When they returned they were received with consideration and honor, or with neglect and disgrace, according as they were more or less laden with booty and spoil.

In the summer months the land kings themselves would organize and equip naval armaments for similar expeditions.

They would cruise along the coasts of the sea, to land where they found an unguarded point, and sack a town or burn a castle, seize treasures, capture men and make them slaves, kidnap women, and sometimes destroy helpless children with their spears in a manner too barbarous and horrid to be described.

On returning to their homes, they would perhaps find their own castles burned and their own dwellings roofless, from the visit of some similar horde.
Thus the seas of western Europe were covered in those days, as they are now, with fleets of shipping; though, instead of being engaged as now, in the quiet and peaceful pursuits of commerce, freighted with merchandise, manned with harmless seamen, and welcome wherever they come, they were then loaded only with ammunition and arms, and crowded with fierce and reckless robbers, the objects of universal detestation and terror.
One of the first of these sea kings who acquired sufficient individual distinction to be personally remembered in history has given a sort of immortality, by his exploits, to the very rude name of Ragnar Lodbrog, and his character was as rude as his name.
[Illustration: THE SEA KINGS] Ragnar's father was a prince of Norway.

He married, however, a Danish princess, and thus Ragnar acquired a sort of hereditary right to a Danish kingdom--the territory including various islands and promontories at the entrance of the Baltic Sea.