borders of Saxony and Prussia at the present day. Some of the darker Wends may well have been among the Black Vikings referred to in the Irish annals,[1] as well as in those of Wales,[2] and may have been the people who have left the Anglo-Saxon name Blacmanne-berghe, which occurs in one of the charters,[3] Blachemenestone on the Kentish coast, and Blachemanstone on the Dorset coast. As late as the time of the Domesday Survey we meet with records of people apparently named after their dark complexions. In Buckinghamshire, Blacheman, Suartinus, and others are mentioned; in Sussex, one named Blac; in Suffolk. Blakemannus and Suartingus; and others at Lincoln. The invasion of the coast of the British Isles by Vikings of a dark or black complexion rests on historical evidence which is too circumstantial to admit of doubt. In the Irish annals the Black Vikings are called Dubh-Ghenti, or Black Gentiles.[4] These Black Gentiles on some occasions fought against other plunderers of the Irish coasts known as the Fair Gentiles, who can hardly have been others than the fair Danes or Northmen. In the year 851 the Black Gentiles came to Athcliat[5]—i.e., Dublin. In 852 we are told that eight ships of the Finn-Ghenti arrived and fought against the Dubh-Ghenti for three days, and that the Dubh~Ghenti were victorious. The Black Vikings appear at this time to have had a settlement in or close to Dublin, and during the ninth century were much in evidence on the Irish coast. In 877 a great battle was fought at Lock-Cuan between them and the Fair Gentiles, in which Albann, Chief of the Black Gentiles, fell.[6] He may well have been a chieftain of the race of the Northern Sorbs of the Mecklenburg coast.
There is still another way in which men of black hair
8
