552 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. 
the ruins of the twelfth-century Cluniac priory at Dudley, and in those of 
Halesowen Abbey (thirteenth century). 
The Borderlands present a combination of rich and varied scenery with 
interesting historical, legendary, and literary associations. As typical instances 
may be mentioned the following : Tong, with rock dwellings, legends of Hengist, 
and memories of Charles Dickens’ Little Nell; Boscobel and the Royal Oak; 
Holbeache and the Gunpowder Plot; Kinver with rock dwellings, legends, and 
charming scenery; Hagley, the Poets’ Retreat beloved of Pope, Shenstone, and 
Thomson; Clent with its legends (sung by Chaucer and Milton) of St. Kenelm, 
the boy king of Mercia; Shakespeare’s Country and the Forest of Arden; 
Kenilworth; Coventry; Tamworth; Lichfield; Sutton Coldfield and Barr 
Beacon; Wall (the Roman Ztocetum); Cannock Chase; the Wrekin and 
Uriconium; and the incomparable Severn Valley. 
—— 
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 15. 
The following Papers were read :— 
1. The Expansion of the Fjord Peoples and its Geographical Conditions. 
By C. B. Fawcett, B.Litt., B.Sc. 
The Fjordlands considered are Norway, the North-West Coast of North 
America, and Magallanes. 
Each of these is a narrow and fragmentary strip of coast backed by barren 
highland, with only small and scattered patches of lowland. Their climates 
are all of the same type, wet, cool and equable, unfavourable to agriculture, 
but with open sea at all seasons. The peoples depend mainly on the sea for 
their food and means of communication, and therefore their expansion has 
been along the waterways. 
Each fjord coast is on the mountainous western edge of a continent in high 
latitudes, but in other respects their positions are very different. Magallanes 
_is at an end of the inhabited earth, with desert coasts to the north and a wide 
ocean on all other sides. The N.W. Coast is exposed to Asiatic and Polynesian 
influences, and is less completely shut off from its hinderland than the other 
fjordlands. The South of Norway borders the ‘ Narrow Seas,’ and thence had 
communication with Europe and the Mediterranean. 
In each of these lands there has been a mingling of races, but in each the 
uniformity of the local conditions and the separation from other peoples has 
made the inhabitants one people in their modes of life. Their relative social 
development has been mainly influenced by their skill in navigation. This 
directly determined the range and security of their food supply, and the growth 
of population and organisation, and therefore the power of expansion. The 
development of navigation was local, and limited, in Magallanes. On the 
N.W. Coast only dug-out vessels were employed. The Norse ships were 
influenced by those of Europe and the Mediterranean, and here navigation very 
early reached a high stage of development. 
The expansion of the N.W. Amerinds was limited to the region bounded by 
the mountains and the ocean east and west and the desert and Arctic coasts 
south and north. The only practicable route was up the rivers; and that 
demanded a complete change in their mode of life. The limits to expansion 
from Magallanes were similar, but even narrower. 
The Norsemen were not checked by any such barriers and they spread along 
three chief routes: (1) N.E. to Finmark and the White Sea, (2) westward to 
Iceland and Greenland, and (3) S.W. to the British Isles. The fourth route, 
to the S.E., was blocked by the Danes and Swedes. The form of the expansion 
in each case was determined by the social condition of the people visited, and the 
causes of the early success and later rapid decline of the Viking Power are 
to be found in the state of affairs in Norway and Western Europe at the time 
and the limited resources of Norway. 
