The news from Norway were naturally agitating to King Olaf and, in the
fluctuation of events there, his purposes and prospects varied much.
He sometimes thought of pilgriming to Jerusalem, and a henceforth
exclusively religious life; but for most part his pious thoughts
themselves gravitated towards Norway, and a stroke for his old place
and task there, which he steadily considered to have been committed to
him by God. Norway, by the rumors, was evidently not at rest. Jarl
Hakon, under the high patronage of his uncle, had lasted there but a
little while. I know not that his government was especially
unpopular, nor whether he himself much remembered his broken oath. It
appears, however, he had left in England a beautiful bride; and
considering farther that in England only could bridal ornaments and
other wedding outfit of a sufficiently royal kind be found, he set
sail thither, to fetch her and them himself. One evening of
wildish-looking weather he was seen about the northeast corner of the
Pentland Frith; the night rose to be tempestuous; Hakon or any timber
of his fleet was never seen more. Had all gone down,--broken oaths,
bridal hopes, and all else; mouse and man,--into the roaring waters.
There was no farther Opposition-line; the like of which had lasted
ever since old heathen Hakon Jarl, down to this his grandson Hakon's
_finis_ in the Pentland Frith. With this Hakon's disappearance it now
disappeared.

Indeed Knut himself, though of an empire suddenly so great, was but a
temporary phenomenon. Fate had decided that the grand and wise Knut
was to be short-lived; and to leave nothing as successors but an
ineffectual young Harald Harefoot, who soon perished, and a still
stupider fiercely-drinking Harda-Knut, who rushed down of apoplexy
(here in London City, as I guess), with the goblet at his mouth,
drinking health and happiness at a wedding-feast, also before long.