Excerpt from The Open Court, Vol. 29: A Monthly Magazine; April, 1915 The inhabitants of the country cultivated the soil at an early date, but it was as seafarers and bold conquerors that they gained their fame. Ships Of theirs have been found in all parts Of. The northern seas; one lay buried in the sands of the Baltic, between Diippel and Alsen, and another was discovered in the Seine, not far below Paris. We here reproduce one now preserved in the University Of Christiania, a staunch. Vessel in its time, and one which could easily have held from sixty to eighty armed men. The habitable portions Of the country are the valleys which are hardly accessible except from the sea through the fiords. AS a result of this lack of connection, most Of the people Of Norway are leading a life Of isolation which has impressed itself upon their character and prevented the formation Of a definite Nor wegian language. Almost every valley has a dialect of its own. The literary language had necessarily to come by way Of the sea, and so it was but natural that at an early date, in the fourteenth cen tury, Danish became the speech of the pulpit and Of the hymns of the church. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.