The Vikings of the Mediterranean and the Vikings of the North

Extract

Properly speaking, these are only a few thoughts arising from this wonderful voyage into history and life I am anxious to put before you. Perhaps more effectively than it would have been in a more ordinary way, we have been faced on this journey by this boat with one great and important fact about the history of the Greeks: the most intimate and closest possible connection of Greek civilisation with the Greek Sea, the Mediterranean in the widest sense of the word. First and last it is the boat, the sailing-boat, that is the very foundation of all the culture in Greece. In these last few days we have seen all the islands rearing themselves from the sea, creating large isolated unities, independent geographical territories. Every one of them, where populated, simply postulates the boat as a means of intercourse. The boat it is that has been linking them together—which created a Greece in ancient times as well as in modern. And one thing more: most of the islands have difficult landing-places. There are no skerries, no small islands or islets which could shelter the coast. From this also follows the necessity of shaping strong, sea-going boats, as the ocean itself creates hard conditions.