for Ethelred's behoof (in the interval between Svein's death and young
Knut's getting back from Denmark), and that our Olaf Haraldson was the
great engineer and victorious captor of London on that singular
occasion,--London captured for the first time. The Bridge, as usual,
Snorro says, offered almost insuperable obstacles. But the
engineering genius of Olaf contrived huge "platforms of wainscoting
[old walls of wooden houses, in fact], bound together by withes;"
these, carried steadily aloft above the ships, will (thinks Olaf)
considerably secure them and us from the destructive missiles, big
boulder stones, and other, mischief profusely showered down on us,
till we get under the Bridge with axes and cables, and do some good
upon it. Olaf's plan was tried; most of the other ships, in spite of
their wainscoting and withes, recoiled on reaching the Bridge, so
destructive were the boulder and other missile showers. But Olaf's
ships and self got actually under the Bridge; fixed all manner of
cables there; and then, with the river current in their favor, and the
frightened ships rallying to help in this safer part of the
enterprise, tore out the important piles and props, and fairly broke
the poor Bridge, wholly or partly, down into the river, and its Danish
defenders into immediate surrender. That is Snorro's account.

On a previous occasion, Olaf had been deep in a hopeful combination
with Ethelred's two younger sons, Alfred and Edward, afterwards King
Edward the Confessor: That they two should sally out from Normandy in
strong force, unite with Olaf in ditto, and, landing on the Thames, do
something effectual for themselves. But impediments, bad weather or
the like, disheartened the poor Princes, and it came to nothing. Olaf
was much in Normandy, what they then called Walland; a man held in
honor by those Norman Dukes.