Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 3.djvu/390

 378 CHRONICLE OF THE NOTES. Anglo-Saxons all came from that coast), could not suddenly have lost the art of navigating vessels so entirely, that in 180 years afterwards they would be a strange people to the Saxon inhabitants of England, whose great grandfathers, in some of the latest settled kingdoms of the Heptarchy, must have been born in that very country. But Northmen from Hordaland, who had to cross the North sea at once from Norway to Northumberland, instead of coasting along from the mouth of the Eyder or of the Elbe to the mouth of the Rliine and the coast of Flanders, from whence a run across to the south-east coast of England is an affair of a couple of days, might very well be an unknown and strange people, before the year 787, to the inhabitants of Northumberland. It is for the Anglo- Saxon scholar to determine whether there may not be a mis- take in transcribing the original manuscripts of the Saxon Chronicle, with respect to the word Deniscra. If it could be omitted, so as to read that these were the first ships of these men, — viz. of Northmen from Heredaland, — who came to England, it would make sense of the passage. As it stands, the specification of three ships of Northmen or Norwegians, from Heredaland or Hordaland, does not agree with the term Danish men ; as the Danish kingdom or name did not in those ages, in the 8th or in the 9th century, either as a whole or in parts under tributary kings, extend to the north of the Gotha river in the Scandinavian peninsula. In the cognate language, the old Norse, the difference of a letter or two would change the demonstrative pronoun expressing that kingdom, viz. of Hordaland or Heredaland, into Danish kingdom. If such a reading could be admitted, of which the Anglo-Saxon scholar only can judge, it would both give sense to the passage, and would agree with what must have been the natural course of events, — viz. that at all times after the establishment of the Heptarchy, as well as before, there were piratical expeditions or commercial communications between the mother country of Holstein, Sleswick, and Jutland, viz. the Danish kingdom and the colonies from it in England, to the extent at least that Danes could not be an unknown people, and confounded with Northmen from the north of Norway, or from Horda- land. It is to be observed also, that in 793, 794, and in all the notices in the first half of the following century of piratical invaders in the Saxon Chronicle, they are called