Northmen or Norsemen, the name given in the Middle Ages to the sea-roving, adventure-loving inhabitants of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark; in their sea-rovings they were little better than pirates, but they had this excuse, their home was narrow and their lands barren, and it was a necessity for them to sally forth and see what they could plunder and carry away in richer lands; they were men of great daring, their early religion definable as the consecration of valour, and they were the terror of the quieter nations whose lands they invaded; at first their invasions were mere raids for plunder, but at length they were satisfied with no less than conquest and the permanent occupancy of the lands they subdued, settling some of them on the shores of England and France, and even in the S. of Italy; these invasions were common and frequent during the whole of the 9th and the early part of the 10th centuries.