I
For more than two hundred years during the Middle Ages the Christian
countries of Europe were attacked on the southwest by the Saracens
of Spain, and on the northwest by the Norsemen, or Northmen. The
Northmen were so called because they came into Middle Europe from
the north. Sometimes they were called Vi'kings, or pirates, because
they were adventurous sea-robbers who plundered all countries which
they could reach by sea.
Their ships were long and swift. In the center was placed a single
mast, which carried one large sail. For the most part, however,
the Norsemen depended on rowing, not on the wind, and sometimes
there were twenty rowers in one vessel.
The Vikings were a terror to all their neighbors; but the two regions
that suffered most from their attacks were the Island of Britain
and that part of Charlemagne's empire in which the Franks were
settled.
[Illustration: MARAUDING EXPEDITION OF NORTHMEN]
Nearly fifty times in two hundred years the lands of the Franks
were invaded. The Vikings sailed up the large rivers into the heart
of the region which we now call France and captured and pillaged
cities and towns. Some years after Charlemagne's death they went
as far as his capital, Aix (_aks_), took the place, and stabled
their horses in the cathedral which the great emperor had built.
In the year 860 they discovered Iceland and made a settlement upon
its shores. A few years later they sailed as far as Greenland, and
there established settlements which existed for about a century.
These Vikings were the first discoverers of the continent on which we
live. Ancient books found in Iceland tell the story of the discovery.
It is related that a Viking ship was driven during a storm to a
strange coast, which is thought to have been that part of America
now known as Labrador.
When the captain of the ship returned home he told what he had
seen. His tale so excited the curiosity of a young Viking prince,
called Leif the Lucky, that he sailed to the newly discovered coast.
Going ashore, he found that the country abounded in wild grapes;
and so he called it Vinland, or the land of Vines. Vinland is thought
to have been a part of what is now the Rhode Island coast.
The Vikings were not aware that they had found a great unknown
continent. No one in the more civilized parts of Europe knew anything
about their discovery; and after a while the story of the Vinland
voyages seems to have been forgotten, even among the Vikings themselves.
So it is not to them that we owe the discovery of America, but
to Columbus; because his discovery, though nearly five hundred
years later than that of the Norsemen, actually made known to all
Europe, for all time, the existence of the New World.