irating into these parts: and then there
chanced a mighty shipwreck, for God was angry with them, and He sunk
them; and their skulls, as they came ashore, were placed here as a
memorial. There were many more when I was young, but now they are fast
disappearing. Some of them must have belonged to strange fellows, madam.
Only see that one; why, the two young gentry can scarcely lift it!" And,
indeed, my brother and myself had entered the Golgotha, and commenced
handling these grim relics of mortality. One enormous skull, lying in a
corner, had fixed our attention, and we had drawn it forth. Spirit of
eld, what a skull was yon!

I still seem to see it, the huge grim thing; many of the others were
large, strikingly so, and appeared fully to justify the old man's
conclusion that their owners must have been strange fellows; but compared
with this mighty mass of bone they looked small and diminutive, like
those of pigmies; it must have belonged to a giant, one of those
red-haired warriors of whose strength and stature such wondrous tales are
told in the ancient chronicles of the north, and whose grave-hills, when
ransacked, occasionally reveal secrets which fill the minds of puny
moderns with astonishment and awe. Reader, have you ever pored days and
nights over the pages of Snorro? probably not, for he wrote in a language
which few of the present day understand, and few would be tempted to read
him tamed down by Latin dragomans. A brave old book is that of Snorro,
containing the histories and adventures of old northern kings and
champions, who seemed to have been quite different men, if we may judge
from the feats which they performed, from those of these days. One of
the best of his histories is that which describes the life of Harald
Haardraade, who, after manifold adventures by land and sea, now a pirate,
now a mercenary of the Greek emperor, became King of Norway, and
eventually perished at the battle of Stanford Bridge, whilst engaged in a
gallant onslaught upon England. Now, I have often thought that the old
Kemp, whose mouldering skull in the Golgotha at Hythe my brother and
myself could scarcely lift, must have resembled in one respect at least
this Harald, whom Snorro describes as a great and wise ruler and a
determined leader, dangerous in battle, of fair presence, and measuring
in height just _five ells_, {10} neither more nor less.

I never forgot the Daneman's skull; like the apparition of the viper in