ancient times till the present day to call the Russians " Wänälaiset" (Wends), and the Swedes "Ruotsalaiset" (Russians) from Roden or Rosen, the ancient name for the part of Sweden nearest southern Finland. This mixing up of different names for the same people renders it very difficult to follow the accounts of the wars and conquests which the Swedes are said to have made in early times amongst the Finns, Wends, and Russians. We know, however, that the greater number of the Varingjar, or Northern rovers, who passed through Garderike, the present Russia, on their way to Miklagaard (Constantinople), were Swedes, while it was from the name Ruotsalaiset or Russians, which the older inhabitants gave them, that the country became known in after times as Russia.

According to Russian chroniclers, it was in the year 859 that a band of the Varingjar, who had come over the sea and were under a leader called Rurik, first appeared in Garderike, where they subdued all the Slaves and Finns whom they met on their march. After a time, however, these older inhabitants of Garderike took courage to attack the small number of strangers who were making themselves masters of their country, and drove them out. Then Rurik and his men made haste to follow their companions who had pushed straight on towards Greece, and for the next two years Garderike was left clear of the Northmen. But at the end of that time the Slaves and Finns having found that they were worse treated by their own chiefs than they had been by the strangers, sent messengers into Greece to the Varingjar, whom they knew both under the names of "Rhos" and "Ruses." "Our land is large," they said, "and blessed with everything good for man; all we need is order; come then, be our princes, and rule over us." On receiving this message the Varingjar took counsel together, and it was decided that those amongst their number who wished to return to Garderike, should cast lots to see whom Odin would choose to be leaders over the rest.

The lot fell upon Rurick and his two brothers, Sineus and Truvor, and these men with their families and a numerous band of followers left Miklagaard and returned into the land of the Slaves. Rurik chose the district now known to us as Novogorod-or New Town-where he built a city which was thence

forth filled by the people of Varingjar origin, while the old land of the Slaves received the name of Russia from the strangers who had become masters of it. Such is the account which the Russians have given us of the manner in which their empire in early times ceased to be wholly Slavonic, and passed under the rule of Scandinavian vikingar whose descendants have since then composed the upper classes among the people.

Ocean Discoveries.—In the same age in which the Danes were hovering on the coasts of England, penetrating into the interior of Gaul and Germany, and the Swedes were making conquests in Eastern Europe, the Norwegians with an inborn love of adventure were striking boldly out into seas where no European-and probably no human being-had ever yet dipped his oar. After they had once begun their daring course of ocean-voyages, they never rested till they had moored their barks on every island in the Northern Seas, and pushed their way beyond the north-western limits of Europe to that new world which we have since called America. Before the close of the ninth century, and while Alfred the Great was still ruling in England, the Pagan Norwegians of whose country he had learnt something through the narrative of the travellers, Ohther and Wulfstan, had made settlements on every side of his kingdom, in Scotland, Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Orkneys, Hebrides and Shetland. They had also discovered and peopled Iceland and the Farö Islands, while before Alfred died in 901 the north-east of the present France had been seized on by their countryman, Rollo, whose descendants in the next century brought back to England the power of the Northmen from which he hoped he had for ever freed his kingdom. The desire of the Norwegians to make new settlements for themselves in foreign lands during the latter half of the ninth century was much stimulated by the state of public affairs in their own country. In Norway, as in the other Scandinavian lands, the country had from the earliest times been divided into a great number of districts, ruled over by Small Kings, and having each a separate "Thing," or Public Assembly, and a certain number of barks and men-at-arms, with which to fight or to defend its own frontiers. Halfden Svarte, a descendant of Olaf Trætelje, the "Tree Hewer," who lived in the middle of the ninth century,

had conquered several of these little kingdoms and joined them with his own state of Vestfold. At his death in the year 863, his son Harald, known in history as Haarfager, "the beautiful-haired," succeeded to these states, but, not content with his heritage, he resolved never to rest till he had made himself sole King of Norway. In proof of his being thoroughly in earnest, he took a solemn oath that he would neither cut nor comb his long yellow locks till he had subdued all the Small Kings in the land. This oath Harald redeemed by making himself master of all Norway from the extreme north of Finnmark to the Næs, or the most southerly cape on the Skagerage. According to the old sagas he was urged on to attempt these conquests by his love for the beautiful Gyda, who refused to marry him as long as there was any other king in the land.

