invaders.

The wild rugged hills and coasts of Scandinavia, with their keen
climate, long nights, and many gulfs and bays, had contributed to nurse
the Teuton race in a vigor and perfection scarcely found elsewhere--or
not at least since the more southern races had yielded to the enervating
influences of their settled life. Some of these had indeed been tamed,
but more had been degraded. The English were degenerating into
clownishness, the Franks into effeminacy; and though Christianity
continually raised up most brilliant lights--now on the throne, now
in the cathedral, now in the cloister--yet the mass of the people lay
sluggish, dull, inert, selfish, and half savage.

They were in this state when the Norseman and the Dane fitted out their
long ships, and burst upon their coasts. By a peculiar law, common once
to all the Teuton nations, though by that time altered in the southern
ones, the land of a family was not divided among its members, but all
possessed an equal right in it; and thus, as it was seldom adequate to
maintain them all, the more enterprising used their right in it only to
fell trees enough to build a ship, and to demand corn enough to victual
their crew, which was formed of other young men whose family inheritance
could not furnish more than a sword or spear.

Kings and princes--of whom there were many--were exactly in the same
position as their subjects, and they too were wont to seek their
fortunes upon the high seas. Fleets coalesced under the command of
some chieftain of birth or note, and the Vikings, or pirates, sailed
fearlessly forth, to plunder the tempting regions to the south of them.

Fierce worshippers were they of the old gods, Odin, Frey, Thor; of the