From what has been said, it appears that the Danish part of England must, in William the Conqueror’s time, have had just as many old Danish popular institutions as Normandy, nay, doubtless still more. It is, therefore, no wonder that William and his Normans were highly partial to the Danish laws then in force in England. Immediately after he assumed the reins of government, he commanded that these laws should be in force throughout the kingdom, and consequently even in the purely Anglo-Saxon districts, as both his own forefathers, and those of almost all his barons, had been Northmen, who had formerly emigrated from Norway. But in an assembly held at London in the fourth year of his reign, he suffered himself to be persuaded, by the urgent entreaties of the leading men among the Anglo-Saxons, to restore the laws of Edward the Confessor in the districts in which they had before prevailed. Nevertheless, the Anglo-Saxon laws gradually gave place to the Scandinavian institutions in force in the north of England. Thus duel, under the name of “trial by battle,” came to be considered throughout England as lawful proof in judicial suits; an evident result of the bold and chivalrous spirit of the new Norman lords. This kind of proof caused, however, much disturbance in England, and at length, though tardily, grew out of use. It was not formally abolished by law till the year 1818, after a prosecutor had challenged his adversary to trial by battle; a proceeding which even the legal tribunals were obliged to acknowledge that the law, taken in its strictest sense, fully authorised him in adopting. It is, however, remarkable enough that the proof by duel, which in Scandinavia itself was abolished on the introduction of Christianity, should have maintained its ground for several centuries in England, which had long been Christianized. We might even say that down to the present times it has everywhere left perceptible traces in Europe. For what are duels but trials by battle, or sort of judgment of God? They were, however, much disseminated by chivalry, in the development of which the warlike Normans took so considerable a part. The ancientholmgangwas, as we have seen, called, both in Normandy and England, “duel.”
The institution of the jury (“Nævninger,” or “Nævn”), before mentioned as originally Scandinavian, was established throughout England by the Normans in such a manner that it has maintained its place to our times. Under the first Norman kings we find traces of a more general employment of the jury, which was previously confined to the Danish part of England, where it continued to exist after the conquest by William. When, in the following century,holmgangor trial by battle, began, in spite of the limitations it had undergone, to become too grievous in England, a law was published in 1164, that a jury of twelve knights, chosen by four knights of the district, should be substituted in its place. Thus at its first general establishment in England the jury had much the same form as it possessed in earlier times in the Danish part of the kingdom. The provision that the jury should be composed of knights soon fell to the ground. Subsequently, after the ordeal by red-hot iron, or the judgment of God, had been abolished (in the year 1219), it was appointed, in the reign of Henry the Third, that the accused, who might previously have liberated himself by that ordeal, should submit his case to the decision of twelveNævninger, or jurymen. In this manner an influence was secured to the jury in England, which has since been continually increasing; trial by jury having become, as it were, the central point of the judicial system in that country. The English themselves, with just reason, regard the jury as a wise and happy institution, which has much contributed to develope the excellence of the national character, and to maintain the free constitution of their country. What is more, foreigners pass the same judgment on it; and it especially deserves to be remembered, that at the present moment, after the introduction of popular freedom into the Scandinavian North, its people are seeking to re-establish the nativeNævn, or jury, which formerly crossed the seas with the conquerors of England and Normandy, and which has victoriously stood the trial of centuries in those countries.
We have already seen it proved, from contemporary laws, that the germ of at least one of England’s freest and most important institutions was to be found, as early as the ninth century, among the numerous Danes and Norwegians settled in that country, to whose successors and kinsmen may be justly ascribed the honour of further developing the institution of trial by jury. In like manner contemporary chronicles bear witness that these Danish and Norwegian settlements in many ways essentially contributed to promote political liberty and the spirit of freedom. According to that remarkable document, Domesday-Book, there was, about twenty years after the Norman conquest, a greater number of independent landed proprietors, if not, in the strictest sense of the word, freeholders, in the districts occupied by the Danes, and under the Danelag, than in the other, or Anglo-Saxon, part of England. The smaller Anglo-Saxon agriculturists were frequently serfs, though, for the most part, perhaps, leaseholders, or holding other subordinate situations; whilst the Danish settlers, being conquerors, were mostly freemen, and, in general, proprietors of the soil. Domesday-Book mentions, under the name of “Sochmanni,” a numerous class of landowners, or peasants, in the Danish districts north-east of Watlinga-Stræt, who, to the south of that line, and even then only just upon the borders of it, are rarely to be found, (viz., in Buckinghamshire, 19, and in Surrey, 9). It also mentions a great number of freemen in those districts, or, as they are called in Latin, “liberi homines.” NeitherSochmanninorliberi hominesseem, however, to have been freeholders, in the present sense of that term. They certainly stood in a sort of feudal relation to a superior lord; but in such a manner that the “Sochmanni” may be best compared with our present hereditary lessees. Their farms passed by inheritance to their sons, they paying certain rents, and performing certain feudal duties; but the feudal lord had no power to dispose of the property as he pleased.
