GENERAL INTRODUCTION
simple and martial religion, which was cherished by those vast multitudes, which, as Milton says, the populous North
“* * * poured from her frozen loins to pass
Rhene or the Danaw, when her barbarous sons
Came like a deluge on the South and spread
Beneath Gibraltar and the Libyan sands.”
During the viking age we find the Scandinavians everywhere. They came in large swarms to France, England and Spain. During the crusades they led the van of the chivalry of Europe in rescuing the Holy Sepulchre; they passed between the pillars of Hercules, devastated the classic fields of Greece and penetrated the walls of Constantinople. Straying far into the East, we find them laying the foundations of the Russian Empire, and swinging their two-edged battle-axes in the streets of Constantinople, where they served as captains of the Greek Emperor’s body-guard, and the chief support of his tottering throne. They ventured out upon the surging main and discovered Iceland, Greenland and North America, thus becoming the discoverers, not only of America, but also of pelagic navigation. The Vikings were the first navigators to venture out of sight of land. And everywhere they scattered the seeds of liberty, independence and culture. They brought to France that germ of liberty that was planted in the soil of Normandy, where the Normans adopted the French tongue and were the first to produce and spread abroad a vernacular literature, that germ of liberty which, when brought to England, budded in the Magna Charta and Bill of Rights, and which in course of time was carried in the Mayflower to America, where it developed full-blown flowers in our Declaration of Independence and the ripest fruit in the Constitution of the United States.
The Scandinavians in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Iceland gave a hearty reception to the Gospel and preserved its teaching for many centuries free from pagan influence. In the Swedish ruler Gustavus Adolphus, protestantism found one of its most efficient and valiant defenders.
The Scandinavians are still faithful to the banner of pro-
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