or blind Magnus was brought out, and again set to act
as King, or King's Cloak, in hopes Gylle's posterity would never rise to
victory more. But Gylle's posterity did, to victory and also to defeat,
and were the death of Magnus and of Slim-Deacon too, in a frightful way;
and all got their own death by and by in a ditto. In brief, these two
kindreds (reckoned to be authentic enough Haarfagr people, both kinds of
them) proved now to have become a veritable crop of dragon's teeth;
who mutually fought, plotted, struggled, as if it had been their life's
business; never ended fighting and seldom long intermitted it, till they
had exterminated one another, and did at last all rest in death. One
of these later Gylle temporary Kings I remember by the name of Harald
Herdebred, Harald of the Broad Shoulders. The very last of them I
think was Harald Mund (Harald of the _Wry-Mouth_), who gave rise to two
Impostors, pretending to be Sons of his, a good while after the poor
Wry-Mouth itself and all its troublesome belongings were quietly
underground. What Norway suffered during that sad century may be
imagined.

CHAPTER XIV. SVERRIR AND DESCENDANTS, TO HAKON THE OLD.

The end of it was, or rather the first abatement, and _beginnings_ of
the end, That, when all this had gone on ever worsening for some forty
years or so, one Sverrir (A.D. 1177), at the head of an armed mob of
poor people called _Birkebeins_, came upon the scene. A strange enough
figure in History, this Sverrir and his Birkebeins! At first a mere
mockery and dismal laughing-stock to the enlightened Norway public.
Nevertheless by unheard-of fighting, hungering, exertion, and endurance,
Sverrir, after ten years of such a death-wrestle against men and things,
got himself accepted as King; and by wonderful expenditure of ingenuity,
common cunning, unctuous Parliamentary Eloquence or almost Popular
Preaching, and (it must be owned) general human faculty and valor
(or value) in the over-clouded and distorted state, did victoriously
continue such. And founded a new Dynasty in Norway, which ended only
with Norway's separate existence, after near three hundred years.

This Sverrir called himself a Son of Harald Wry-Mouth; but was in
reality the son of a poor Comb-maker in some little town of Norway;
nothing heard of Sonship to Wry-Mouth till after good success otherwise.
His Birkebeins (that is to say, _Birchlegs;_ the poor rebellious
wretches having taken to the woods; and