The counties occupied by the Danes and Norwegians, viz., Northumberland, Durham, Westmoreland, Cumberland, and Lancashire, are not mentioned in Domesday-Book. In the other fifteen counties to the north and east of Watlinga-Stræt, the “Sochmanni” and “liberi homines” are summed up as follows (see Turner’s “History of the Anglo-Saxons”):—
The so-called “freemen” (liberi homines), who, it may be assumed, most resembled our freeholders, seem from this to have been principally confined to Essex (306) and the ancient East Anglia, or Norfolk and Suffolk (together, 12,993). “Sochmanni” were also very numerous in these three counties (together, 6878); yet they appear in the greatest numbers in the old Danish Lincolnshire, which alone had 11,322. In the other districts round the Danish five burghs, they were also pretty numerous: in Leicestershire, 1716; and in Nottinghamshire, 1565. The number of these independent landowners was consequently greatest in the districts earliest occupied by the Danes, where they naturally sprung up from the Danish chiefs’ parcelling out the soil to their victorious warriors. That the large county of York had not more than about 440Sochmannican hardly be used by way of counter-proof; partly because Yorkshire had been terribly exhausted in the wars of William the Conqueror, which took place before Domesday-Book was compiled; and partly because it is clear that Yorkshire is not so fully described in that document as the more southern counties. Lastly, it is remarkable that extremely few serfs are mentioned in the districts north-east of Watlinga-Stræt, in comparison of the many that are recorded in the south and south-west of England.
English authors admit that the Danish settlers in England bestowed a great benefit on the country, in a political point of view, by the introduction of a numerous class of independent peasantry, who formed a striking contrast to the oppressed Anglo-Saxon commonalty. (“The Danes seem to have planted in the colonies they occupied a numerous race of freemen, and their counties seem to have been well peopled.”—Turner.) But unfortunately the number of Danish-Norwegian freeholders and freemen at that time in England cannot now be given more closely than by the above sum of 36,729, which is evidently too low, and in every respect highly inaccurate.
It is, however, large enough to strengthen and throw light upon the statements of the chronicles, that the descendants of the Danes and Norwegians in the country to the north-east of Watlinga-Stræt, especially distinguished themselves by a lively feeling of freedom and independence. From the time of their very first settlement, they desperately resisted every chief who attempted to deprive them of their rights as free and independent men. It was, indeed, but reasonable that they should, with persevering boldness, defend in a foreign land that freedom for the sake of which they had abandoned their Scandinavian homes. Their severest and most perilous struggle for liberty naturally took place after the destruction of the Danish power under Hardicanute (1042): although the extensive Danish tract north of the Humber still retained its Danish jarl, Siward.
But on Siward’s death (1055), his son, Valthjof (Waltheof), was too young to govern that important district, which was therefore made over to Toste Godvinsön, who afterwards fell at Stamford Bridge. Toste ruled with despotic power, set aside the laws of Canute the Great, and levied taxes which were contrary to the people’s ancient rights. The Northumbrians therefore deposed him at aThing, and expelled him in 1064. When Toste’s brother, Harald, afterwards endeavoured to effect a reconciliation, on the condition that Toste should be reinstated in the earldom, the Northumbrians unanimously rejected the proposal. “We were born and bred up in freedom,” they exclaimed; “a proud and ambitious chief we will not endure, for we have learnt from our fathers either to live like freemen or to die.”
