Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/60

46 captured his vessels. In the engagement of Earl Paul in Orkney with the friends of Earl Rognwald he refused the assistance of men from Erling of Tankerness, off which place the battle was fought, because he had as many men as could find room to fight in his vessels, but required his assistance in carrying out stones from the shore to his vessels as long as the enemy would allow it to be done safely. Stones could not be transported or distributed in a conflict on land; and on this account the Northmen appear generally to have kept to their ships in their battles, and, even when marauding on land, to have had their ships far up the rivers to retire upon. This circumstance, namely, the great bulk in stowage, and in transport by land, of the usual arms of the age, arrows, casting spears, and stones, in any considerable quantities for a body of troops, and the difficulty of concentrating stores of them just at the spot where they are needed on land, accounts in a great measure for the success of comparatively small bodies of invaders landing on the coasts of England, or Normandy, in those ages. The invaders had the advantage of a supply of weapons in their vessels to retire upon, or to advance from; while their opponents having once expended what they carried with them, which could scarcely exceed the consumption in one ordinary battle of a few hours' duration, would be totally without missiles.

In the settlement of an Asiatic population in Scandinavia, which, whatever may have been the cause or inducement for preferring that side of the Baltic, undoubtedly did take place at an unascertained date, under a chief called Odin, we find a remarkable difference of social arrangement—and a sufficient cause for it—from that social arrangement which grew up among the people who invaded and seized on the ancient Roman empire. The latter were settling in countries of which the land was already appropriated;