Canute, the
king of Denmark, completed the conquest and became king of all England.

This is not the whole story of the sea-kings, whose daring voyages and
raids made up much of the history of those centuries. One of the most
important events in viking history took place in 862, when three brother
chiefs, probably from Sweden, who had won fame in the Baltic Sea, were
invited by the Russian tribes south of Lake Ladoga to come and rule over
them. They did so, making Novgorod their capital. From this grew the
empire of Russia, which was ruled over by the descendants of Rurik, the
principal of these chiefs, until 1598.

Other vikings made their way southward through Russia and, sailing down
the Dnieper, put Constantinople in peril. Only a storm which scattered
their fleet saved the great city from capture. Three times later they
appeared before Constantinople, twice (in 904 and 945) being bought off
by the emperors with large sums of money. Later on the emperors had a
picked body-guard of Varangians, as they called the Northmen, and kept
these till the fall of the city in 1453. It was deemed a great honor in
the north to serve in this choice cohort at Myklegaard (Great City), and
those who returned from there doubtless carried many of the elements of
civilization to the Scandinavian shores.

To some of these Varangians was due the conquest of Sicily by the
Northmen. They were in the army sent from Constantinople to conquer that
island, and seeing how goodly a land it was they aided in its final
conquest, which was made by Robert Guiscard, a noble of Normandy, whose
son Roger took the title of "King of Sicily and Italy." Thus it was that
the viking voyages led within a few centuries to the founding of kingdoms
under Norse rulers in England, Ireland, Sicily, Russia, and Normandy in
France.

_HAAKON THE GOOD AND THE SONS OF GUNHILD._

We have told how King Haakon succeeded his brother, Erik Blood-Axe, on
the throne, and how, from his kindly and gentle nature, people called him
Haakon the Good. There were other sons and several grandsons of Harold
the Fair-Haired in the kingdom, but the new king treated them with
friendliness and let them rule as minor kings under him.

He dealt with the peasants also in the same kindly spirit, giving them
back their lands and relieving them of the tax which Harold had laid. But
he taxed them all in another way, dividing the country into marine
districts, each of which was require