When, two years afterwards, William began to conquer England, and to parcel it out among his warriors, it was chiefly the inhabitants of the old Danish districts who opposed him with all the energy of despair. The successors of the Danes and Norwegians, under ordinary circumstances, would have joined their kinsmen the Normans; especially as they gave out that one of their objects in coming to England was to avenge their Danish and Norwegian relatives, secretly massacred by Ethelred. But the Normans aimed at nothing less than the abolition of the free tenure of estates, and the complete establishment of a feudal constitution; a mode of proceeding which, by depriving the previously independent man of his right to house and land, and transferring it to powerful nobles, shook the very foundation of freedom. The descendants of the Danes turned from them, therefore, with disgust, and now no longer hesitated to enter into an alliance with the equally oppressed Anglo-Saxons; for the common danger made both races forget their ancient animosities. Many of the Anglo-Saxon chiefs and warriors who had been defeated by William in the west and south-west of England, fled towards the north, and prepared, in conjunction with the inhabitants of that district, to venture everything in self-defence.
It was not till the year 1068 that the Normans succeeded, after a severe contest, in taking Oxford, Warwick, and the old Danish burghs Leicester, Derby, Nottingham, Lincoln, and York. In these places, but especially in Lincoln and York, the Normans were obliged to build strong fortifications, for fear of the people of Scandinavian descent, who abounded both in the towns and in the adjacent rural districts. But what the Normans chiefly apprehended was, attacks from the Danes who, there was good reason to suppose, might come over with their fleets to the assistance of their countrymen in the north of England.
Meantime, whilst the remains of the united Anglo-Saxon and Danish-Norwegian armies had withdrawn to the mountains of Northumberland, where they often surprised and killed whole detachments of Norman troops, numerous fugitives and messengers repaired to King Svend in Denmark, to implore him, in the name of his English friends, and in that of freedom, to assist them against William the Conqueror. Svend sent his brother Asbjörn, and his sons Harald and Canute, over with a fleet, who, after a vain attempt to land at Sandwich, entered the Humber, in the year 1069. The Northumbrians, and the rest of the aggrieved inhabitants, both Northmen and Anglo-Saxons, flocked gladly together under the Danish banner. Edgar, who had been chosen king by the Anglo-Saxons, Valthjof (Waltheof), a son of the old Northumbrian jarl Siward, and many other fugitives, joined the Danish host. York was taken, the Normans put to flight, and their fortifications levelled with the ground. In these encounters Waltheof gained great honour for courage and bravery.
But the joy of victory was only of short duration. William, who had sworn in his anger to lay all Northumberland waste, knew how to avert by persuasion, cunning, and bribery, the danger that threatened him from Denmark. The Danish fleet went home in the spring; and William retook York, and extended his dominion in Northumberland; where his progress was marked by slaughter, incendiarism, and rapine. The unfortunate inhabitants fled to the forests and morasses; their last place of refuge was the marshes near the Wash. Moved by the cries of complaint which continually reached him from England, the Danish king Svend again sent a number of vessels, which appeared in the Humber in the year 1074. But these were not able to render any effectual assistance. Waltheof, whom William, in order to conciliate the Northumbrians, had appointed Jarl in his father’s earldom, fell under the axe of the executioner on suspicion of being concerned in this naval expedition; and fresh devastations promoted William’s dominion over Northumberland, which was so terribly harassed that large districts were left without houses or human inhabitants.
The forests of the north of England now became the last refuge of numberless outlaws, who would not submit to the ferocious conqueror, preferring a free and merry life in the green woods; where they united together, and defied William’s powerful armies and severe laws. They had secret connections among the people, who saw in them the last defenders of their ancient freedom. Among the leaders of these outlaws, who, long after William’s time, continued to wander about in the English forests, but who were most numerous in the north of England, we meet with Scandinavian names, such as Sweyn, and Sihtrik; and in the legends and songs which have preserved the remembrance of them, are found Scandinavian traits of character, such as the story of William of Cloudesley, who shot the apple from his son’s head. It is the identical legend related in our old Sagas of the Scandinavian hero, Palnatoke.
