ROMAN AND GREEK ACCOUNTS OF THE NORTHMEN.
The three maritime tribes of the North—The fleets of the
Sueones—Expeditions of Saxons and Franks—Home of these tribes—The
tribes of Germania not seafaring—Probable origin of the names
Saxons and Franks.
Roman writers give us the names of three maritime tribes of the North,
which were called by them _Sueones_, _Saxones_, and _Franci_. The first
of these, which is the earliest mentioned, is thus described by Tacitus
(circ. 57–117 A.D.):—
“Hence the States of the Sueones, situated in the ocean itself, are not
only powerful on land, but also have mighty fleets. The shape of their
ships is different, in that, having a prow at each end, they are always
ready for running on to the beach. They are not worked by sails, nor are
the oars fastened to the sides in regular order, but left loose as in
some rivers, so that they can be shifted here or there as circumstances
may require.”[4]
The word _Sviar_, which is constantly met with in the Sagas to denote
the inhabitants of Svithjod (Sweden), or the country of which Upsala was
the capital, corresponds somewhat to the name Sueones, and it is highly
probable that in _Sueones_ we have the root of _Sviar_ and of
_Svithjod_. The ships described by Tacitus are exactly like those which
are described in this work as having been found in the North.
It stands to reason that the maritime power of the Sueones must have
been the growth of centuries before the time of Tacitus, and from
analogy of historical records we know that the fleets of powerful
nations do not remain idle. Hence we must come to the conclusion that
the Sueones navigated the sea long before the time of Tacitus, an
hypothesis which is implied by the Eddas and Sagas as well as by the
antiquities discovered.
That the Sueones, with such fleets, did not navigate westward further
than Frisia is not credible, the more so that it was only necessary for
them to follow the coast in order to come to the shores of Gaul, from
which they could see Britain, and such maritime people must have had
intercourse with the inhabitants of that island at that period; indeed,
the objects of the earlier iron age discovered in Britain, which were
until lately classed as Anglo-Roman, are identical with those of the
country from which these people came, i.e., Scandinavia.
The Veneti, a tribe who inhabited Brittany, and whose power on the sea
is described by Cæsar, were in all probability the advance-guard of the
tribes of the North; their ships were built of oak, with iron nails,
just as those of the Northmen; and the people of the country in which
they settled were not seafaring.[5] Moreover, the similarity of the name
to that of the Venedi, who are conjecturally placed by Tacitus on the
shores of the Baltic, and to the Vends, so frequently mentioned in the
Sagas, can scarcely be regarded as a mere accident.
“The Veneti have a very great number of ships, with which they have been
accustomed to sail to Britain, and excel the rest of the people in their
knowledge and experience of nautical affairs; and as only a few ports
lie scattered along that stormy and open sea, of which they are in
possession, they hold as tributaries almost all those who have been
accustomed to traffic in that sea....”
“For their own ships were built and equipped in the following manner:
Their ships were more flat-bottomed than our vessels, in order that they
might be able more easily to guard against shallows and the ebbing of
the tide; the prows were very much elevated, as also the sterns, so as
to encounter heavy waves and storms. The vessels were built wholly of
oak, so as to bear any violence or shock; the cross-benches, a foot in
breadth, were fastened by iron spikes of the thickness of the thumb; the
anchors were secured to iron chains, instead of to ropes; raw hides and
thinly-dressed skins were used for sails, either on account of their
want of canvas and ignorance of its use, or for this reason, which is
the more likely, that they considered that such violent ocean storms and
such strong winds could not be resisted, and such heavy vessels could
not be conveniently managed by sails. The attack of our fleet on these
vessels was of such a nature that the only advantage was in its
swiftness and the power of its oars; in everything else, considering the
situation and the fury of the storm, they had the advantage. For neither
could our ships damage them by ramming (so strongly were they built),
nor was a weapon easily made to reach them, owing to their height, and
for the same reason they were not so easily held by grappling-irons. To
this was added, that when the wind had begun to get strong, and they had
driven before the gale, they could better weather the storm, and also
more safely anchor among shallows, and, when left by the tide, need in
no respect fear rocks and reefs, the dangers from all which things were
greatly to be dreaded by our vessels.”
Roman writers after the time of Tacitus mention warlike and maritime
expeditions by the Saxons and Franks. Their names do not occur in
Tacitus, but it is not altogether improbable that these people, whom
later writers mention as ravaging every country which they could enter
by sea or land, are the people whom Tacitus knew as the Sueones.
The maritime power of the Sueones could not have totally disappeared in
a century, a hypothesis which is borne out by the fact that after a
lapse of seven centuries they are again mentioned in the time of
Charlemagne; nor could the supremacy of the so-called Saxons and Franks
on the sea have arisen in a day; it must have been the growth of even
generations before the time of Tacitus.
Ptolemy (circ. A.D. 140) is the first writer who mentions the Saxons as
inhabiting a territory north of the Elbe, on the neck of the Cimbric
Chersonesus.[6] They occupied but a small space, for between them and
the Cimbri, at the northern extremity of the peninsula, he places ten
other tribes, among them the Angli.
