others, in a large, quietly potent, and successful manner; and it
lasted in this royal form till his death, after sixty years of it.

These were the times of Norse colonization; proud Norsemen flying into
other lands, to freer scenes,--to Iceland, to the Faroe Islands, which
were hitherto quite vacant (tenanted only by some mournful hermit,
Irish Christian _fakir_, or so); still more copiously to the Orkney
and Shetland Isles, the Hebrides and other countries where Norse
squatters and settlers already were. Settlement of Iceland, we say;
settlement of the Faroe Islands, and, by far the notablest of all,
settlement of Normandy by Rolf the Ganger (A.D. 876?).[2]

Rolf, son of Rognwald,[3] was lord of three little islets far north,
near the Fjord of Folden, called the Three Vigten Islands; but his
chief means of living was that of sea robbery; which, or at least
Rolf's conduct in which, Harald did not approve of. In the Court of
Harald, sea-robbery was strictly forbidden as between Harald's own
countries, but as against foreign countries it continued to be the one
profession for a gentleman; thus, I read, Harald's own chief son, King
Eric that afterwards was, had been at sea in such employments ever
since his twelfth year. Rolf's crime, however, was that in coming
home from one of these expeditions, his crew having fallen short of
victual, Rolf landed with them on the shore of Norway, and in his
strait, drove in some cattle there (a crime by law) and proceeded to
kill and eat; which, in a little while, he heard that King Harald was
on foot to inquire into and punish; whereupon Rolf the Ganger speedily
got into his ships again, got to the coast of France with his sea-
robbers, got infeftment by the poor King of France in the fruitful,
shaggy desert which is since called Normandy, land of the Northmen;
and there, gradually felling the forests, banking the rivers, tilling