The last gleam of any well-founded hope of deliverance shone upon the successors of the Anglo-Saxons and Danish-Norwegians in the north of England, when, in the year 1085, the Danish king Canute, afterwards called the Saint, assembled a powerful fleet in the Liimfjord, in order to release England from the Conqueror’s yoke, and if possible to seat himself on the throne. Sixty Norwegian vessels had joined Canute’s fleet. William, on his side, made great preparations in order to resist the expected attack. Danegelt was again collected for the defence of the kingdom against the Danes. The inhabitants of Scandinavian descent in the north of England were compelled to alter their dress, and to cut off their long beards, that the Danes might not thereby recognise their kinsmen. The coasts were occupied by soldiers, who erected strong defences; whilst William at the same time endeavoured, by means of secret envoys and bribery, to sow disunion in the Danish fleet. Canute’s progress was impeded by unfortunate circumstances; the fleet separated, and a mutiny broke out, which ended in the murder of Canute at Odensee, in the year 1086. No further attempt was made by Denmark to conquer England; for the expedition said to have been prepared by King Erik Lam in the year 1138 was, at all events, a very poor and unsuccessful one. Thus the Northmen in England, being no longer able to obtain support from Denmark or Norway, were forced to submit to the Norman dominion.
Nevertheless, in spite of the terrible devastations by which William coerced the north of England, “the half-Saxon half-Danish population of these districts” (says the French historian, Thierry) “long continued to preserve their old feeling of independence and their ancient indomitable pride. The Norman kings who succeeded the Conqueror dwelt with perfect safety in the southern districts, but did not venture north of the Humber without some fear; and a chronicler, who lived at the close of the twelfth century, assures us that they never visited that part of the kingdom without being accompanied by a strong army.”
Although no very great number of Northmen, or men of Scandinavian extraction, could have remained in Normandy after William’s conquest of England, and after the Norman expeditions into Italy, yet even these few, as we have before stated, were subsequently able to impart to the popular spirit in Normandy a peculiar Scandinavian colouring. The Norman knights distinguished themselves from the effeminate, dreaming, and excitable knights of the south of France, not only by a greater inclination for adventures and a bolder martial spirit, but also by a genuine Scandinavian sedateness and an all-subduing perseverance. The old Scandinavian feeling of freedom revealed itself, even in the middle ages, in the cities of Normandy, which were long the seats of a democratic spirit and of republican movements. According to William the Conqueror’s own statement, the ancient Normans, and, above all, their Scandinavian forefathers, were, in a high degree, quarrelsome and litigious; and, even to this day, Normandy is remarkable, above all other provinces of France, for the great number of law-suits which annually take place in it. Frenchmen themselves have remarked that their most skilful and persevering seamen are to be found among the inhabitants of Dieppe, and that the most celebrated admirals of France have been natives of Normandy.
If such was the influence of the Normans in France, were not the Danes and Norwegians, who had been settled for centuries in England, in a still better position to fix a lasting stamp upon the life and character of the people; more particularly as the Danish-Norwegian elements continued, long after the Norman conquest, to exercise a very considerable influence in England? We may truly assert that the Scandinavian spirit is still clearly to be discerned, not merely in separate districts, but throughout England. The love of the English for bold adventures, especially at sea, their unshaken calmness in the greatest dangers, their apparent coolness during the most violent emotions, and their proud feeling of freedom, are surely not to be ascribed exclusively to the Normans. These qualities must, in a great degree, be attributed to the English, as the descendants of those Danish and Norwegian warriors who sought dangers on unknown seas; who looked death steadily in the face, come in whatever shape it might; who gloried in the feeling that their countenances should not betray the passions which fermented in their breasts; and who prized liberty far more than life.
