DANISH INVASIONS .-- But Saxon Britain was also to suffer from continental incursions.

The Scandinavians--inhabitants of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark--impelled by the same spirit of piratical adventure which had actuated the Saxons, began to leave their homes for foreign conquest.
"Impatient of a bleak climate and narrow limits, they started from the banquet, grasped their arms, sounded their horn, ascended their ships, and explored every coast that promised either spoil or settlement."[3] To England they came as Danes; to France, as Northmen or Normans.

They took advantage of the Saxon wars with the British, of Saxon national feuds, and of that enervation which luxurious living had induced in the Saxon kings of the octarchy, and succeeded in occupying a large portion of the north and east of England; and they have exerted in language, in physical type, and in manners a far greater influence than has been usually conceded.
Indeed, the Danish chapter in English history has not yet been fairly written.

They were men of a singularly bold and adventurous spirit, as is evinced by their voyages to Iceland, Greenland, and thence to the Atlantic coast of North America, as early as the tenth and eleventh centuries.

It is more directly to our purpose to observe their character as it is displayed in their conquest of the Frankish kingdom of Neustria, in their facile reception and ready assimilation of the Roman language and arts which they found in Gaul, and in their forcible occupancy, under William the Conqueror, of Saxon England, in 1066.
V.THE NORMAN CONQUEST .-- The vigor of the Normans had been trained, but not weakened by their culture in Normandy.