Northmen, or NORSEMEN, the name given in the middle ages by the coast-dwellers of Germany, France, and England to the sea-rovers who came from the north—Denmark, Norway, Sweden. In a narrower sense the word sometimes means the inhabitants of Norway only. The most prominent characteristics of these North Teutonic tribes were their love for the sea and for war. Bolder navigators than even the Phoenicians of old, they sailed east, west, south, and even north into the Arctic Ocean, to indulge their passion for fighting, to win fame, to gain wealth, to plunder, and to slay. We nowadays should call them pirates; they called themselves sea-kings, vikings, and believed that these expeditions were the noblest and most honourable work they could put their hands to. They believed too that the best title, in the legal sense, to land and other (movable) property was given by winning it with the sword: this gained them the highest respect and influence, and was the surest guarantee of political power. There were likewise powerful economic and political causes co-operating with these to send forth, from the middle of the 8th century to the 13th, and even later, these thronging swarms of Northmen. The natural resources of the lands they dwelt in were very inadequate to the support of the relatively large populations. The system of land tenure, based on the indivisibility and absolute ownership of the family estate, whilst fortifying the sense of family attachment and fostering family pride, frequently imposed galling restraints upon the younger sons, especially the more restless and high-spirited among them. Hence they spent the summer in quest of fame and booty in distant lands; but generally came home again in the autumn, to pass the winter in the enjoyment of the good things they had earned. Still stronger impulses were given to these expeditions when the more powerful chiefs (kings) at home began to subdue their weaker contemporaries and rivals, and the separate kingdoms (Norway, Denmark, Sweden) began to take definite shape, under such strong rulers as Harold Fairhair (Haarfager) and Canute. Many of the free odal proprietors, rather than submit to become the feudal vassals of the conquerors, preferred to abandon their homes, and go and conquer new lands for themselves elsewhere. These strong rulers moreover sternly put down the intestine conflicts in which the Northmen delighted; consequently to get their fill of fighting they were obliged to go abroad.
A favourite plan of the weaker viking chiefs was to lie in wait up some small creek or river-mouth, or behind the shelter of some island, and thence suddenly dart out upon a passing vessel. The larger fleets boldly invaded a district, plundered the inhabitants, slew them if they offered resistance, or carried them off as slaves if they did not, harried the open country, rifled the churches and monasteries—which always yielded the greatest stores of gold and silver—and not infrequently burned them to the ground, as they did the strong cities they took and sacked. Being heathens, worshippers of Thor and Odin, they had no qualms of conscience as to sacrilege, and stood in no awe of the threatenings of the church. One viking fleet would even challenge another to fight it for fighting's sake only. The vessels they sailed in were comparatively small and light of draught, so that they were able to penetrate a long way up the rivers, sometimes into the heart of a country; and as the Northmen were resistless in arms and unrelenting in their wrath, their mere appearance was often sufficient to paralyse an entire district with panic terror. In many churches a special petition, 'From the fury of the Northmen, O Lord, deliver us,' was recited in the litany. But these sea-rovers were also keen traders: on many occasions they first requested permission to land and trade peacefully with the inhabitants, and only when their trading was done did they begin to plunder. There were several recognised trading-places along the shores of the Baltic, and some on the North Sea, which were visited not only by legitimate merchants from England, Flanders, Italy, the East, but also by vikings who had slaves, and gold and silver, and other less valuable booty to dispose of.
The viking age is divisible into two periods: during the first adventure and plunder were the chief incitements—this lasted until the middle of the 9th century; the second was the period of permanent conquests, in Ireland, France, England, South Italy. The sea-rovers made their first recorded attack upon England, upon Wessex, in 787, and first began to raid along the shores of Frisia, Flanders, and France towards the end of the century. These bands came from Denmark, but may nevertheless have been Norwegians. During the first half of the next century the depredations of the Northmen were more terrible than ever, especially in Frisia and Flanders, during the periods 834–837 and 845–850. They had also gone farther south: in 820 a band reached Aquitaine; fifteen years later another band plundered the French island of Noirmoutier; in 843–844 a fleet sailed up the Loire and Gironde, visited Galicia (Spain), and steered up the Guadalquivir and fought the Moors. From about the middle of the century bodies of Northmen established themselves in permanent camps at the mouths of the French rivers, and repeatedly ascended them on their errands of plunder and slaughter. Three times in quick succession they took Paris and stripped it of its wealth (845, 857, 861); but the most famous siege took place in 885–886. In 859 and 860 an exceptionally adventurous fleet entered the Mediterranean, ravaged the coasts of Spain and Mauretania, and Majorca, spent the winter at the mouth of the Rhone, and in the following summer laid their ruthless hand on the coast towns of Italy, especially on Luna (near Carrara), thinking it was Rome. Yet Flanders and the north of France suffered most during the thirty-six years from 876 to 912. During all this period a large army, or even armies, dominated the coast districts from the Rhine to Brittany, quartering themselves in entrenched camps, and not only routing time after time the armies of the weak kings of Austrasia and Neustria, and their still weaker vassals, but even making disastrous raids far into the interior—to Coblenz, Soissons, Sens—and extorting from kings, dukes, counts, and towns large sums in gold and silver as the price of abstaining from hostilities. The chiefs of these formidable bands were Björn Ironside, Hasting, Siegfried, Godfred, and Rollo or Rolf. Detachments of the main body crossed over more than once to England, where, however, Alfred was a match for them. Rollo (Rou) is probably the same as Rolf the Ganger; if so, he was the son of a chief of the west coast of Norway, and was outlawed by Harold Fairhair shortly after 872. In 912 Charles the Simple of France, seeing that it was hopeless for him to drive away his dangerous and pertinacious foe, thought it best to disarm them against himself, and at the same time arm them against new-comers, by allowing them to settle in his kingdom, a plan adopted by other rulers before. Accordingly at Clair-sur-Epte he agreed to cede to Rollo the district bounded by the Channel, the Seine, and the Epte, on condition that he would become his man or vassal, and be baptised a Christian. Rollo accepted the terms, and thus acquired the nucleus of the duchy of Normandy (q.v.). There the name Northmen was softened into Normans, a name celebrated in history not only in virtue of the conquest of England by Duke William, but also because of their exploits in Italy and Sicily, and the East, described under GUISCARD and SICILY.
