ABSTRACT
The Franks, particularly the East Franks, emerged in the eleventh century as a formative force in shaping a new Europe, and we are tempted to invest their pre-eleventh-century history with a significance not justified by events. If we resist this temptation and raise our eyes from Francia and look to other parts of Europe, as these pages have attempted to do, we can see in the northern peninsulas vital forces which exercised significant influences not only over vast areas but also over the institutions of many peoples. The Vikings had acted out their historical roles on a large stage that stretched from Vinland to the Volga and touched the lives of peoples in war and peace. Europe had never seen their like before or since. Two and a half centuries and it was over, ended by successful overseas settlements and the emergence of states in their peninsular homelands. Their string had run out as had that of the Persians, Greeks and Romans before them and so many others after them. The dynamics of history raise a people to a place of prominence-even dominance-and those same dynamics, still uncontrolled by human agencies including totalitarian governments and liberal institutions, bring about that people’s decline. Strong states in western Europe, the reformed church, and new economic alliances provided a new shape to the Europe of the late eleventh century and after. The Viking ship had sailed its journey, and the setting northern sun was casting a long but fading sail-shadow upon lands to the west, to the south, and to the east. A new day would bring new things, but the Viking ship has left historians with problems still unresolved in its wake.
