of Dublin and place-names throughout the British Isles and in Normandy bear witness to the worship of this god. At the same time, in religion as in everything else, the Vikings shewed themselves very ready to seize new ideas and, more especially, to avail themselves of any advantages which adhesion to the Christian religion might give. Scandinavian merchants settled in the various European countries were often "prime-signed, i.e. received the sign of the cross, preliminary to baptism, which raised them to the rank of catechumens and enabled them to live in trading and social intercourse with Christians, while they did not necessarily proceed to the full renunciation of their heathen faith. Even in the ninth century, when the Danes were fighting the Norsemen in Ireland, we hear how they invoked the aid of St Patrick, thinking that he must take vengeance on those who had done him such injury. When victorious they gave him large offerings, for "the Danes were a people with a certain piety, whereby they could refrain from flesh and from women for a time." As was to be expected in a time of transition from one faith to another, superstition was rife and more than once the Viking hosts fell a prey to it. When the army of Ragnarr Loðbrók was besieging Paris 845 his followers were attacked by a mysterious sickness: prayer to the heathen gods was unsuccessful, but when, on the advice of a Christian prisoner, they prayed to his God, wisely abstaining at the same time from flesh and mead, the plague was removed. The blending of the old and new is happily illustrated in the sepulchral stones of the Isle of Man and Gothland: here we have stones in the shape of a cross, or with the sign of the cross on them, decorated with scenes from Valhalla or with an inscription praying at the same time for the repose of the dead man's soul and that God may betray those who betrayed him. More than once do we hear of men who believed neither in the heathen gods nor in Christ and had faith in nought but their own strength: the nickname "the godless" is by no means unfrequent among the settlers in Iceland. Throughout the period, however, Christianity made steady advance: by the year 921 we find the Vikings sparing hospitals and churches when sacking Armagh; the great king Olaf Cuaran, who died in 981, spent his old age as a monk in Iona; at one time in the tenth century the primates of York and Canterbury were both of Scandinavian family, and in the later tenth and early eleventh centuries the Roman Church had no more faithful sons than the Normans.
Their general philosophy of life was that every man must rely on himself and his own wisdom; he must place no reliance on others, least of all upon women. The great aim in life is to attain fame and fair speech from men after death. Though their beliefs were strongly tinged with fatalism, this brought no weakening of character or gloom of outlook. "Joyous and happy must every man be until death comes upon him," is the counsel of Hávamál, and the highest ideal of the end of life
