conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a description for a book titled A History of the Vikings about with the genre: History, Europe.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Since this book was first published in 1968, it has become an authorative classic, very readable, like an adventure story, but all true. It contains 30 plates,58 figures and 15 maps.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about History, Vikings, Illustrated with the genre: History, Europe?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'A History of the Vikings'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first five paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A History of the Vikings
  For the viking, whatever he may have done abroad, whatever his social behaviour was, despite his heathendom and the polygamy of his chieftains, must be seen against a cultural background that deserves respect. He came of a people who were for the most part sober and industrious agriculturists, a people who were endowed with considerable aesthetic sensibility and who were in some trades, such as shipbuilding and ironwork, craftsmen of more than ordinary skill. Therefore though it is profitless to look for such a thing as a typical viking, since throughout the whole of their history the vikings were exactly what their circumstances made them, robbers, colonists, and traders, yet it is a nearer approach to the truth to believe of them that they were an orderly and sensible civilized folk than that they were bloody and destructive brutes.
  It has been said that neither the conquests abroad made by the vikings nor their colonial enterprises command an unreserved respect. It remains, therefore, to ask what was the worth of the viking movement and what permanent good or lasting harm these Northmen did.
  So far as eastern Europe is concerned the vikings undoubtedly played an important and beneficial role in the foundation of the Russian state and in the subsequent orientation of this upon Constantinople; herein, beyond all question, was their most significant and remarkable achievement. But in the west there is less to be said for them. Certainly the fact that Iceland and the Faroes are now peopled by a flourishing and happy folk must be regarded as a result of Norse enterprise in the Viking Period; yet the discovery of Greenland brought few men profit, and the amazing discovery of America was so much adventure and courage wasted. On the other hand, the seaport town-system of Ireland was not only established but developed by the Northmen and this contributed materially to the well-being of the country in the early Middle Ages; in Ireland, indeed, the usefulness of the vikings ended only with their extinction after the Norman invasion, and this perhaps is also true of the northern shores of the Bristol Channel where the vikings had developed a lively trade and were settled in no small numbers. In England the establishment of the Danes meant the addition of a large foreign element to the population, and though this had no permanent effect upon the southern Danelaw between the Thames and the Welland, it was not without considerable influence upon the social structure of East Anglia, and was of even greater significance in the northern Danelaw of Northumbria where, until the Norman conquest and even later, a peaceable and semi-foreign rural society contrived to hold themselves apart from the rest of the English, aware of their individuality and differing from their neighbours in law and custom. For though the original Danelaw lasted only half a century as an independent Danish colony and though the Anglo-Danish kingdom of Cnut was likewise short-lived, neither the re-conquest of the Danelaw by Edward the Elder nor the collapse of Cnut's realm meant the actual expulsion of the unambitious resident countryfolk of Danish blood. To them the fall of the Danelaw in 920 was but a change of overlord, and the coming of the Normans no worse than the arrival of new masters; so they survived as only half-English folk, possessors of their ancient wapentakes, until at last they disappear in the Norman world of the Middle Ages, leaving behind them a rich legacy of Old Norse personal names and place-names as witness to the foreign blood in them.
