the wrath of the brutal, ferocious, furious, untamed,
implacable hordes by whom that oppression was inflicted, because of the
excellence of their polished, ample, treble, heavy, trusty, glittering
corslets; and their hard, strong, valiant swords; and their well-riveted
long spears, and their ready, brilliant arms of valour besides; and
because of the greatness of their achievements and of their deeds, their
bravery, and their valour, their strength, and their venom, and their
ferocity, and because of the excess of their thirst and their hunger for
the brave, fruitful, nobly-inhabited, full of cataracts, rivers, bays,
pure, smooth-plained, sweet grassy land of Erinn"--(pp. 52-53). Some
part of this, however, must be abated, because the chronicler is
exalting the terror-striking enemy that he may still further exalt his
own people, the Dal Cais, who did so much under Brian Boroimhe to check
the inroads of the Northmen. When a book does (5) appear, which has
been announced these ten years past, we shall have more material for
the reconstruction of the life of those times than is now anywhere
accessible. Viking earldoms also were the Orkneys, Faroes, and
Shetlands. So late as 1171, in the reign of Henry II., the year after
Beckett's murder, Earl Sweyn Asleifsson of Orkney, who had long been the
terror of the western seas, "fared a sea-roving" and scoured the western
coast of England, Man, and the east of Ireland, but was killed in an
attack on his kinsmen of Dublin. He had used to go upon a regular plan
that may be taken as typical of the homely manner of most of his like
in their cruising: "Sweyn had in the spring hard work, and made them
lay down very much seed, and looked much after it himself. But when
that toil was ended, he fared away every spring on a viking-voyage, and
harried about among the southern isles and Ireland, and came home after
midsummer. That he called spring-viking. Then he was at home until the
corn-fields were reaped down, and the grain seen to and stored. Then
he fared away on a viking-voyage, and then he did not come home till the
winter was one month off, and that he called his autumn-viking." (6)

Toward the end of the ninth century Harold Fairhair, either spurred
by the example of Charlemagne, or really prompted, as Snorri Sturluson
tells us, resolved to bring all Norway under him. As Snorri has it in
"Heimskringla": "King Harold sent his men to a girl hight Gyda.... The
king wanted her for his l