It deserves at least to be mentioned, as affording a remarkable analogy to Normandy, that England’s most celebrated and successful admiral, Nelson, bore a genuine Scandinavian name (Nielsen, with the characteristic Scandinavian termination ofson, orsön). He was, besides, a native of one of the districts early colonized by the Danes, having been born in the town of Burnham-thorpe, in Norfolk, or East Anglia. In fact, the perceptible difference of character still actually found between the people in old Saxon South England and in the more northern old Danish districts, is very remarkable. The southern Englishman is softer and more compliant. The northern Englishman is of a firmness of character, bordering on the hard and severe, and possesses an unusually strong feeling of freedom. The Yorkshireman is well known in England as a hasty and touchy, but determined and independent, character. Great political movements have therefore not only found reception and encouragement among the population of the north of England; but this population, from the interest it takes in the progress of public affairs, and from its love of freedom, has played a leading part in the great internal revolutions which mark the recent political history of England. Public men regard it as a great honour to represent the northern districts of England in Parliament (for instance, the West Riding of Yorkshire), merely from the intelligent political character of the voters; and it is certainly through the adherence of the lovers of freedom in the north, that Cobden has been able to struggle so successfully for the promotion of free trade, for financial reform, and for similar liberal measures. That this spirit of liberty in the north of England is chiefly derived from the old Scandinavian colonists is by no means merely the partial assertion of a Dane. The celebrated English writer, Sir E. Bulwer Lytton, who, in his “Harold,” has successfully begun to awaken the attention of his countrymen to a juster view of the Danish conquest, says in a note appended to that work: “It might be easy to show, were this the place, that though the Anglo-Saxons never lost their love of liberty, yet that the victories which gradually regained liberty from the gripe of the Anglo-Norman kings were achieved by the Anglo-Norman aristocracy. And even to this day, the few rare descendants of that race (whatever their political faction) will generally exhibit that impatience of despotic influence, and that disdain of corruption, which characterize the homely bonders of Norway, in whom we may still recognise the sturdy likeness of our fathers; while it is also remarkable that the modern inhabitants of those portions of the kingdom originally peopled by the Danes, are, irrespectively of mere party divisions, noted for their intolerance of all oppression, and their resolute independence of character; to wit, Yorkshire, Norfolk, Cumberland, and large districts in the Scottish lowlands.”
It would be impossible to deny that the Danes and Norwegians settled in England before the arrival of the Normans not only essentially contributed to the preservation of popular liberty—which, through the weakness and effeminacy of the Anglo-Saxons, was threatened with destruction—but that they also laid the foundation of its further development, and powerfully contributed to its complete establishment. We need, therefore, be no longer surprised that memorials of the Danes are mixed up with England’s freest and most liberal institutions; and that to the present day, for instance, the place whence the candidates for a seat in Parliament address the electors, bears, throughout England, the pure Danish name “husting.”
General View.—Anglo-Saxon and Danish-Norman England.—Sympathiesfor Denmark.—The Dane in England.
General View.—Anglo-Saxon and Danish-Norman England.—Sympathiesfor Denmark.—The Dane in England.
General View.—Anglo-Saxon and Danish-Norman England.—Sympathies
for Denmark.—The Dane in England.
The various kinds of Danish and Danish-Norwegian memorials which I have alluded to, such as names of places, coins, and peculiarities of language (not to mention contemporary letters-patent and laws), afford so many incontrovertible proofs that the Danish influence in England was neither of short duration, nor, on the whole, of a transient nature. Future and more successful investigations and comparisons, more particularly in England itself, will undoubtedly much extend the circle of known Danish memorials existing there. So much, however, is already placed beyond all doubt, that in no country out of the present homes of the Scandinavian race have its colonists left such various, such considerable, and such clear traces of their existence, as the Danes, especially, have left in England. The Scandinavian spirit has not ruled with so much power in any other, still less in any greater, European kingdom; nor been able to retain so powerful a dominion for such a length of time.
The Danes, and their successors the Normans, did not content themselves with the temporary overthrow of the Anglo-Saxon dominion; they annihilated it for ever. In this the Danes may be said to have been more active than the Normans. They not only gradually settled themselves under their own laws and their own chiefs, in half of England, but spread themselves over the whole of it. In the time of Alfred the Great, they once held all England in subjection; and at an early period obtained places amongst the highest ecclesiastical and secular aristocracy of the country. In the tenth century, the Anglo-Saxon king Edgar favoured the Danes so much, that during his reign the Danish power had an opportunity to consolidate and extend itself. Even the Anglo-Saxon royal family became mixed with Danish blood. Among the Anglo-Saxons, both high and low, weakness and proneness to vice went on continually increasing; whilst the Danish dominion, prepared by two centuries of independent Viking expeditions, and by the subsequent settlements of the Northmen, established itself completely, as soon as the sea kings and wandering Vikings were succeeded by Danish monarchs with considerable fleets at their command.
