f the dead, and the Norsemen,
dispirited by the loss of their leaders, gave way and retreated towards
the ships, hotly pursued by their victorious foes. Of their great host
only a small remnant succeeded in reaching the ships.

Thus ended the great fight at Stamford Bridge, and with it the reign and
life of Harold Hardruler, who fell a victim to his ambition and love of
strife. For years thereafter the bones of men lay scattered widely over
that field, for none stayed to bury the dead, the Norsemen fleeing in
their ships, while news of the landing of William of Normandy called
Harold hastily to the south--where he fell in the midst of the fighting
at Hastings as Harold of Norway had fallen on Stamford Field. Harold's
invasion of England was the last great exploit of the vikings of the
north, and though Ireland was invaded later by a Norseland fleet, no
foreign foe after the fatal days at Stamford and Hastings ever landed on
England's shores.

_SVERRE, THE COOK'S SON, AND THE BIRCHLEGS._

In the year 1177 those people in Norway who loved a joke must have
laughed to their hearts' content, when the tidings reached them that the
son of a cook, followed by seventy ragged and half armed men, had set out
to win the throne of the kingdom. Surely a more extraordinary and
laughable enterprise was never undertaken, and the most remarkable thing
about it was that it succeeded. A few years of desperate adventures and
hard fighting raised the cook's son to the throne, and those who had
laughed at his temerity were now glad to hail him as their king. How
Sverre the adventurer won the crown is a tale full of adventure and amply
worth the telling.

No common man was Sverre and no common woman was his mother Gunhild, a
cook in the kitchen of King Sigurd Mouth. Not handsome was she, but quick
of wit and bright of brain. If the king had had his way the boy would
have had a very short life, for he bade the mother to kill her child as
soon as it should be born. Instead of consenting to this cruel mandate,
she fled from the palace to a ship, which took her to the Faroe Islands,
and here her son was born. She was then serving as milkmaid to Bishop
Mathias.

The little Sverre began his life with an adventure. When he was a few
months old a man named Unas came from Norway to the islands, a smith or
comb-maker by profession. But Gunhild suspected him of being a spy sent
by King Sigurd to kill her son, and she hid the boy in a cavern,