HARALD HAARFAGR.

Till about the Year of Grace 860 there were no kings in Norway,
nothing but numerous jarls,--essentially kinglets, each presiding over
a kind of republican or parliamentary little territory; generally
striving each to be on some terms of human neighborhood with those
about him, but,--in spite of "_Fylke Things_" (Folk Things, little
parish parliaments), and small combinations of these, which had
gradually formed themselves,--often reduced to the unhappy state of
quarrel with them. Harald Haarfagr was the first to put an end to
this state of things, and become memorable and profitable to his
country by uniting it under one head and making a kingdom of it; which
it has continued to be ever since. His father, Halfdan the Black, had
already begun this rough but salutary process,--inspired by the
cupidities and instincts, by the faculties and opportunities, which
the good genius of this world, beneficent often enough under savage
forms, and diligent at all times to diminish anarchy as the world's
worst savagery, usually appoints in such cases,--conquest, hard
fighting, followed by wise guidance of the conquered;--but it was
Harald the Fairhaired, his son, who conspicuously carried it on and
completed it. Harald's birth-year, death-year, and chronology in
general, are known only by inference and computation; but, by the
latest reckoning, he died about the year 933 of our era, a man of
eighty-three.

The business of conquest lasted Harald about twelve years (A.D.
860-872?), in which he subdued also the vikings of the out-islands,
Orkneys, Shetlands, Hebrides, and Man. Sixty more years were given
him to consolidate and regulate what he had conquered, which he did