Sarah Orne Jewett - The Normans; told chiefly in relation to their conquest of England

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Frontispiece. BIRTHPLACE OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. FALAISE.

THE STORY OF THE NATIONS

BY

SARAH ORNE JEWETT

NEW YORK
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN
1898

Copyright, 1886
BY
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

The Knickerbocker Press, New York

TO
MY DEAR GRANDFATHER
Doctor WILLIAM PERRY, of Exeter

EUROPE AT THE CLOSE OF THE 11TH CENTURY

The ten illustrations in this volume which are from designs by Thomas Macquoid, have been reproduced (through the courtesy of Messrs. Chatto & Windus) from Mrs. Macquoid's "Pictures and Legends from Normandy and Brittany," the American edition of which was published by G. P. Putnam's Sons.

DUKES OF THE NORMANS.

[Pg001]

THE STORY OF THE NORMANS.

"Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam,
Survey our empire and behold our home." Byron.

The gulf stream flows so near to the southern coast of Norway, and to the Orkneys and Western Islands, that their climate is much less severe than might be supposed. Yet no one can help wondering why they were formerly so much more populous than now, and why the people who came westward even so long ago as the great Aryan migration, did not persist in turning aside to the more fertile countries that lay farther southward. In spite of all their disadvantages, the Scandinavian peninsula, and the sterile islands of the northern seas, were inhabited by men and women whose enterprise and intelligence ranked them above their neighbors.

Now, with the modern ease of travel and transportation, these poorer countries can be supplied from other parts of the world. And though the [Pg002] summers of Norway are misty and dark and short, and it is difficult to raise even a little hay on the bits of meadow among the rocky mountain slopes, commerce can make up for all deficiencies. In early times there was no commerce except that carried on by the piratesif we may dignify their undertakings by such a respectable name,and it was hardly possible to make a living from the soil alone. The sand dunes of Denmark and the cliffs of Norway alike gave little encouragement to tillers of the ground, yet, in defiance of all our ideas of successful colonization, when the people of these countries left them, it was at first only to form new settlements in such places as Iceland, or the Faro or Orkney islands and stormiest Hebrides. But it does not take us long to discover that the ancient Northmen were not farmers, but hunters and fishermen. It had grown more and more difficult to find food along the rivers and broad grassy wastes of inland Europe, and pushing westward they had at last reached the place where they could live beside waters that swarmed with fish and among hills that sheltered plenty of game.

Besides this they had been obliged not only to make the long journey by slow degrees, but to fight their way and to dispossess the people who were already established. There is very little known of these earlier dwellers in the east and north of Europe, except that they were short of stature and dark-skinned, that they were cave dwellers, and, in successive stages of development, used stone and bronze and iron tools and weapons. Many relics of [Pg003] their home-life and of their warfare have been discovered and preserved in museums, and there are evidences of the descent of a small proportion of modern Europeans from that remote ancestry. The Basques of the north of Spain speak a different language and wear a different look from any of the surrounding people, and even in Great Britain there are some survivors of an older race of humanity, which the fairer-haired Celts of Southern Europe and Teutons of Northern Europe have never been able in the great natural war of races to wholly exterminate and supplant. Many changes and minglings of the inhabitants of these countries, long establishment of certain tribes, and favorable or unfavorable conditions of existence have made the nations of Europe differ widely from each other at the present day, but they are believed to have come from a common stock, and certain words of the Sanscrit language can be found repeated not only in Persian and Indian speech to-day, but in English and Greek and Latin and German, and many dialects that have been formed from these.