About a century after the time of Ptolemy, Franks and Saxons had already
widely extended their expeditions at sea. Some of the former made an
expedition from the Euxine, through the Mediterranean, plundered
Syracuse, and returned without mishap across the great sea (A.D. circ.
280).[7]
“He (Probus) permitted the Bastarnæ, a Scythian race, who had submitted
themselves to him, to settle in certain districts of Thrace which he
allotted to them, and from thenceforth these people always lived under
the laws and institutions of Rome. And there were certain Franks who had
come to the Emperor, and had asked for land on which to settle. A part
of them, however, revolted, and having obtained a large number of ships,
caused disturbances throughout the whole of Greece, and having landed in
Sicily and made an assault on Syracuse, they caused much slaughter
there. They also landed in Libya, but were repulsed at the approach of
the Carthaginian forces. Nevertheless, they managed to get back to their
home unscathed.”
“Why should I tell again of the most remote nations of the Franks (of
Francia), which were carried away not from those regions which the
Romans had on a former occasion invaded, but from their own native
territory, and the farthest shores of the land of the barbarians, and
transported to the deserted parts of Gaul that they might promote the
peace of the Roman Empire by their cultivation and its armies by their
recruits?”[8]
“There came to mind the incredible daring and undeserved success of a
handful of the captive Franks under the Emperor Probus. For they, having
seized some ships, so far away as Pontus, having laid waste Greece and
Asia, having landed and done some damage on several parts of the coast
of Africa, actually took Syracuse, which was at one time so renowned for
her naval ascendancy. Thereupon they accomplished a very long voyage and
entered the Ocean at the point where it breaks through the land (the
Straits of Gibraltar), and so by the result of their daring exploit
showed that wherever ships can sail, nothing is closed to pirates in
desperation.”[9]
In the time of Diocletian and Maximian these maritime tribes so harassed
the coasts of Gaul and Britain that Maximian, in 286, was obliged to
make Gesoriacum or Bononia (the present Boulogne) into a port for the
Roman fleet, in order as far as possible to prevent their incursions.
“About this time (A.D. 287) Carausius, who, though of very humble
origin, had, in the exercise of vigorous warfare, obtained a
distinguished reputation, was appointed at Bononia to reduce to quiet
the coast regions of Belgica and Armorica, which were overrun by the
Franks and Saxons. But though many of the barbarians were captured, the
whole of the booty was not handed over to the inhabitants of the
province, nor sent to the commander-in-chief, and the barbarians were,
moreover, deliberately allowed by him to come in, that he might capture
them with their spoils as they passed through, and by this means enrich
himself. On being condemned to death by Maximian, he seized on the
sovereign command, and took possession of Britain.”[10]
Eutropius also records that the Saxons and others dwelt on the coasts of
and among the marshes of the great sea, which no one could traverse, but
the Emperor Valentinian (320–375) nevertheless conquered them.
The Emperor Julian calls the
“Franks and Saxons the most warlike of the tribes above the Rhine and
the Western Sea.”[11]
Ammianus Marcellinus (d. circ. 400 A.D.) writes:—
“At this time (middle of the 4th century), just as though the trumpets
were sounding a challenge throughout all the Roman world, fierce nations
were stirred up and began to burst forth from their territories. The
Alamanni began to devastate Gallia and Rhætia; the Sarmatæ and Quadi
Pannonia, the Picts and Saxons, Scots, and Attacotti constantly harassed
the Britons.”[12]
“The Franks and the Saxons, who are coterminous with them, were ravaging
the districts of Gallia wherever they could effect an entrance by sea or
land, plundering and burning, and murdering all the prisoners they could
take.”[13]
Claudianus asserts that the Saxons appeared even in the Orkneys:—
“The Orcades were moist from the slain Saxon.”[14]
These are but a few of many allusions to the same effect which might be
quoted.
That the swarms of Sueones and so-called Saxons and Franks, seen on
every sea of Europe, could have poured forth from a small country is not
possible. Such fleets as they possessed could only have come from a
country densely covered with oak forests. We must come to the conclusion
that Sueones, Franks, and Saxons were seafaring tribes belonging to one
people. The Roman writers did not seem to know the precise locality
inhabited by these people.
It would appear that these tribes must have come from a country further
eastward than the Roman provinces, and that as they came with ships,
their home must have been on the shores of the Baltic, the Cattegat, and
Norway; in fact, precisely the country which the numerous antiquities
point to as inhabited by an extremely warlike and maritime race, which
had great intercourse with the Greek and Roman world.
The dates given by the Greek and Roman writers of the maritime
expeditions, invasions, and settlements of the so-called Saxons and
Franks agree perfectly with the date of the objects found in the North,
among which are numerous Roman coins, and remarkable objects of Roman
and Greek art, which must have been procured either by the peaceful
intercourse of trade or by war. To this very day thousands upon
thousands of graves have been preserved in the North, belonging to the
time of the invasions of these Northmen, and to an earlier period. From
them no other inference can be drawn than that the country and islands
of the Baltic were far more densely populated than any part of central
and western Europe and Great Britain, since the number of these earlier
graves in those countries is much smaller.
