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chronicles (A.-Sax. Chron. under 982). It is found in the
Epinal Glossary, and therefore was known long before
the Scandinavian invasions (W. H. Stevenson, Eng.
Hist. Rev. xix., p. 143). Dr. Lawrence has suggested
that it comes from the Anglo-Saxon wīgan, wīgian, to
fight, from which the usual substantive is wiggend or
wīgend, a warrior. Liðvîcingas occurs in "Widsith,"
corresponding to the Icelandic Liðungar, the men from
Lid in the Vík of Norway, though the reading of one
MS. in the chronicles (A.D. 885) of Lidwicingas for
Lidwiccas suggests that Bretons might be meant in
this case. English historians usually assume that
"Vikings" meant "men from the Vík" of Norway;
but the word does not seem to have been used in
this sense by saga-writers, who called the dwellers in
Víkin Víkverskar or Víkverjar, though in the mediæval
Icelandic Bishops’ sagas Suðvíkingr means a man from
Súðavík, Vestfolding a man from Vestfold, and so on.
The word víkingr means in the Sagas any pirate, of
whatever nationality. For instances, the rather early
Kormáks-saga, relating adventures of a party of
Icelanders and a German, calls them all "vikings,"
and Landnámabók gives the name to any Scandinavian
sea-rovers. Nor does it mean "haunting the creeks
of England, the lochs of Scotland and the loughs of
Ireland;" for though it is true that there is no word
austr-víking (piracy in the east) parallel to vestr-víking
(piracy in the west), still Egil’s saga (chap. 36) tells
how "they went in viking on the eastern way," to
Russia. The word víking (feminine) means the
life of a pirate, a free-booting voyage; "to go in
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