Scandinavian-Britain

264 SCANDINAVIAN BRITAIN1904). It relates the adventures of an imaginary kingof England whose wife was carried off by Vikings toa Scottish seaport, his children to the Norse colonyof Caithness, where they were fosteredby kindly furtraders,and he himself, after long wanderings, is broughtto the service of a merchant in Galinde (Galuide) orGavaide (Galvaide), that is to say, Galloway. Thestory, like others of the period, is of British origin,and can have been composed only in Cumbria orNorthumbria towards the end of the eleventh century,and among people who, though they had a horror ofthe piracy of an age by then passing away, were inclose connexion with Norse trading colonies inScotland. The great jarlis sketched with admiration,perhaps from the famous Thorfinn the kind Caithness;traders are drawn to the life,not without hints of theirhomeliness as compared with the refinement of theSouth, and the benevolent and wealthy shipowner ofGalloway is the true ancestor of the merchant princeswho have made British commerce and philanthropyfamous. The unconscious testimony of this contemporarypicture of manners and men tells us, likethe monuments, a tale untold by the curt annals ofbloodshed 'and rapine, now no longer to be regardedas the whole history of Scandinavian Britain.