in some points.

For the rest, he was evidently, in practical matters, a man of sharp,
clear insight, of steadfast resolution, diligence, promptitude; and
managed his secular matters uncommonly well. Had sixteen Jarls under
him, though himself only Hakon Jarl by title; and got obedience from
them stricter than any king since Haarfagr had done. Add to which
that the country had years excellent for grass and crop, and that the
herrings came in exuberance; tokens, to the thinking mind, that Hakon
Jarl was a favorite of Heaven.

His fight with the far-famed Jomsvikings was his grandest exploit in
public rumor. Jomsburg, a locality not now known, except that it was
near the mouth of the River Oder, denoted in those ages the
impregnable castle of a certain hotly corporate, or "Sea Robbery
Association (limited)," which, for some generations, held the Baltic
in terror, and plundered far beyond the Belt,--in the ocean itself, in
Flanders and the opulent trading havens there,--above all, in opulent
anarchic England, which, for forty years from about this time, was the
pirates' Goshen; and yielded, regularly every summer, slaves,
Danegelt, and miscellaneous plunder, like no other country Jomsburg or
the viking-world had ever known. Palnatoke, Bue, and the other
quasi-heroic heads of this establishment are still remembered in the
northern parts. _Palnatoke_ is the title of a tragedy by
Oehlenschlager, which had its run of immortality in Copenhagen some
sixty or seventy years ago.

I judge the institution to have been in its floweriest state, probably
now in Hakon Jarl's time. Hakon Jarl and these pirates, robbing
Hakon's subjects and merchants that frequented him, were naturally in