All England yielded to the conqueror Canute, and under his wise, powerful, and just administration, enjoyed that tranquillity and happiness of which it had long felt the want. The Anglo-Saxons and Danes now became more amalgamated. But Canute’s sons wanted their father’s ability and strength of purpose. The old dissensions and quarrels broke out afresh; whilst violent internal disturbances in the newly Christianized Scandinavian North, where the Viking spirit became extinguished, deprived the Danes in England of the succour necessary in their contests with the natives. The Danish power in England fell, but left the population completely mixed and saturated with Danish elements. The Anglo-Saxon royal race, as it was called, was now half Danish. The higher clergy and nobility were connected by the closest ties of relationship with the Danes and their chiefs, in whose hands several of the most important fiefs remained. The Danes had acquired considerable influence in many of the largest cities; and in about half of England the majority of the population was of Danish extraction, and possessed Danish laws and other Danish characteristics. The Danes who, naturally enough, could not forget that they had been absolute masters in that conquered land, obeyed unwillingly a king of another race, though they had not the power to place one of their own race upon the throne. The unmixed Saxon population, on the other hand, could not endure that the royal sceptre should continue to be borne, in the once independent country of their forefathers, by foreign conquerors from Denmark, whose power, besides, seemed at that time on the wane. Inward dissensions increased; the kings were too feeble to maintain efficiently their difficult position; and the power falling more and more out of the hands of the degenerate Anglo-Saxons, passed over to the stronger Danes and their Norman kinsmen.
With an unmixed population, England would have been able to maintain herself united and powerful in the hour of danger, and when threatened by foreign conquerors. But split and divided as she now was among different races contending for the mastery, real unanimity was impossible; and, in case of a powerful attack from without, dissolution was inevitable. Through the Danish expeditions, the Danish colonizations, and finally through the fall of the Danish supremacy, it became practicable for William of Normandy to conquer England with an army of only 60,000 men. Had not those events prepared the way, it would be inconceivable that with such a force a foreign conqueror should have been able to subdue a country so extensive, so well peopled, and so favoured by nature; still less that he should have succeeded in retaining such a conquest for any length of time. William won the battle of Hastings, which decided the fate of England, only because Harald Godvinsön’s Anglo-Saxon army entered the field weakened and exhausted by the sanguinary battle of Stamford Bridge. This was fought against the Norwegian king, Harald Haardraade, and the discontented Scandinavians in the north of England, who wanted to re-establish a king of their own race on the English throne.
The Danish-Norwegian settlements, and the Danish dominion in England, by subduing for a time the political power of the Anglo-Saxons, had not only prepared the way for the first victory of the Normans, but also for the future progress and establishment of the Norman power in England, and especially for the ultimate triumph of the Norman popular spirit over the remains of the ancient Saxon nationality. The Danes, by expelling the Anglo-Saxons from the northern and eastern parts of England, as well as by mixing with them in the south, had by degrees undermined their national independence and their popular characteristics, and had thus prepared an entrance for the Scandinavian spirit, which was so nearly allied to the Norman, into a great, if not the greater, portion of the English population. The bold and chivalrous spirit of the Norman aristocracy, their love of daring adventures, and their lofty feeling of freedom, completely agreed with the characteristics of the Scandinavians settled in England at an earlier period. The Normans found among the Scandinavian population of England, and particularly the Danish portion of it, several of those free institutions already in full force which they themselves, with much advantage to liberty, afterwards extended to the whole country.
Thus the conquest of England by Danish Normans, undoubtedly prepared, or, more properly speaking, was the indispensable and necessary foundation of the subsequent French-Norman conquest; and it may therefore be justly called the first act of that great historical drama, “The Norman Conquest,” of which William of Normandy’s conquest is only the concluding act.
But many will undoubtedly ask, was the Norman conquest, on the whole, beneficial to England? Would it not have been better had the Anglo-Saxon nationality been permitted to develope itself, instead of being arrested by such violent devastations and by such bloodshed as the Danish-Norman expeditions occasioned? And is it not a proof of the nobleness of the Anglo-Saxon nationality, that it has since prevailed so preponderantly in England?
