Tiie invasions of the Northmen into England were still more numerous and important; they sought at an early moment to secure a permanent footing in that country. The first invasion we find recorded took place in 787 ; after 795 they became quite common. Numerous battles which took place between the Anglo-Saxons and the Normans in 832 and 833 show tliat the latter had al- ready advanced far inland, and were trying to establish themselves permanently. Here, as in France, we find their leaders grachially embracing the Christian faith in exchange for land secured to them. One of their prin- cipal invasions was that led by the renowned Eagnar Lodbrog. After a long struggle they succeeded, in 870, in securing the whole western portion of England, and from thence they gradually spread into other parts of
the country. Finally, the Anglo-Saxon king, Alfred, succeeded in making a treaty by which the Normans received about half the country, on the condition of their king, Gudruna, submitting to baptism, and recog- nising king Alfred as his suzerain. The English chron- icles consider Alfred as having converted the Danes; yet Northumberland remained still heathen, and in other parts the Norman population was only in part Christian. From a treaty concluded by Edward, Al- fred's successor, with the subsequent Danish king, Gud- run, it appears however that Christianity was already the state religion of the Danish population in England in the early part of the 10th centurj-. The penalties imposed on such as fell back into idolatry, laws for the security of Church property, etc., prove that it was legally recognised. We also find Normans holding high offices in the Church. Fresh invasions of the Normans and inroads into the territory of the Anglo- Saxons continued during the 10th century. Their frontiers were gradually extended, and finally, in 1016, the Dane Canute was recognised king of England. Once on the throne, he sought to heal the dissensions existing between the two parties by his mild and mod- erate administration. He issued a number of decrees concerning ecclesiastical subjects. The Christian re- ligion was alone recognised, but needed the support of the government in order successfully to resist tlie influ- ence of the heathen Norman emigrants: thus, in 1012, archbishop jElfetah of Canterbury, having been made prisoner, had been cruelly put to death by the Danes, who were incensed at the zeal he had displayed for their conversion. The Norman dynasty founded by Canute was of short duration ; the brother of the last Anglo-Saxon king, Edward the Confessor, ascended the throne of England thirty years after Canute, but he never fully succeeded in conciliating the Normans; and under his .successor, Harold H, the French Normans in- vaded the kingdom, under the guidance of William the Conqueror, in 1066. Thus England fell again under Norman rule ; yet the conquerors adopted the customs, laws, and language of the conquered, and the Norman element exercised no marked influence on religious or ecclesiastical matters. See England.
In Ireland the Norman invasions commenced about the end of the 8th century, and after many efforts they succeeded in 852 in founding there a kingdom, of which the centre was at Dublin, but which did not stand long. They also founded less important settlements, which thej^ had much trouble in defending against the native inhabitants. We possess but little information con- cerning the particulars of their conversion, but most of the Norman inhabitants of Ireland appear to have been Cliristians in the middle of the 11th century.
Iceland was discovered by the Northmen in 8G0, and settled in 874. In 876 or 877 Greenland was discovered, and a colony was planted there by Eric the Bed in 983- 985.
It is from the latter country that, according to Ice- landic sagas, the Northmen went out and discovered America in 986, touching at Newfoundland ; and that in 1001 thirty-five men went out again to further pursue the discovery, under the leadership of Leif, son of Eric the Eed, and besides visiting Newfoundland, they touched at what is now supposed to be Nova Scotia and the coast of New England. At the last-named land they wintered, and returned to Greenland, their vessels freighted with timber. In the following year Leifs brother Thorwald visited, it is supposed. Mount Hope Bay, E. I. In 1004 these Northmen explored the coast eastward, but had a skirmish with the Indians, and lost their leader. In 1005 they returned to Greenland ; but in 1007 Karlscfni, a rich Icelander, set sail for the New England coast — by them called Vinland (Vine-Land) — with three ships, one hundred and sixty men, and some cattle, and passed three winters on the New England coast; but the hostility of the natives finally obliged him to quit the country. The old Icelandic MSS.
NORN^
177
NORRTS
make visits to Vinland or to Mark-land (Nova Scotia) in 1121, 1285, and 134:7. The truthfulness of the sagas is insisted upon by Northern scholars, because Adam of Bremen, almost contemporary with the voyage of Thor- finn, states, on the authority of the Danish king Est- rithson, that Yinland was so called because of the vines whicli grew wild there. The latest documentary evi- dence, however, is the Venetian narrative of Nicolo Zeno, who visited Greenland about 1390, and records that he met with fishermen there who had been on the American coast. (See Anderson, America not discover- ed by Columbus.')