They came from all the shores of the Northern and Baltic Seas.

In fact, they inhabited the sea rather than the land.

They were a race of bold and fierce naval adventurers, as the Anglo-Saxons themselves had been two centuries before.

Most extraordinary accounts are given of their hardihood, and of their fierce and predatory habits.

They haunted the bays along the coasts of Sweden and Norway, and the islands which encumber the entrance to the Baltic Sea.