viving brother, Æthelred, in 866, the northern storm
broke with far other force upon Britain. ¹ Its occu-
pation had now, indeed, become almost a necessity
for the Wikings. It was the one measure which
could draw their other conquests together. They
already occupied the Faroes and the Shetlands, the
Orkney Isles and the Hebrides. On either side of
Britain they were a settled power. The west coast
of Ireland was dotted with their towns, while east-
ward their settlements formed a broken line from
Friesland to Bordeaux. But, in the very heart of
their field of operations, Britain still lay uncon-
quered, for their descents on its shores had only
ended as yet in hard fighting and defeat. And yet
it was the winning of Britain which was needed
above all to support and widen their conquests to
the. eastward and westward of it. Had the pirates
once become masters of this central post the face
of the west must have changed. Backed' by a
Scandinavian Britain, their isolated colonies along
the Irish coast must have widened into a dominion
over all Ireland, while their settlement along the
Frankish coast might have grown into a territory
stretching over much of Gaul. In a word, Christen-
dom would have seen the rise of a power upon its
border which might have changed the fortunes of
the western world. Such political considerations,
indeed, can hardly have affected any save the

-82-