CHAPTER III

HAKON THE GOOD.

Eric Blood-axe, whose practical reign is counted to have begun about
A.D. 930, had by this time, or within a year or so of this time,
pretty much extinguished all his brother kings, and crushed down
recalcitrant spirits, in his violent way; but had naturally become
entirely unpopular in Norway, and filled it with silent discontent and
even rage against him. Hakon Fairhair's last son, the little
foster-child of Athelstan in England, who had been baptized and
carefully educated, was come to his fourteenth or fifteenth year at
his father's death; a very shining youth, as Athelstan saw with just
pleasure. So soon as the few preliminary preparations had been
settled, Hakon, furnished with a ship or two by Athelstan, suddenly
appeared in Norway got acknowledged by the Peasant Thing in Trondhjem
"the news of which flew over Norway, like fire through dried grass,"
says an old chronicler. So that Eric, with his Queen Gunhild, and
seven small children, had to run; no other shift for Eric. They went
to the Orkneys first of all, then to England, and he "got
Northumberland as earldom," I vaguely hear, from Athelstan. But Eric
soon died, and his queen, with her children, went back to the Orkneys
in search of refuge or help; to little purpose there or elsewhere.
From Orkney she went to Denmark, where Harald Blue-tooth took her poor
eldest boy as foster-child; but I fear did not very faithfully keep
that promise. The Danes had been robbing extensively during the late
tumults in Norway; this the Christian Hakon, now established there,
paid in kind, and the two countries were at war; so that Gunhild's
little boy was a welcome card in the hand of Blue-tooth.