The fate of Norway was decided in a great sea-battle fought in Hafurstjord, near the present Stavanger, where Harald in 872 scattered the fleet which some of the Norwegian chiefs had collected in the hope of defeating him, and forced them either to submit to his power, or leave their native land as outlaws. Harald followed up his victory by imposing a heavy tax upon every district in Norway, and setting his own friends over the different small kingdoms with the title of Jarls. The severity with which the king and his officers caused the laws to be carried out against the rich as well as the poor enraged the old chiefs, and many of them declared that "rather than submit, like low-born churls to rule and order, they would leave their country." Then it was that some of the noblest Norwegians, taking their families and servants with them, embarked on board their ships, and after making solemn offerings to the gods of their fathers and calling down divine vengeance on the head of King Harald, left their native land for ever and set sail in search of new homes.

Rollo the Norman.—One of the most noted of the Norwegian families who were driven from their native land at this period was that of Rögnvald, Jarl of Mære, who like King Harald claimed to be descended from the famous Sigurd Ring, conqueror of Denmark. When King Harald found that the Jarl had not carried out against his own son Hrolf, or Rollo, the orders which he had received to punish piracy by death, he sent the Princes Gudröd and Halfdan to invade Rögnvald's lands and drive his family from their home. The Jarl Rögnvald was slain in battle, and his eldest son Ejnar driven into exile, while the younger son Rollo, who had been the cause of the feud between the king and his family, was still absent from Norway on a viking cruise. This youth, who on account of his great stature, which prevented any horse from carrying him, was known as Gaungo Hrolf, or "the walking Rollo," was one of the most famous vikingar of his age, and noted for the success with which he followed the old northern practice of "Strand-Hug," or seizing by force from off the sea-coast lands upon anything which he or his crews might want, and then going off to sea again with the booty. This way of taking what did not belong to a man King Harald called by the plain name of "stealing," and was resolved to punish whenever he could; accordingly when Rollo, who did not know of the death of his father and the disgrace of his family, landed on the island Vigen and began his old habit of using Strand-Hug, he was seized by orders of the king, who caused him to be brought before the Thing, and to be condemned as an outlaw. Rollo's mother and friends offered large sums of money to appease his anger, but to no purpose, and the young man, seeing that Harald would not pardon him or allow him to remain in Norway, set forth in search of a home elsewhere. The Icelandic sagas tell us that, having crossed the sea, he went in 876 to Walland (Gaul), where he carried on war against the king, and at last gained for himself a great

Jarldom, which he filled with Northmen, and which on that account was called "Nordmandiet," or Normandy. "From this stock came the Jarls of Normandy, and, in course of time, also the Kings of England, for Rollo's son William was the father of Richard, and this Richard had a son of his own name, whose son Rollo, or Robert, was the father of William the Conqueror of England." Such is the old northern account of the settlement of Normandy and of the line of descent which the Norwegians give of the first of our Norman kings.

According to northern traditions the Danes had as early as the fifth century made settlements in Scotland, but the Norwegians did not attack the country in any large numbers till the reign of Harald. In Ireland the northern vikingar were known under the name of "Lochlanach," and the lands from which they came under that of "Lochlin." The Irish annals record the arrival in 852 of an "Olauf, King of Lochlin," to whom all the Northern Gât, or Strangers, submitted. He reigned in Dublin, whilst two other northern chiefs, Ivar and Sigtrygg, made small kingdoms for themselves in Waterford and Limerick. The descendants of the vikingar continued to rule over those parts of Ireland till the time of our Henry II., when the island was invaded by the English in 1172. But long after that time the former presence of the Northmen, or Eastmen," as they were then called, could be traced in the laws and usages and even in the appearance of the people of those districts.

The close of Harald Haarfager's reign was troubled by quarrels amongst his many sons, and at last to escape from these family troubles he retired to a little island near Stavanger, leaving his ungrateful children to govern the state as they liked, and died at a great age in 936, after having spent three years in this retreat. A short time before his death Harald sent his youngest son Hakon to his friend the English King Æthelstan, in order that the boy might be brought up at his court and kept safe from the hands of his wicked half-brother Erik. This little prince, who to the end of his life was known as Hakon, "Athelstan's fostre," or Æthelstan's foster-child, is said in accordance with an old northern custom to have been brought by his attendants to the English prince, and placed on the knees of Æthelstan while he sate on his throne holding a court