Note 24 — Chapter IV · THE EARLY SHIPS OF NORTHERN EUROPE.

“This northern civilisation,” says Du Chaillu, in his account of these people (“The Viking Age,” vol. i. p. 4, London, 1889) “was peculiar to itself, having nothing in common with the Roman world, Rome knew nothing of these people till they began to frequent the coasts of her North Sea provinces, in the days of Tacitus, and after his time, the Mediterranean.... The manly civilisation the Northmen possessed was their own ... it seems to have advanced north from about the shores of the Black Sea, and ... many northern customs were like those of the ancient Greeks.”