ship. Stripped of its barbaric excrescences at stem and stern,
and of its rows of shields and ornaments, the lines of the Viking ship
of Gokstad[17] found there buried but entire, are the lines of our
herring boats of fifty years ago. Sharp and partly decked at stem and
stern only, like those boats, the Viking ship could live, head to the
waves, even in the roughest sea. It was, too, a living thing, a new
type of vessel handy to row or sail, and far in advance not only of
the early British ship and Pictish coracle[18] but also of the Roman
galley with lines like those of a canal barge, and also far in advance
of the Saxon ship of war or merchandise. The only points of difference
between the older type of herring boat and the Viking ship were the
stepping of the mast further forward and the use of the fixed rudder
in the modern vessel.

Not only did the Viking brain invent our modern ship, but it was
the Viking spirit that impelled us as a nation to use the ocean as
a highway. The Norseman had discovered America and West Africa many
centuries before Columbus or Vasco di Gama. The Norse colonised[19]
Greenland, Labrador, and possibly even Massachusetts, and it was on a
voyage to Iceland that Jean Cabot heard of America, on whose continent
he was the first modern sailor to land, and it is said that it was
through him that Columbus, after he had discovered the West Indian
Islands, first heard that North America had been proved to be a
continent by Cabot's coasting voyage along its shore from Maine to
Florida. The Vikings, too, taught us the discipline without which no
ship can live through an ocean storm. Their spirit, too, when piracy
had died out, led us into trade; for, as we have seen, the Viking was
no mere pirate, but ever a trader as well.[20] Their sea-fights live
in story, though their traders found no skald or bard, and it is thus
that we hear less of their trading or of their civic or domestic life.

This spirit of theirs, like their blood, is ever with us still. It has
gone into our race, and it keeps coming out in unexpected quarters.
Hidden under Celtic colouring and Highland dress, the Viking warrior
is there in spirit, glorying in battle, though often apparently no
more of a real "Barelegs" by race than was kilted King Magnus. The
Berserk fury and stubborn tenacity of our Highland regiments derive
their origin from the Viking as well as from the Celtic strain.[21]
Our sailors too, had they been Celts, would