Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/58

44 labour as would make stone arrow-heads more scarce and valuable than metal ones. Of such stones as might be substituted for metal in missile weapons it happens, singularly enough, that Scandinavia itself is more productive than any part of the north of Europe, if we except perhaps the districts of England abounding in flint. Our ordinary museum arrow-heads of stone, or what our country people, when they turn them up by the plough, call elf-bolts, from an obscure impression that they do not belong to the soil, but are, from the regularity of their shape, an artificial production, are in reality the organic fossil called by geologists the Belemnite, which, tapering to a point at both ends from regular equally poised sides, is, in its natural fossil state, an arrow-head. This fossil, and the sharp schists, which could easily be formed into effective points for missile weapons, abound particularly in that great indenture of the Norwegian coast called the Skager Rack, and in the middle ages called Vicken, or the Wick, or Vik, between the Naze of Norway and the Sound or the coast of Jutland, and from which Pinkerton conjectures the Scottish Picts or Victi, if they were a Gothic tribe, originally proceeded. He founds his conjecture on the similarity of name; and the Vikings or pirates probably derived their name from this district of Viken in which they harboured, and for the obvious reason that here the means of replenishing their ships with the missile arms of the age abounded. Hardsteinagriot, or small hard stones, appear to have been even an article of export at a very early date from Telemark, and to have been shipped from the coast to which they were transported in quantities of 1500 loads at a time from the interior. Stones for throwing by hand (the sling, on account of the space required around the