Page:Readings in European History Vol 1.djvu/188

1 5 2 Readings in European History as ambassadors ; but as submissive vassals they hastened at the holy Eastertide to do homage to the emperor. Finally one year they came fifty strong. The emperor asked them whether they would be baptized. They assented, and he commanded that they be straightway sprinkled with holy water. There were not enough linen robes, so the emperor had more garments cut out and sewed up roughly like a bag or towel. One of these robes was suddenly put upon one of the oldest of the Northmen. He looked at it awhile with crit- ical eyes, and grew not a little angry. Then he said to the emperor : " I have been baptized here twenty times before, and every time I was clad in the best and whitest garments; and now you give me a sack which befits a swineherd rather than a warrior. I have given up my own garments and would be ashamed of my nakedness if I cast aside this one also, else I would leave thy robe to thee and thy Christ." The Norse In the extracts from the Annals given below there are us^the North- pl entv f sad pictures of the Northmen as pirates and man's idea cruel invaders, but to gain an idea of how they viewed of himself and his themselves, we must turn to the Norse sagas. About paopie. jjjg time that Charles the Fat was bargaining with the Northmen in France, many belonging to the same race were streaming over from Norway to Iceland. Here it was that the Norse literature sprang up the sagas t or tales, which still delight the reader in something tbe same way that Homer does. Of these sagas the finest is perhaps The Story of Burnt Njal, who lived in the time of Otto the Great. The famous tale opens as follows : 67. Opening There was a man named Mord whose surname was Fiddle; "Vale" in the Rangrivervales. He was a mighty chief, and a great taker up of suits, and so great a lawyer that no