Scandinavian-Britain

86 SCANDINAVIAN BRITAINsouthern campaigns. The adoption of the mountedinfantry system, afterwards copied by the English, putthem at once into a position of great tactical advantage; just as their well-known but most difficult trickof the feigned flight enabled them to break the line ofthe bravest Saxon fyrd, fighting on the old hand-tohandprinciples. Odin, in far antiquity, as theirstories told, taught his children the " swine-fylking,"the charge in wedge-formation, such as the Highlandersused at Prestonpans ;but who was the newculture-hero who made use of many experiencesgathered from the South, and sent out the Vikingsof the ninth century to be the most efficient soldieryof their age Who ? planned the great campaign bywhich East Anglia, Deira and Mercia, were successivelyannexed ? and why did he fail to annex thekingdom of /Elfred ?The genius of Viking conquest, according to Prof. A.Bugge ( Vikingerne^ i. p. 139) was Thorgest, who fell inIreland in 843 after extending his empire over half thecountry. But a greater man may be suspected in thehalf-mythical Ivar "the Boneless," who in 857 to 862had been fighting in Ireland, and now led the greathost through all its wonderful successes, only to disappearfrom the scene at the moment before the tideturned, and the good fortune of the Saxons prevailed.It was he whom the Irish Annals called" chief kingof all Northmen in Britain and Ireland," and theEnglish chroniclers name with deepest hate, thetribute of the conquered. In the Sagas he is thewily one, " who had no bones in his body, but was