Europe: A History by Norman Davies Read Free Book Online

Mediterranean and the Plain, had important consequences. It provided the most effective setting for the fusion of the ancient civilization of the south with the ‘barbarian’ cultures of the north. For the Romans it offered, as Cisalpine Gaul, the first major province beyond Italy. For the Franks, the first of the barbarians to establish a major empire of their own, it offered the promise of the sun, and of high culture. They established a foothold in AD 537, a century after the fall of Roman power, and never let go. The resultant Kingdom of France, partly northern, partly Mediterranean, developed the most influential and the most universal culture of the Continent.
    The Danube Basin, like the Midi, links the Plain with the Mediterranean; but in this case the link lies west-east. The Danube rises in the Black Forest, crossesthe mountain line in the Bavarian Gap at Passau, and flows east for 1,500 miles to the Black Sea. For peoples approaching from the east it offered the simplest route to the interior; for the peoples of the Plain, the most tempting itinerary to the southern seas. For most of its length, it constituted the principal frontier line of the Roman Empire and hence of ‘civilization’. In modern times, its catchment area supplied the territorial base for the great multinational empire of the Habsburgs, and the scene for the principal confrontation in Europe between Christianity and Islam, [DANUVIUS]
    FAROE
    O F all Europe’s many islands, none can match the lonely grandeur of the Faroes, whose high black basalt cliffs rise from the stormy North Atlantic midway between Iceland, Norway, and Scotland. Seventeen inhabited islands, centred on Stremoy and the principal harbour of Tórshavn, support a modern population of 45,464 (1984), mainly from fishing. Descended from Norsemen who settled in the eighth century, the Faroese answered to the Gulating , the assembly of western Norway, and to their own local Loegting . [DING] Their language is a dialect of Norwegian; but they have their own sagas, their own poets and artists, their own culture. Yet from 1814, when Norway was annexed to Denmark, ‘Europe’s smallest democracy’ was subjected to a Danish governor and to Danish interests.
    As a result, the Faroese national movement came to be directed against Denmark, ‘the one Scandinavian country with which they have least in common’. 1 In this the Faroese followed in the steps of Iceland, aiming above all to preserve their identity. The big moment came in June 1940, when, with Copenhagen under Nazi occupation, a British warship ordered a Torshavn skipper to hoist the Faroese flag in place of the Danish one. The referendum of 1946, which opted for unlimited sovereignty, preceded the compromise settlement of 1 April 1948. Faroe accepted home rule within the Danish realm. In 1970 it was granted independent membership of the Nordic Council. The Norôurlandahusiô or ‘Nordic House’ in Tórshavn was built with Swedish wood, Norwegian slate, Danish glass, and Icelandic roofing, and was equipped with Finnish furniture.
    Of all the bridgelands, however, none is more vital than that through which the Volga flows. By modern convention, the Continental divide is taken to lie on the line of the Ural Mountains and the Ural River. To the west of the Ural, in the Volga Basin, one is in Europe; to the east of the Ural, in Siberia or Kazakhstan, one is in Asia. On the banks of the Volga, therefore, at Saratov or Tsaritsyn, one stands truly at the gate. For the Volga marks the first European station on the highroad of the steppe; and it fills the corridor which joins the Baltic with theCaspian. Until the seventeenth century the Volga also happened to coincide with the limit of Christian settlement, and hence with an important cultural boundary. It is Europe’s largest river, and a worthy guardian of the Peninsula which stretches ‘from the Atlantic to the Urals’.
    DANUVIUS
    I N ancient times, the River Danube represented