was hindered she ran into the woods and slew men to get their property."
She was always urging her brothers to deeds of daring and adventure. One
day they had been hawking, and when they let slip the falcons, Harald's
falcon killed two blackcocks in one flight and three in another. The dogs
ran and brought the birds, and he said proudly to the others, "It will be
long before most of you have any such success," and they all agreed to
this. He rode home in high spirits and showed his birds to his sister
Freydis. "Did any king," he asked, "ever make so great a capture in so
short a time?" "It is, indeed," she said, "a good morning's hunting to
have got five blackcocks, but it was still better when in one morning a
king of Norway took five kings and subdued all their kingdoms." Then
Harald went away very humble and besought his father to let him go and
serve on the Varangian Guard of King Otho at Constantinople, that he might
learn to be a warrior.

So Harald was brought from his Norwegian home by his father Erik the Red,
in his galley called the _Sea-serpent_, and sailed with him through
the Mediterranean Sea, and was at last made a member of the Emperor Otho's
Varangian Guard at Constantinople. This guard will be well remembered by
the readers of Scott's novel, "Count Robert of Paris," and was maintained
by successive emperors and drawn largely from the Scandinavian races. Erik
the Red had no hesitation in leaving his son among them, as the young man
was stout and strong, very self-willed, and quite able to defend himself.
The father knew also that the Varangian Guard, though hated by the people,
held to one another like a band of brothers; and that any one brought up
among them would be sure of plenty of fighting and plenty of gold,--the
two things most prized by early Norsemen. For ordinary life, Harald's
chief duties would be to lounge about the palace, keeping guard, wearing
helmet and buckler and bearskin, with purple underclothes and golden
clasped hose; and bearing as armor a mighty battle-axe and a small