presented a chosen specimen, cloak, doublet, or whatever it was, to
Harald; who wore it with acceptance in public, and rapidly brought
disposal of the Icelander's stock, and the surname of _Greyfell_ to
himself. His under-kings and he were certainly not popular, though I
almost think Greyfell himself, in absence of his mother and the
under-kings, might have been so. But here they all were, and had
wrought great trouble in Norway. "Too many of them," said everybody;
"too many of these courts and court people, eating up any substance
that there is." For the seasons withal, two or three of them in
succession, were bad for grass, much more for grain; no _herring_ came
either; very cleanness of teeth was like to come in Eyvind
Skaldaspillir's opinion. This scarcity became at last their share of
the great Famine Of A.D. 975, which desolated Western Europe (see the
poem in the Saxon Chronicle). And all this by Eyvind Skaldaspillir,
and the heathen Norse in general, was ascribed to anger of the heathen
gods. Discontent in Norway, and especially in Eyvind Skaldaspillir,
seems to have been very great.

Whereupon exile Hakon, Jarl Sigurd's son, bestirs himself in Denmark,
backed by old King Blue-tooth, and begins invading and encroaching in
a miscellaneous way; especially intriguing and contriving plots all
round him. An unfathomably cunning kind of fellow, as well as an
audacious and strong-handed! Intriguing in Trondhjem, where he gets
the under-king, Greyfell's brother, fallen upon and murdered;
intriguing with Gold Harald, a distinguished cousin or nephew of King
Blue-tooth's, who had done fine viking work, and gained, such wealth
that he got the epithet of "Gold," and who now was infinitely desirous
of a share in Blue-tooth's kingdom as the proper finish to these
sea-rovings. He even ventured one day to make publicly a distinct
proposal that way to King Harald Blue-tooth himself; who flew into