  As to the effect of the expansion of the Northmen upon the march of civilization, it is easy to exaggerate the harm done by the pillaging and destruction of the monasteries that was the first result of the viking invasion ; for although it is now a commonplace of history that the vikings checked and finally crushed the Carolingian renaissance on the fringes of the western empire and in Britain and Ireland, though it is indubitably true that the destruction of manuscripts and the flight of monks were consequences of their early raids, yet it is questionable whether the increased activity in the world of art and learning that had been encouraged by Charles the Great had had, or was likely to have, any appreciable effect on the remote countryfolk whose lands were now attacked by vikings; moreover, it is open to doubt whether the destruction of the monasteries, or even of Frankish towns, really interrupted the progress of learning, inasmuch as it was only for a very short time that the monkish studies were checked and the influence of monastic life denied to the layman. One of the most surprising features of this short and horrible period in history is the extraordinary recuperative powers of the ransacked ruined monasteries and the plundered towns; only a few religious houses were destroyed utterly and only one town Quentovic, on the south shore of the Channel, blotted out of existence. The story of the little monastery of Noirmoutier in Francia shows how the monks returned again and again to rebuild their homes and how most of their precious belongings had been taken away or hidden before the vikings arrived; for this was several times plundered in the period 814 to 819, and in 834 the monks, fearing further attack, removed the relics of their patron St. Philibert to safety on the mainland; in 835 the new onslaught came ; the place was plundered and many monks slain; in 843 the vikings seized the island and wintered there, but by 846 the monks were back, for in that year the abbey was burnt again. Noirmoutier now became one of the viking strongholds, but still some monks stayed on and did not finally abandon the monastery until 871, when the bones of St. Philibert were translated to St. Pourçain (Allier), where these much-harassed ecclesiastics possessed henceforth a new and safer home. So, too, in Ireland, the monasteries of both Armagh and Clonmacnois were sacked nine or ten times and yet survived, while that of Kildare was not abandoned even after being pillaged on sixteen occasions. And like the monks, the townsmen too crept back to their burnt dwellings, for the chroniclers tell how both civilian and monk trusted loyally and faithfully in the might of the Christian arms to defend them from further peril. Thus Dorstad, the first butt of the Danes, was plundered in 834, again in 835, and again in 836, yet the town survived to pass into the hands of the invaders to be held as fief in 846, and it was rather as a result of viking mismanagement than because of their devastations that the fortunes of this great mart declined.
  It is also well to remember that the vikings did not remain for long the ferocious enemies of religion and learning that they certainly were at first ; in England, for example, Wulfhere, the Archbishop of York when the Danish armies took possession of Deira in 867, returned to his archbishopric, though it was still under Danish rule, some ten or twelve years later; so too the see of Lindisfarne, though the monastery on Holy Island was destroyed in 875, was re-established with its headquarters at Chester-le-Street near Durham in 883, by which time the Danes had learnt not only to tolerate but to accept the Christian faith.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me four more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: But in 871, at the height of his power, Olaf left Ireland for ever, sailing off to fight in his own country where he fell in battle. He left Ivar the Boneless, who had been away fighting in England, as king of the Norse colonies in Ireland and Britain ', and two years later, at Ivar's death, Olaf's son Eystein became king in his stead. Early in his reign there was an attack by the Danes on Dublin, a small party of the Northumbrian vikings under Halfdan (p. 231), and perhaps Ubbe, his brother, attempting to take Eystein's kingdom from him by guile, this because it had been under the rule of their brother Ivar and they could therefore pretend some claim to add this splendid colony to their rich English possessions. It was the beginning of a long and curious struggle between Dublin and York that was partly based on the natural rivalries of Danes and Norwegians and partly a result of the circumstance that the later rulers at Dublin were of the same family as the Danish kings of York ; in a word, the struggle was not so much a declared war between the two viking states as a series of attempts to unite by force these two states into a single family heritage.
  On this first occasion Aed Finnlaith intervened on behalf of the now peaceful Norwegians, so that Halfdan and his contingent took fright and sailed off northwards up the Irish coast where the great Northumbrian chief was killed in a battle with the Norsemen on Strangford Loch. The Danes of his army fled to Scotland, and thence to Wales and Devonshire, and for the time being the Norwegians in Ireland had nothing more to fear from their fellow-vikings.
  But at this period, about 877, their power was already on the wane. No longer came great fleets from Norway to reinforce the colonies, for now the Vestfold royal line was aiming at the mastery of all the country and the full strength of the great viking provinces of Vestland was needed at home in order to resist their would-be lords. The Irish settlements, therefore, grew weaker in numbers, and less and less a menace to the native kings and their peoples. It even came to pass that Dublin, the mainspring of Norse power in Ireland, fell, after the short reigns of the sons of Audgisl and Ivar, under the control of Cearbhall of Ossory, who had been an ally of Ivar. Although Cearbhall's granddaughter married a son of Olaf of Dublin, and his daughter married the viking Eyvind Eastman, and though he himself was later counted as the head of the family tree of several distinguished Icelandic families, this Irish control of Dublin must have been a sorry business for whatever remained of the old viking pride, and it is natural enough that about this time the settlement should have been further depleted by the wholesale migration of many of the Norse colonists across the Irish Sea to Cumberland and Northumberland. Small wonder that when Cearbhall, king of Leinster, attacked Dublin in 902, he captured the place without difficulty, made a terrible slaughter of the inhabitants, and forced the beaten remnant of the defending army to seek refuge across the sea, some going off to plunder Chester and others sailing for the Loire.
