EARLY NORSE HISTORY. 
381 
inclement a habitation may excite surprise; but it 
must always be remembered that they were, probably, 
a comparatively scanty congregation, and that the un¬ 
occupied valleys of Norway and Sweden, teeming with 
fish and game, and rich in iron, were a preferable region 
to lands only to be colonised after they had been 
conquered. 
Thus, under the leadership of Odin—and his twelve 
Paladins, to whom a grateful posterity afterwards con¬ 
ceded thrones in the halls of their chief’s Valhalla,—the 
new emigrants spread themselves along the margin of 
the out-ocean, and round about the gloomy fiords, and 
up and down the deep valleys, that fall away at right 
angles from the back-bone, or heel , as the sea-faring 
population soon learnt to call the flat snow-capped ridge 
that runs down the centre of Norway. 
Amid the rude, but not ungenial influences of its 
bracing climate, was gradually fostered that gallant 
race which was destined to give an imperial dynasty 
to Russia, a nobility to England, and conquerors to 
every sea-board in Europe. 
Upon the occupation of their new home, the as¬ 
cendancy of that mysterious hero, under whose 
