them toward* the open sea.

When the men were away fishing or trading, the women managed the farms; and Viking women were strong-minded, independent creatures, who could on occasion be as fierce and ruthless as their men. None of the Scandinavian lands was yet united. In the later eighth century the Swedes conquered their neighbours the Goths (whose name survives in Gothenburg) but there seem to have been still two separate kings in Sweden. In Denmark one king ruled in Jutland and another in the Islands, while Norway was still a collection of independent clans in their separate fiords. Where kings existed their authority was as yet uncertain, and much power lay with the nobles and the clan chiefs who were pagan priests as well as local rulers. The great mass of the people were yeoman farmers, owning their land and meeting for public business in the local Thing, jealous of their independence and ready to resist any encroachment upon it. Slaves there were too, as in Anglo-Saxon England, who had been born unfree or lost their freedom by capture, debt, or crime; but they were employed as farm-hands or household servants, and were of little account. Land was held by Odal tenure, as in England before the Church devised wills and title-deeds, and could not ordinarily be sold or given away. It passed to the sons, or to the eldest son, but if there were several sons the farm would either be broken in pieces too small for a family to live on or kept intact for the eldest so that the rest got none at all. Either way, as population increased, there were many who desperately wanted land and could not get it in their own country. Later, as the powers and demands of kings increased, many stiffnecked nobles and yeomen found another 5

reason for seeking their fortunes elsewhere, Kings snd chiefs often had several wives, and therefore many sons of noble descent but with no prospects in their own land. Hardihood, and the willingness to take great risks, were in the blood of the Viking peoples. As conditions in their own lands became more difficult, they had little to lose but their lives (about which they were not particularly concerned) and much to gain by going overseas to the richer civilised countries of Christendom, to the wealthy but un- governed trading rivers of Russia, or to the vacant islands of the North Atlantic. Nor was the hope of bettering themselves their only motive: a love of adventure, a desire to do great deeds and win a lasting reputation, and an explorers inquisitiveness also played their part. The means were to hand in the vessels with which they were already fishing and trading in the open sea. Before the Viking period they had developed the two types of ship which, except for some increase in size and improvement in hull design, they were to use throughout. These were the warlike longship and the more tubby and capacious trading knarr\ Both were open, clinker built, boats propelled by a square sail and oars, and their difference lay mainly in the build of the hull. The longship, made for speed, had less freeboard above the waterline and a narrower hull, and was not intended or used for long ocean voyages. The practice of burial in ships, under a mound, has
SHIPS