Birkebeiner, or Birchlegs. Though little better than highwaymen, they
were sturdy and daring and had some success, but finally were badly
beaten by the king and their leader slain. They might have never been
heard of again had not the greatest of the pretenders just then came to
Norway.

The rumor that a son of King Sigurd Mouth was in the land reached the
ears of the handful of Birchlegs remaining and, learning where Sverre
was, they sought him and begged him to be their chief. He looked at them,
and seeing what dirty and ragged vagabonds they were, he told them that
he had no fancy for being their leader, that there was no link of
connection between them and him but poverty, and advised them, if they
wanted a chief, to seek one of Earl Birger's sons, who, like himself,
were of royal descent.

The beggarly troop took his advice, but the earl's son would have nothing
to do with them. By way of a joke he told them to go back to Sverre and
threaten to kill him if he would not be their leader. They did so, using
persuasions and possibly threats, and Sverre, seeing no hope of success
among the great, finally consented to become the leader of this ragged
band of brigands. Such was his first definite step on the road to the
throne.

In this humble fashion, the ambitious young prince, then about
twenty-four years old, with empty hands and pockets and seventy ragged
followers, began his desperate strife for the throne of Norway.

From Vermeland, where his enterprise began, he led his forlorn seventy
southward toward Viken, his party rolling on like a snowball and growing
in size on its way, until it swelled to four hundred and twenty men. In
spite of his protest, these vagabonds proclaimed him king and touched his
sword to indicate their allegiance. But their devotion to his cause was
not great, for when he forbade them to rob and plunder the peasants most
of them left him. To test the remainder, he ordered them back to
Vermeland and before they reached that region only the original seventy
remained.

Desperate was now the position of the youthful adventurer. He had
declared himself a claimant for the throne and any one had the right to
kill him. The peasants hated his robber band and he could get none to
join him. They would rather have killed them all and thus earned the
king's favor.

Had young Sverre been a man of common mind his enterprise must now have
reached its end. But he was a man of wonderful mental resources