PREFACE.
It is of importance to English history to have, in the English language, the means of judging of the social and intellectual state—of the institutions and literature—of a people who during 300 years bore an important, and for a great portion of that time a predominant part, not merely in the wars, but in the legislation of England; who occupied a very large proportion of the country, and were settled in its best lands in such numbers as to be governed by their own, not by Anglo-Saxon laws; and who undoubtedly must be the forefathers of as large a proportion of the present English nation as the Anglo-Saxons themselves, and of a much larger proportion than the Normans. These Northmen have not merely been the forefathers of the people, but of the institutions and character of the nation, to an extent not sufficiently considered by our historians. Civilised or not in comparison with the Anglo-Saxons, the Northmen must have left the influences of their character, institutions, barbarism or culture, among their own posterity. They occupied one third of all England for many generations, under their own Danish laws; and for half a century nearly, immediately previous to the Norman conquerors, they