On this point let us hear a learned and impartial Englishman. The latest and most celebrated Anglo-Saxon historian, Mr. Kemble, says, in his preface to the before-mentioned Collection of Anglo-Saxon Diplomas:—“With the close of the fourth volume of this work we arrive at the reign of Harald, and the Norman conquest of England; an event which our contemporary forefathers could only regard as deplorable, but which we must look back upon with gratitude and pride, as the remote origin of our own peculiar character and power. It is hardly possible to compare the signatures to the charters contained respectively in this and in the previous volumes, without seeing how widely a foreign element had become predominant. The Scandinavians of Ingwar, Guðorm, Swegen, and Cnut, successively prepared the way for the descendants of other Scandinavians under William; and the Saxon national character, like the national dynasty, was too weak to offer a successful resistance. Defeated, yet still holding a portion of its domain with unabated perseverance, yielding somewhat in one place, to break out with unshaken obstinacy at another, it accommodated itself partially to the peculiar habits of each successive invader; till, after the closing scene of the great drama commenced at Hastings, it ceased to exist as a national character, and the beaten, ruined, and demoralized Anglo-Saxon, found himself launched in a new career of honour, and rising into all the might and dignity of an Englishman. Let us reflect that defeats upon the Thames and Avon were probably necessary preliminaries to victories upon the Sutlej.”
The weakness and degeneracy of the Anglo-Saxon national character contained the seeds of its decay. It has long since been agreed that, in an historical view, we ought not to complain that the degenerate, though highly-civilized, Romans in Britain were compelled to make way for the rude Anglo-Saxons, since the latter brought with them the germ of a new and higher development. In like manner we can hardly regret that the degenerate, but to a certain degree civilized, Anglo-Saxons, were in turn expelled by the more powerful, but ruder Danes; since these also were to prepare, and lay the foundation of a new and more flourishing state of society. Under the reign of Ethelred the Second, the supremacy of the Anglo-Saxons had already passed away. As a people, they sank entirely, and left only a part of their civilization and of their institutions to their successors in dominion, the Danes and Normans. The transition took place amidst the same shocks and the same bloodshed which still mark every important and radical revolution in the history of nations. The Danish-Norman, or perhaps more properly, the Scandinavian national character, usurped the place of the Anglo-Saxon. It was certainly built upon the foundation laid by the Anglo-Saxons, but it must be observed that it has made greater progress in all respects. To it especially is owing the development in England of a maritime skill before unknown, of a bold and manly spirit of enterprise, and of a political liberty, which, by preserving a balance between the freedom of the nobles and of the rest of the people, has long ensured to England a powerful and comparatively peaceful and fortunate existence.
The Englishman is justly proud of his native land, of its internal freedom, and external greatness. But when he extols his country in respect only of its being “Anglo-Saxon,” or praises the merits of the Anglo-Saxons and Norman-French, whilst he unconditionally condemns the Danish expeditions and settlements, as having been merely devastating and destructive, he commits both an historical error and an evident injustice. The Anglo-Saxons performed their share in the civilization of England, and the Norman-French did still more; but it ought not to be forgotten—and least of all by Englishmen, who are so nearly related to the Danes—that the latter also very essentially contributed to win freedom and greatness for England, and that this freedom, and this greatness, are in no slight degree sealed with Danish blood. From at least the Danish-Normanic conquest (about the year 1000), the Danish-Normanic, or Scandinavian, national character has been the prevailing and leading one in England’s history, and so it certainly continues to be at the present day.
A perceptible and very remarkable evidence of this is the sympathy which the English people in general feel for the North, the ancient home of their fathers, and particularly for Denmark. The Englishman himself will generally aver, with a sort of pride, that he derives his descent from the North. A Dane travelling in England will everywhere find an unusually cordial reception. He will in general be regarded more as a countryman than as a foreigner, merely because he is a Dane. He will discover that the English, instead of having forgotten their kinsmen beyond the sea, with whom they were formerly united, feel themselves attracted to them by the ties of blood and friendship. He will continually hear complaints of the deplorable attitude which the policy of England assumed with regard to Denmark at the commencement of the present century; and he will adopt the conviction that in this mistaken policy, the people themselves, at least, were not to blame. He will at times be induced to forget that he is at a distance from his native land and from his nearest relatives; for the highly-striking agreement between the character of the English and that of their Scandinavian kinsmen causes a Dane to imagine that he is still among his own friends, in the home which he has long since left. It was certainly also something more than mere accident that, during the last war in Denmark, the Danish cause nowhere, out of the North itself, awakened such general sympathy among the people, nor found so many bold champions, both in speeches and publications, as in England. May we not in these facts trace the effects of near relationship, and perceive the ties of blood?