The earliest serious attacks upon England were made in 793 and 794, when Lindisfarne and Jarrow monastery were sacked and Northumberland ravaged. It was about the same time that the sea-kings of Norway began to cross the 'Western Sea' and sail as far as the Syderöer or South Islands—i.e. the Hebrides, the Western Isles of Scotland, and Man (q.v.)—and to Ireland, prob- ably utilising the Faroe (q.v.) and Shetland (q.v.) Islands as resting-stages. They sacked Iona (Hy) in 802 and again in 806, slaying most of the monks. Their visits to Ireland were particularly numerous after 807, and brought great woes upon the unhappy island. A chief named Torgisl, a Norseman, conquered most of north Ireland shortly after 840. In or a little before 852 a fleet of Danes arrived and disputed fiercely with the Norsemen, or, as the Irish called them, the Eastmen; but in the year quoted Olaf the White of Norway founded the Scandinavian (chiefly Danish) kingdom of Dublin, which lasted three centuries or more, whilst two of his followers created the separate kingdoms of Waterford and Limerick (see IRELAND, Vol. VI. p. 203). The Faroe, Orkney, and Shetland Islands seem to have been frequently visited by Norsemen after 825, and were permanently colonised during the next quarter of a century. Iceland (q.v.) was discovered and colonised by the same people between the middle and end of the century; and from Iceland they ventured still farther west, and made settlements in Greenland (q.v.), and even visited Vinland (q.v.) in North America. The viking raids on England were incessant after 833, but were checked for a time by the great slaughter inflicted on them by Ethelwulf at Ockley (Surrey) in 851. Fifteen years later they began again, and this time assumed the character of a serious invasion, the invaders being almost exclusively Danes. They made themselves absolute masters of the northern, and more especially the eastern, portions of the island, notwithstanding the heroic efforts of Alfred and his son Edward. The struggle is sketched under England (q.v.).
By the middle of the 8th century the Norwegians had discovered the sea-route to the White Sea by rounding the North Cape. On several occasions down to 1222 they sailed up the Northern Dwina and plundered the people of Bjarmeland or Permia. The most important event in viking history on the east side of the Baltic happened in 862. The Slav (perhaps rather Germanic Russi) tribes who dwelt south of Lake Ladoga as far as the Southern Dwina invited three Scandinavian chiefs (probably from Sweden), brothers, of whom Rurik became the most influential, to go and rule over them. They established themselves at Holmgard (Novgorod) and laid the foundations of the kingdom of Gardarike, out of which grew the subsequent Russia (q.v.), that was ruled over by Rurik's descendants down to 1598. Contemporaneously with this two other Scandinavian chiefs formed the nucleus of another state at Könugaard (Kieff); and, sailing thence down the Dnieper, they threatened Constantinople, which was only saved by a sudden storm scattering the fleet of the Northmen or Värings (Varangians), as they were called by the Slavic Russians and the Greeks. Three times during the first half of the 10th century these adventurers appeared before the capital of the Eastern empire, and on two occasions (907 and 945) went away carrying with them heavy sums, the price paid by the emperors to save the city from assault. Igor, the son of Rurik, who commanded two of these expeditions, even launched his fleet on the waters of the Caspian, and carried the terror of the Northmen's name among the Mohammedan dwellers on its shores. The expeditions of the Värings gradually ceased after Vladimir introduced Christianity into his dominions in 988. Nevertheless for many years these Scandinavian rulers in Russia surrounded themselves with stout and trusty warriors from the north, their position being precisely analogous to that of the Manchu emperors in China. From the end of the 10th century the emperors of Constantinople had, till the fall of the city in 1453, a picked bodyguard of Varangians. The men of the north esteemed it a high honour to have served in this chosen cohort at Myklegård (i.e. 'the Great City'); and doubtless they carried back to their countrymen at home many elements or traits of the civilised refinement of the Byzantine court. After the Norman Conquest of England large numbers of English Northmen made their way to Constantinople and enlisted in the Varangian guard; these were the only men whose battle-axes cost Robert Guiscard and his Normans trouble at the great battle of Dyrrhachium (1082).
See Steenstrup, Normannerne (4 vols. 1876-82); G. Storm, Kritiske Bidrag til Vikingetidens Historie (1878); Munch, Det Norske Folks Historie (7 vols. 1852-63); Keary, Vikings in Western Christendom, 789-888 (1891); Du Chaillu, Viking Age (2 vols. 1890); Barlow, History of Normans in South Europe (1886); Count Schack, Normannen in Sicilien (2 vols. 1889); Delarc, Les Normands en Italie (1883); also the older books Worsae, Danes and Norwegians in England, &c. (1852); Strinnholm, Wikingszüge (2 vols. 1839-41); Wheaton, History of Northmen (1831); and Depping, Histoire des Expéditions des Normands (2 vols. 1826). See also the books quoted under NORMANDY, and the articles IRELAND, NAMES, SHIPBUILDING. For the language, see ICELANDIC; and see also SCANDINAVIAN MYTHOLOGY.