfred’s death there were three distinct
states founded by the Danes, together forming
the Danelaw. It will make the story simpler if,
instead of carrying on the chronology of the whole
simultaneously, we take each in turn, beginning with
the district which was absorbed soonest into the
kingdom of Ælfred’s family.
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