Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/154

 anchor. Boats may be anchored by a stone, or a book of strong wood sunk by a heavy stone attached to it; but vessels of from 50 to 111 feet of keel, such as the war-ships and last-ships of the Northmen, must have carried anchors of from ten to fifteen hundred weight at the least, and we read of their riding out heavy gales. To forge, or procure in any way such anchors, betokens a higher state of the useful arts among these pagan Northmen than we usually allow them. Iron is the mother of all the useful arts; and a people who could smelt iron from the ore, and work it into all that is required for ships of considerable size, from a nail to an anchor, could not have been in a state of such utter barbarism as they are represented to us. We may fairly doubt of their gross ignorance and want of civilisation in their pagan state, when we find they had a literature of their own, and laws, institutions, social arrangements, a spirit and character very analogous to the English, if not the source from which the English flowed; and were in advance of all the Christian nations in one branch at least of the useful arts, in which great combinations of them are required—the building, fitting out, and navigating large vessels.