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 The first attacks of the Norsemen were directed mainly against the religious houses. They took Lindesfarne in 793; in 794 parties were in the Wear, whilst others were wasting the Western Isles and South Wales. In 802 and 806 they burnt the monastery at Iona; in 807 they were on the west and south coast of Ireland; in 815 they had planted a settlement at Armagh; in 835 they were on the Cornish coast, and thenceforward their irruptions were continuous. The Orkneys became practically part of Norway: this was their base, whence they sailed to Iceland, Ireland, England, and France. The voyages of the Orkneymen fill the Sagas, and these islanders sailed with the Viking fleets to Barcelona, Pisa, Rome, and Constantinople in the ninth century. Rolf, who led the Northmen in their conquest of Normandy, was himself an Orkneyman, son of Rognvald, Earl of Orkney.

The Norseman and Dane, when in course of time they settled down and were absorbed into the population, must have imparted something of their enterprise and skill in navigation to the Anglo-Saxon. Commerce between the Scandinavians in England and the Scandinavians of Norway and Iceland would arise. Chester and Bristol began to trade with Dublin and the Far North, though the insecurity of the seas, which were infested by vikings, probably not too careful to spare their own countrymen, must have at first restricted the volume of commerce. The Christian Northmen, too, voyaged to the Holy Land; a journey of Canute's to Rome is mentioned in the Saxon Chronicle, A.D. 1031, but it is not said whether he travelled overland.

A fine picture of an Orkney voyage and fight in the last year before the conversion to Christianity is given in the Earl's Saga. Thorfinn of Orkney and King Karl of Scotland had a feud, and Thorfinn harried Karl's land, but was surprised by Karl with eleven long ships when he had only five. The eleven ships rowed up against the five, when, as the poet sings—