The Viking Age 65 



terror all the dwellers 011 the coasts of Christian 

 Europe. 



It must not be supposed that the dej)redations of 

 the northern warriors had gone on from time imme- 

 morial. There is a very definite date at which begins 

 the Viking age, properly so called, the age of A'iking 

 voyages and depredations. This is in the year a.d. 

 789. And there can be no doubt that the one thine 

 which, more than any other, led to this outbreak of 

 piracy was the discovery of the use of sails by the 

 Scandinavians. The Viking ships resembled those of 

 the rock-carving of a thousand years earlier in almost 

 every particular but one, that the earlier vessels had 

 not, and the later had, sails ; and there can be no doubt, 

 while in otlier respects their art of boat-building was 

 ancestral, that the northern people learnt the use of 

 sails from the Eomans. They began to use them pro- 

 bably some hundred years before their great era of 

 adventure and piracy dawned. But for all that, it 

 was this discovery more than any other which led to 

 that era. 



The first Scandinavian ships which harried any coast 

 of Christian Europe were three vessels, which, in the 

 summer of a.d. 789, appeared upon the Dorset coast. 

 The officer in charge of the port — we are not told pre- 

 cisely to what harbour they had come — supposed them 

 to be merchant-men, and rode down to demand the 

 port-dues payable to the king. But he found to his 

 cost that these were no merchants. The Vikings sprang 

 to the shore, drew their swords and killed the port- 

 reeve and his small following, then took plunder from 

 the place and sailed away out to sea. 



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