  Although, during these forty years after the death of Halfdan, the viking hold upon Ireland had been steadily weakening, yet most of their harbour-strongholds on the coast must still have remained as centres of a semi-Norse population. Even as early as the middle of the ninth century there existed the Gaill-Gaedhil, or foreign Irish, and though at first these were merely Irishmen who had thrown in their lot with the pirates, it is likely enough that from these recreants had sprung a race of mixed parentage, half Irish and half Norse, in the settlement areas. But the Gaill-Gaedhil, low-born adventurers whose swords were for hire, were not the only result of intercourse between Norse and Irish. On the contrary, there are many records of the free and peaceable mingling of the two peoples, the intermarriage of the high-born Norse and the Irish nobility, and also of temporary alliances between them for battle and adventure, the Norse sometimes entering with zest into the wars of the rival Irish kings, while these kings, upon occasion, were not above taking a part in the viking expeditions in search of plunder. There remained, therefore, on the Irish coasts a not inconsiderable legacy from the viking conquests of Turgeis and Olaf, even if viking rule had to some extent collapsed, and it needed only the advent of fresh armies of Norsemen to re-establish the colonies where the Norse tongue and Norse manners were still cherished by the enfeebled descendants of the early raiders.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: But in 871, at the height of his power, Olaf left Ireland for ever, sailing off to fight in his own country where he fell in battle. He left Ivar the Boneless, who had been away fighting in England, as king of the Norse colonies in Ireland and Britain ', and two years later, at Ivar's death, Olaf's son Eystein became king in his stead. Early in his reign there was an attack by the Danes on Dublin, a small party of the Northumbrian vikings under Halfdan (p. 231), and perhaps Ubbe, his brother, attempting to take Eystein's kingdom from him by guile, this because it had been under the rule of their brother Ivar and they could therefore pretend some claim to add this splendid colony to their rich English possessions. It was the beginning of a long and curious struggle between Dublin and York that was partly based on the natural rivalries of Danes and Norwegians and partly a result of the circumstance that the later rulers at Dublin were of the same family as the Danish kings of York ; in a word, the struggle was not so much a declared war between the two viking states as a series of attempts to unite by force these two states into a single family heritage.
  On this first occasion Aed Finnlaith intervened on behalf of the now peaceful Norwegians, so that Halfdan and his contingent took fright and sailed off northwards up the Irish coast where the great Northumbrian chief was killed in a battle with the Norsemen on Strangford Loch. The Danes of his army fled to Scotland, and thence to Wales and Devonshire, and for the time being the Norwegians in Ireland had nothing more to fear from their fellow-vikings.
  But at this period, about 877, their power was already on the wane. No longer came great fleets from Norway to reinforce the colonies, for now the Vestfold royal line was aiming at the mastery of all the country and the full strength of the great viking provinces of Vestland was needed at home in order to resist their would-be lords. The Irish settlements, therefore, grew weaker in numbers, and less and less a menace to the native kings and their peoples. It even came to pass that Dublin, the mainspring of Norse power in Ireland, fell, after the short reigns of the sons of Audgisl and Ivar, under the control of Cearbhall of Ossory, who had been an ally of Ivar. Although Cearbhall's granddaughter married a son of Olaf of Dublin, and his daughter married the viking Eyvind Eastman, and though he himself was later counted as the head of the family tree of several distinguished Icelandic families, this Irish control of Dublin must have been a sorry business for whatever remained of the old viking pride, and it is natural enough that about this time the settlement should have been further depleted by the wholesale migration of many of the Norse colonists across the Irish Sea to Cumberland and Northumberland. Small wonder that when Cearbhall, king of Leinster, attacked Dublin in 902, he captured the place without difficulty, made a terrible slaughter of the inhabitants, and forced the beaten remnant of the defending army to seek refuge across the sea, some going off to plunder Chester and others sailing for the Loire.