It should not pass altogether unnoticed that the sympathies of the English for Denmark, and their fraternal feeling towards the Danish people, have increased in proportion as they have been obliged to acknowledge that the Danes of modern times still know how to defend their independence, liberty, and honour, with the bravery inherited from their forefathers. Not to speak of the last contest, so glorious for Denmark, it is particularly the battle in Copenhagen Roads, the 2nd of April, 1801, which has maintained in England the ancient fame of Danish valour. The English regard this action not only as one of Nelson’s greatest triumphs, but as one of their most glorious naval battles, particularly on account of the sturdy resistance which they encountered. On Nelson’s monument in Westminster Abbey, on which his most glorious battles are recorded, that of Copenhagen is named first. Nelson himself describes the action as the bloodiest and most desperate he had ever beheld. That he is correct in this respect, and that he has not extolled the bravery of our nation merely to enhance his own, we Danes, at least, cannot doubt, since we cannot even admit that the battle must be unconditionally regarded as lost by us.
For the rest, it is remarkable how frequently the English confound the battle in Copenhagen Roads in 1801 with the carrying off of our fleet in 1807, and place these two entirely distinct events under one and the same head. The English historians have endeavoured gradually to conceal the dishonour attaching to the robbery of our fleet in 1807; and this has even been carried to such an extent, that the rising generation but too often reckons that ignominious act amongst Nelson’s triumphs. They imagine that the surrender of our fleet was the result of the battle in the Roads; and yet Nelson had fallen two years before, at the battle of Trafalgar, in 1805. Fortunately for his honour, he was thus spared from partaking in the robbery of the fleet of a nearly-related people, with whom England was at peace.
But this is not the only error which the Dane must correct when he hears in England the name of Nelson extolled at the expense of Denmark and of historical truth. Yet he will find it difficult to refute another similar mistake, namely, a firm belief in Nelson’s “complete victory” in the battle of 1801. It is just as unshaken an article of faith among the British people that Nelson then gained a brilliant victory, as it is an acknowledged certainty, founded on fact, that at all events the battle was neither won by the English nor lost by the Danes. Nay it is certain that almost the whole of Nelson’s fleet would have been destroyed, or taken, if the Crown Prince of Denmark—for fear of engaging in a lengthened war with England, and from other purely political reasons, as well as, it must also be observed, at Nelson’s own request—had not put a stop to the battle. Curiously enough, in two of the finest poems which the English and Danish people can produce, Campbell’s “Battle of the Baltic,” and Hertz’s “Slaget paa Rheden,” the combat is represented in each as honourable to the respective nations.
Not long since, a Dane in England was led into a warm argument respecting the disputed result of this battle; when the master of the house suddenly recollected that an old invalid, who looked after the boats on the canals in the garden, had served under Nelson. He called out to him that “here was a Dane, and that he had certainly seen that sort of folks before.” “Yes, master,” answered the honest tar, “but on that day the Danes made it much hotter than we liked.”
This terminated the dispute. The time, however, in the order of Nature, cannot be far distant when the Dane in England may look in vain for such support from men who were present at the battle. He must then be contented to state his opinion, without the least hope of its carrying any weight; though he can, at all events, console himself with the reflection that, when the conversation turns on the mutual relations between England and Denmark, the latter may point to conquests of a very different, as well as far more important and altogether undisputed kind.
In the long series of brilliant victories, won not only by the Danish sword, but by the Danish national character in England, and which, by the conquest of that country, essentially contributed to found there a greatness and a power before unknown, the Danish people possess memorials so proud and brilliant, that they may be reckoned among the most beautiful ornaments in that glorious wreath which from time immemorial encircles the Danish name. We may safely leave them by the side of the best and most imposing memorials of most other nations.