ro of the North, true darling of War and of Song, was Harold
Hardrada! At the terrible battle of Stiklestad, at which his brother,
St. Olave, had fallen, he was but fifteen years of age, but his body was
covered with the wounds of a veteran. Escaping from the field, he lay
concealed in the house of a Bonder peasant, remote in deep forests, till
his wounds were healed. Thence, chaunting by the way, (for a poet's soul
burned bright in Hardrada,) "That a day would come when his name would be
great in the land he now left," he went on into Sweden, thence into
Russia, and after wild adventures in the East, joined, with the bold
troop he had collected around him, that famous body-guard of the Greek
emperors [223], called the Vaeringers, and of these he became the chief.
Jealousies between himself and the Greek General of the Imperial forces,
(whom the Norwegian chronicler calls Gyrger,) ended in Harold's
retirement with his Vaeringers into the Saracen land of Africa. Eighty
castles stormed and taken, vast plunder in gold and in jewels, and nobler
meed in the song of the Scald and the praise of the brave, attested the
prowess of the great Scandinavian. New laurels, blood-stained, new
treasures, sword-won, awaited him in Sicily; and thence, rough foretype
of the coming crusader, he passed on to Jerusalem. His sword swept
before him Moslem and robber. He bathed in Jordan, and knelt at the Holy
Cross.

Returned to Constantinople, the desire for his northern home seized
Hardrada. There he heard that his nephew Magnus, the illegitimate son of
St. Olave, had become King of Norway,--and he himself aspired to a
throne. So he gave up his command under Zoe the empress; but, if Scald
be believed, Zoe the empress loved the bold chief, whose heart was set on
Maria her niece. To detain Hardrada, a charge of mal-appropriation,
whether of pay or of booty, was brought against him. He was cast into
prison. But when the brave are in danger, the saints send the fair to
their help! Moved by a holy dream, a Greek lady lowered ropes from the
roof of the tower to the dungeon wherein Hardrada was cast. He escaped
from the prison, he aroused his Vaeringers, they flocked round their
chief; he went to the house of his lady Maria, bore her off to the
galley, put out into the Black Sea, reached Novgorod, (at the friendly
court of whose king he had safely lodged his vast spoils,) sailed home to
the north: and, after such feats as became sea-king