21! SETTLEMENT OF 11RITALV BY NOltTIlMUX. 



This belief seems to be supported by u variety of evidence. 

 Herodotus describes a people on the Tanais, the Budini, as 

 being blue-eyed and yellow-haired, with houses built of wood, 

 his description of the walls reminding one of the charac- 

 teristics of the Danavirki (Herodotus, IV. 21, 108, 100). One 

 of his tribes, the Tliysagetw, may possibly be indicated in the 

 Thursar of the Voluspa, &c. 



When we appeal to Archaeology, we find in the neighbour- 

 hood of the Black Sea, near to the old Greek settlement, graves 

 similar to those of the North, containing ornaments and other 

 relics also remarkably like those found in the ancient graves of 

 Scandinavia. The Runes of the North remind us strikingly 

 of the characters of Archaic Greek. If we follow the river 

 Dnieper upwards from its mouth in the Black Sea, we see in the 

 museums of Kief and Smolensk many objects of types exactly 

 similar to those found in the graves of the North. When we 

 reach the Baltic we find on its eastern shores the Gardariki of 

 the Sagas, where, we are told, the Odin of the North placed 

 one of his sons, and on the southern shores many specimens 

 have been discovered similar to those obtained in Scandinavia. 



In the following chapters the reader will be struck by the 

 similarity of the customs of the Norsemen with those of the 

 ancient Greeks as recorded by Homer and Herodotus ; for ex- 

 ample, the horse was very much sacrificed in the North, and 

 Herodotus, describing the Massagetae, says : 



r i 



They (the Massagetae) worship the sun only of all the gods, 

 and sacrifice horses to him" (I. 216). 



In regard to the Jutes, Jutland = Jots, Jotnar ; Jotland, 

 Jotunheim, we find them from the Sagas to be a very ancient 

 land and people, and meet several countries bearing kindred 

 names even to this dav we have Goteborer, in which the G is 



ml O ' 



pronounced as English Y. 



From the Roman, Greek, Frankish, Russian, English, and 

 Arabic records, we must come to the conclusion that the 

 " Viking Age " lasted from about the second century of our 

 era to about the middle of the twelfth without interruption, 

 hence the title given to the work which deals with the history 

 and customs of our English forefathers during that period. 