Every tumulus described by antiquaries as a Saxon or Frankish grave is
the counterpart of a Northern grave, thus showing conclusively the
common origin of the people.
Wherever graves of the same type are found in other countries we have
the invariable testimony, either of the Roman or Greek writers of the
Frankish and English Chronicles or of the Sagas, to show that the people
of the North had been in the country at one time or another.
The conclusion is forced upon us that in time the North became
over-populated, and an outlet was necessary for the spread of its
people.
The story of the North is that of all countries whose inhabitants have
spread and conquered, in order to find new fields for their energy and
over-population; in fact, the very course the progenitors of the
English-speaking peoples adopted in those days is precisely the one
which has been followed by their descendants in England and other
countries for the last three hundred years.
It is certain that the Franks could not have lived on the coast of
Frisia, as they did later on, for we know that the country of the Rhine
was held by the Romans, and, besides, as we have already seen, Julian
refers to the Franks and Saxons as dwelling above the Rhine. Moreover,
till they had to give up their conquests, no mention is made by the
Romans of native seafaring tribes inhabiting the shores of their
northern province, except the Veneti, and they would have certainly
tried to subjugate the roving seamen that caused them so much trouble in
their newly-acquired provinces if they had been within their reach.
From the Roman writers, who have been partially confirmed by archæology,
we know that the tribes which inhabited the country to which they give
the vague name of Germania were not seafaring people nor possessed of
any civilisation. The invaders of Britain, of the Gallic and of the
Mediterranean coasts could therefore not have been the German tribes
referred to by the Roman writers, who, as we see from Julius Cæsar and
other Roman historians, were very far from possessing the civilisation
which we know, from the antiquities, to have existed in the North.
“Their whole life is devoted to hunting and warlike pursuits. From
childhood they pay great attention to toil and hardiness; they bathe all
together in the rivers, and wear skins or small reindeer garments,
leaving the greater part of their bodies naked.”[15]
Tacitus, in recording the speech of Germanicus to his troops before the
battle at Idistavisus, bears witness to the uncivilised character of the
inhabitants of the country.
“The huge targets, the enormous spears of the barbarians could never be
wielded against trunks of trees and thickets of underwood shooting up
from the ground, like Roman swords and javelins, and armour fitting the
body ... the Germans had neither helmet nor coat of mail; their bucklers
were not even strengthened with leather, but mere contextures of twigs
and boards of no substance daubed over with paint. Their first rank was
to a certain extent armed with pikes, the rest had only stakes burnt at
the ends or short darts.”[16]
Now compare these descriptions with the magnificent archæology of the
North of that period—as seen in these volumes—from which we learn that
the tribes who inhabited the shores of the Baltic and the present
Scandinavia had at the time the above was written reached a high degree
of civilisation. We find in their graves and hoards, coins of the early
Roman Empire not in isolated instances, but constantly and in large
numbers, and deposited side by side with such objects as coats of mail,
damascened swords and other examples of articles of highly artistic
workmanship.
Three kinds of swords are often mentioned by the Northmen—the _mœkir_,
the _sverd_, and the _sax_, while among the spears there is one called
_frakki_, or _frakka_.
The double-edged sword was the one that was in use among the Romans, and
they, seeing bodies of men carrying a weapon unlike theirs—single-edged,
and called Sax—may have named them after it, and the Franks, in like
manner, may have been called after their favourite weapon, the Frakki;
but we see that neither the _sax_ nor the _frakki_ was confined to one
tribe in the North. There is a Saxland in the Sagas—a small country
situated east of the peninsula of Jutland, about the present Holstein—a
land tributary to the Danish or Swedish Kings from the earliest times,
but far from possessing the warlike archæology of the North, it appears
to have held an insignificant place among the neighbouring tribes.
In the Bayeux tapestry the followers of William the Conqueror were
called Franci, and they always have been recognised as coming from the
North.
The very early finds prove that the Sax was not rare, for it occurs in
different parts of the North and islands of the Baltic. The different
swords and spears used were so common and so well known to everybody,
that we have no special description of them in the Sagas, except of
their ornamentation; but in the Saga of Grettir there is a passage which
shows that the Sax was single-edged.
Gretti went to a farm in Iceland to slay the Bondi Thorbjorn and his son
Arnor. We read—
“When Gretti saw that the young man was within reach he lifted his _sax_
high into the air, and struck Arnor’s head with _its back_, so that his
head was broken and he died. Thereupon he killed the father with his
_sax_.”
Whatever may be the origin of local names employed by the Roman writers
we must look to the North for the maritime tribes described by them;
there we shall find the home of the earlier English people, to whose
numerous warlike and ocean-loving instincts we owe the transformation
which took place in Britain, and the glorious inheritance which they
have left to their descendants, scattered over many parts of the world,
in whom we recognise to this day many of the very same traits of
character which their ancestors possessed.