The Story of Norway by Hjalmar Boyesen

Author:Hjalmar Boyesen [Boyesen, Hjalmar]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Serapis Classics
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

THE OLD MAN OF HOY, ON THE ORKNEYS.

"I'll kill thee; but unhappily I have no weapon that will avail me."

"Well, since thou seest that thou canst not kill me," rejoined the Norseman, "let me try if I can't kill thee."

And raising his sword, he struck off the yeoman's head and made off with his jerkin.

For many years after this battle, heaps of human bones lay scattered over the fields, for no one stayed to bury the dead. The landing of William the Conqueror (September 29th) called Harold Godwineson to Hastings, where the fruits of the victory at Stamford Bridge were lost.

Olaf Haroldsson, Harold Sigurdsson's son, steered his course first to the Orkneys, where his half-sister Maria, in the meanwhile, had died. There he remained during the winter and spring, and sailed the following summer, with Queen Ellisif and his sister Ingegerd, to Norway. Of all the splendid fleet with which his father had sailed away only twenty-four ships returned.

King Harold was fifty-one years old when he fell. In spite of the discontent of the chiefs, Norway took great strides, during his reign, toward a settled internal condition. The tribes were being welded into a people. In every branch of the administration the king's strong hand was felt. His wars, though in one sense disastrous, tended, on the whole, to give Norway a secure place among the nations. A long controversy which he had concerning ecclesiastical affairs with Archbishop Adalbert of Bremen ended in his triumph, and though no formal decision was made, the Norwegian Church ceased, for a while, to recognize the supremacy of the see of Bremen. If King Harold had been as noble as he was able, he would have left a greater name behind him.

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