  Although, during these forty years after the death of Halfdan, the viking hold upon Ireland had been steadily weakening, yet most of their harbour-strongholds on the coast must still have remained as centres of a semi-Norse population. Even as early as the middle of the ninth century there existed the Gaill-Gaedhil, or foreign Irish, and though at first these were merely Irishmen who had thrown in their lot with the pirates, it is likely enough that from these recreants had sprung a race of mixed parentage, half Irish and half Norse, in the settlement areas. But the Gaill-Gaedhil, low-born adventurers whose swords were for hire, were not the only result of intercourse between Norse and Irish. On the contrary, there are many records of the free and peaceable mingling of the two peoples, the intermarriage of the high-born Norse and the Irish nobility, and also of temporary alliances between them for battle and adventure, the Norse sometimes entering with zest into the wars of the rival Irish kings, while these kings, upon occasion, were not above taking a part in the viking expeditions in search of plunder.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Hudson mouth is the Hop of Mr. Gathorne Hardy. Professor Hovgaard, who does not believe that Karlsefni ever got to Wineland at all, makes Straumfjord Sandwich Bay on the east coast of Labrador, and Hop White Bay in Newfoundland. Professor Steensby puts Straumfjord and Hop in the St. Lawrence estuary ; Mr. W. H. Babcock (Smithsonian Misc. Coll. 59, 1913, No. 19, pp. 124, 139) places Straumfjord in Passamaquoddy Bay and Hop in Mount Hope Bay. Gustav Storm placed both Straumfjord and Hop on the south-east coast of Nova Scotia. And this illustrates the almost hopeless difficulty of describing these voyages in a coherent story that does not at some point run counter to the narratives in the sagas. I cannot defend the identifications I have chosen here, but I have picked out what seem to me to be the best guesses, and I earnestly commend to the student a very excellent little paper by Professor Halldór Hermannsson (Geographical Review, New York, January, 1927, p. 107) who begins his study by the novel and ingenious method of plotting Leif's course back to Greenland. To Professor Hermannsson is due the identification that I have adopted here of Straumfjord as Chaleur Bay. The trouble, of course, is that the sources are in no sense sailing directions ; they are narratives, as muddled and misleading as any other stories set down in writing some two or three hundred years after they were first told, and the plain truth is that the identification of the viking settlements in America will only be conclusively settled, if ever, by the actual discovery of the Norse booths. Unfortunately, the search for Scandinavian remains in the New World has so far yielded no results in spite of various extravagant claims. The old stone mill at Newport, Rhode Island, thought to date from the time of the Norsemen, proves to have been built in the seventeenth century, the alleged runes on the Dighton Rock and the Yarmouth Stone are certainly not Norse, the Kensington runic inscription in Minnesota is a forgery, and there is no hope for the painted boulder at Spokane, Washington. Excavation has failed to show that certain ruins on the Charles River at Cambridge, Massachusetts, are Norse, as was at one time believed, and other ruins and graves on the east coast of Labrador near Nain and Amitok Island, also thought to be of Norse origin, are now known to be the work of other peoples.
  The word trjóna is usually translated pole or stave, but I adopt here Mr. Gathorne Hardy's suggestion (op. cit., p. 182).
  The Norsemen described this as a large ball, resembling a sheep's paunch and dark-coloured, which was slung from a pole and made a horrible noise when it descended. Modern Indians use no such weapon, but Algonquin tradition has preserved the memory of a formidable ballista which was made of a boulder sewn up tight in a skin and slung at the end of a long rod, H. R. Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes of the United States, I (1851), p. 85.
  Karlsefni is said to have sailed northward to Keelness and then westwards, having land on his port side. This probably means that he sailed across the Gulf of St. Lawrence and then back again in a westerly direction to the Gaspé peninsula and thence westward along the south bank of the St. Lawrence.
  It is sometimes said that Harald Hardradi journeyed to Wineland during his celebrated voyage to investigate the breadth of the northern ocean (Adam of Bremen, IV, 38), but actually there is no reason for supposing that he reached America. Nor is the Honen rune-stone in Ringerike of any historic importance even though an uncertain reading seems to record an expedition to Wineland by explorers who lost themselves among the ice of uninhabited countries. Nor, moreover, can anything be made of a projected expedition to discover the ' New Land ' found in the northern seas by Icelandic explorers about 1290. On this, and Harald's voyage, see F. Nansen, In Northern Mists.