Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/384

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fields for their energy, and a soil more suited for a superabundant population than could be found amidst the barren mountains of Scandinavia or in the northern portions of Germany, the first object of most of them, as was the case with the Goths and Vandals, was, doubtless, to obtain greater means of subsistence. But desolate hills, and a string of small islands along a deeply indented coast, with deep and narrow water between them and the mainland, afforded a natural home for the Vikings' tribe; while the mainland itself became available as a great sea-fortress for countless fleets.

By the physical structure of the country, there run out from a solid centre of mountain-land a multitude of rocks, like great prongs, with deep gulfs between them filled from the sea. These are the celebrated Fiords, which send branches or inlets through the mountains on either side, some of them longer than the longest sea lochs of the West Highlands of Scotland. Except in the few places where large rivers make deltas of silt, the rocks run sheer down into deep water, so that vessels can lie close to the land in the smallest crevices or bays. The entrances to wide stretches of fiord are sometimes so narrow, and consequently so easily defended, that the people speak of the stones rolling from the tops of the high rocky banks, and bounding across the water, so as to strike the opposite shore. It was of little consequence to the Vikings that the soil around them was hard and barren, for the value to them of that soil was in protection, not in produce. The only articles they required for home industry were the timber, iron, and pitch, for the building of their