Thorfinn's men when they landed were not gentle to their enemies. "They so fared amongst thorpes and farms, and so burned everything that not a cot stood after them. They slew, too, all the fighting men they found, but women and old men dragged themselves off to woods and wastes with weeping and wailing. Much folk, too, they made captives of war, and put them in bonds, and so drove them before them." This same Thorfinn harried Ireland, Galloway, and even North England; where, however, the English captured a band of his men and slew all but the runagates, whom they considerately returned. Thorfinn took to peace and the fear of God in his old age. The Norsemen of the Orkneys and the Südereyar, or Hebrides, and Western Isles appear to have been the boldest and most warlike of their race; whilst in the Isle of Man was a powerful Norse colony, the king of which, Hakon, is said in the Chronicles to have sailed round Britain with three thousand six hundred ships. The Manxmen are not mentioned during these early years as pirates or voyagers, though they must have been both.[1] They were soon converted to Christianity, which may have interfered with the profession of plunder.[2]
- ↑ In 973, says Oswald. 'Vestigia Manniae insulae antiquiora.' (Douglas, 1860, p. 117.) Macon, King of Man, was appointed Edgar's admiral on the British seas, and sailed on them with three hundred and sixty ships. This is not noticed in the Saxon Chronicle, unless Macon were one of the six kings who came to Edgar at Chester, and no authority is given.
- ↑ It must be remembered, however, that the term "pirate" carries no reproach as late as the sixteenth century, and that the most pious Christians reconciled robbery of the stranger with their facile consciences in the days of Elizabeth.
