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                            IVAR THE VIKING




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                            IVAR THE VIKING




                           A ROMANTIC HISTORY
                   BASED UPON AUTHENTIC FACTS OF THE
                       THIRD AND FOURTH CENTURIES




                                   BY

                            PAUL DU CHAILLU

      AUTHOR OF “THE VIKING AGE,” “THE LAND OF THE MIDNIGHT SUN,”
           “EXPLORATIONS IN EQUATORIAL AFRICA,” “A JOURNEY TO
                          ASHANGO LAND,” ETC.




                                 LONDON

                   JOHN MURRAY      ALBEMARLE STREET

                                  1893




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                          TO GEORGE W. CHILDS


My Dear Childs: Years of our unbroken friendship, going back more than a
    quarter of a century, have passed away, and the recollection of all
    your kindnesses during that time comes vividly before my mind. Many
    a time your home in Philadelphia, at the sea-side, or at Wootton has
    been my home, and many of the happy days of my life have been spent
    with you and your kind wife. Three years ago I lay on a sick-bed at
    your house, and all that tender nursing, the skill of the physician,
    and loving hands could do that winter was done for me, and for all
    that I am indebted to you and to Mrs. Childs. Now a twenty miles’
    walk day after day does not fatigue me. “Ivar the Viking” was partly
    written, after my recovery, under the shade trees of Wootton and in
    the midst of the perfume of its flowers. To you, my dear old friend,
    I dedicate the book as a token of the esteem and high regard I have
    for your noble character, and in grateful remembrance of all you
    have done for me.

                   PAUL DU CHAILLU.

            NEW YORK, September, 1893.




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                              INTRODUCTION


THE story of “IVAR THE VIKING” depicts the actual life of Norse chiefs
who ruled at the period therein described, and also gives the customs,
religion, life, and mode of thinking which prevailed among the people.
My object in writing this story is to give a view, in a popular way, of
the life of these early ancestors of the English-speaking peoples, whose
seat of power was on the islands situated in the basin of the Baltic and
the countries known to-day as Scandinavia.

The reader of this volume will gain a correct idea of the civilization
of the Norsemen of that period, the men who came to the gates of Rome,
and settled in Britain, Gaul, Germania, on the shores of the
Mediterranean, and other countries.

I begin the story of my hero with his birth, accompanied by the
characteristic ceremonies attending it; then I tell of his fostering,
his education, his coming of age, of the precepts of wisdom he is
taught, of his foster-brothers, of the sacred ceremony of
foster-brotherhood, of his warlike expeditions and commercial voyages,
of the death and funeral of his father, of his accession to rule, and
other similarly typical Viking events.

I speak in the narrative of the dwellings of the people; how they lived;
of their “bys,” or burgs; of the different grades making up society; of
their feasts; of their temples; of their worship, religious ceremonies,
and sacrifices; of funerals; of Amazons; of athletic games; of women and
maidens; of love; of duels and sports; of dress; of men and women; of
marriages. In a word, the book is a life-like picture of the period. The
time which I have chosen is the epoch when the Norsemen were most surely
and swiftly sapping the power of Rome, and engaged in colonization on
the largest scale.

There is not an object, a jewel, either Norse, Roman, or Greek, or a
coin mentioned, that has not been found in the present Scandinavia, and
is not seen to-day in its museums, and often in great numbers.

The descriptions of customs interwoven in the narrative are derived from
authentic records, the sagas, the evidence of graves, and of antiquities
in general. These are more fully, scientifically, and technically
described in my work published three years ago, “The Viking Age.”

The descriptions of dresses of the women have been most carefully drawn
from the sagas, and from the handles of three keys seen in “The Viking
Age,” where three women in full dress are represented. The materials and
jewels with which I have adorned them are those found in their graves.
The attire of the men is from the garments, weapons, and ornaments of
that early period, found in graves and bogs, and from descriptions in
the sagas.

                  *       *       *       *       *

“The Viking Age” had hardly been published in England, when a storm of
protests and adverse criticisms arose from many quarters of that
conservative country; for it is there that the old belief in the Angle
and Anglo-Saxon descent of the modern English-speaking peoples is most
rooted, having indeed become a religion with many Englishmen.

I fully expected opposition to the new views I propounded. Had not my
former accounts of African travels been received with incredulity? Did
not the people laugh when I told that I had seen a race of pigmies and
been in their villages? Did they not doubt my descriptions of the great
equatorial forest, of gorillas, cannibals, etc.? I was before the time.
I was too young; and these circumstances were against me. But then, as
in the case of “The Viking Age,” I found warm supporters and defenders
in England itself.

I knew that it was bold on my part to attack the Saxon idol which had
been worshipped so long among Englishmen, and to try to destroy the
faith in which they and their fathers had believed. Was the glorious
Anglo-Saxon name which the people had been shouting for so long, even in
America, to be overthrown? What, then, would become of the sturdy
qualities claimed as inherited from the so-called Anglo-Saxon race? The
qualities are there, only the name of Anglo-Saxon ought to be changed to
that of Norse.

Nothing but absolute conviction made me take this bold step. I had never
been satisfied with the assertions of historians, and could see no
evidence in their writings for the conclusions at which they had arrived
in regard to the name Anglo-Saxon and as to who were the conquerors and
settlers of Britain.

When I travelled in the Norselands, to the northern part of which I gave
the name of “The Land of the Midnight Sun,” a name which has been
generally adopted since, I became convinced that the conquerors of
Britain were Norse; for while visiting their museums, which contained
the Norse antiquities, I saw that these objects were the same as those
called in England by antiquarians, Angle, Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Roman, and
in France, Frankish. These facts set me thinking, and ultimately
produced “The Viking Age.”

                  *       *       *       *       *

As soon as I brought before the public the evidence I had collected,
many voices rose and exclaimed: “Woe to him who tries to dispel our
belief and destroy our faith!” The world is full of such examples in the
treatment of new ideas. How could I escape hostility when I proclaimed
that the antiquities called in England by archæologists and others, and
classified in the museums as Angle, Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Roman, are Norse,
consequently that the ancestors of the English-speaking people are from
the basin of the Baltic and present Scandinavia, and that it is only
there that one sees the antiquities of a most warlike and sea-faring
race of the period of the so-called _Saxon_ maritime expeditions?

Many apply the name of Anglo-Saxon to the people who settled in Britain,
without knowing why, except that they had been taught to believe it from
their school and college days, or because the majority believe so. I
maintain that the earlier England, popularly placed at the southern part
of the peninsula of Jutland, is mythical; that such antiquities pointed
out as Angle are not found there; that