Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 3.djvu/393

 KINGS OF NORWAY. p^gl churches, and furnished 110 ships. Aros, a third bishopric notes. also in Jutland, had 210 churches, and furnished 90 ships. The fourth bishopric was Wyburg, also in Jutland, which furnished 100 ships. It then describes Lymfiord, an inlet from the Baltic reaching almost to the North sea, and only divided from it by a narrow neck of sand, over which Harald of Norway drew his vessels when blockaded by King Swend Ulfsson's fleet in the fiord, and thus escaped into the North Sea. It then goes on to describe the bishoprics north of this inlet; viz. Hiorrung, with 160 churches, furnishing as its quota in a levy 50 ships. The sixth bishopric is Odense, in the island of Fyen, with 300 churches, furnishing 100 ships. The seventh is Koskilde, in the island of Seland, with 411 churches, furnishing 120 ships ; and the eighth is the bishopric of Lund in Scania, across the Sound, with 353 churches, and furnishing 150 ships. We have here 2358 districts, or churches, furnishing 850 ships to the king on a general levy, which appears to have been called out almost every summer. From this minute ac- count of the available naval force of Denmark alone, we see that there is probably no exaggeration in the accounts of the immense number of vessels collected on the naval expeditions of those times. Canute, we are told in the saga, had 1200 vessels in his fleet at the battle of Helge-a, which startles the historical reader; but when we find 850 of these vessels were only the regular levy furnished by Denmark, and that he had all the shipping of England also at his command, the number is quite credible. These vessels may have been very small ; but the smallest could scarcely have had less than ten men of a standing crew to row and manage them, besides the fighting men. This would make a greater sea force than Denmark possesses at the present day, including her German territories of Holstein and part of Sleswick, and the considerable ship- ping towns of Altona, Kiel, Flensburg belonging to it. The registered seamen belonging to Denmark, and available for the service of the crown if called on, amount at present only to 6650 men; and the sea-force, it is stated by statistical writers, could not be raised to 8000 men, without taking all the men from the commercial marine of the country. Den- mark has been positively, as well as comparatively, a greater naval power in the 11th than in the 19th century. She has