Normen

"All the low German tribes were early distinguished for maritime enterprize, but the Danes and Scandinavians, who all passed by the name of Northmen, or Normen, were by far the most remarkable for bold adventure in the middle ages. […] Westwards the Feroe, Orkney, Shetland, and Western Islands were often visited, and partly peopled by the Normen; […] If we were to relate all the bold deeds which in pilgrimages, in the service of Constantinople, and in expeditions in almost every land and sea, even to Greenland and America, were achieved by the Normen, the relation would seem a romance. […] The Normen were true to one another, and virtuous men in their own eyes; […] The plundering Normen held murder, in the acquisition of their booty, no crime; […] We doubt if Christianity made the Normen more scrupulous, with regard to the property of others, than it did our Scotch and English borderers, who received absolution one day, and stole cattle the next. The Normen settled the matter with their conscience, on the terms of the following low German adage: […] which means that robbing and devastating were no shame, as they were practised by the best in the land."