as he thought, no free-born man could now care to live.  Now it is that we hear of him in Iceland, where Ingolf was the first settler in the year 874, and was soon followed by many of his countrymen.  Now, too, we hear of him in all lands.  Now France—­now Italy—­now Spain, feel the fury of his wrath, and the weight of his arm.  After a time, but not until nearly a century has passed, he spreads his wings for a wider flight, and takes service under the great emperor at Byzantium, or Micklegarth—­the great city, the town of towns—­and fights his foes from whatever quarter they come.  The Moslem in Sicily and Asia, the Bulgarians and Slavonians on the shores of the Black Sea and in Greece, well know the temper of the Northern steel, which has forced many of their chosen champions to bite the dust.  Wherever he goes the Northman leaves his mark, and to this day the lion at the entrance to the arsenal at Venice is scored with runes which tell of his triumph.

But of all countries, what were called the Western Lands were his favourite haunt.  England, where the Saxons were losing their old dash and daring, and settling down into a sluggish sensual race; Ireland, the flower of Celtic lands, in which a system of great age and undoubted civilization was then fast falling to pieces, afforded a tempting battlefield in the everlasting feuds between chief and chief; Scotland, where the power of the Picts was waning, while that of the Scots had not taken firm hold on the country, and most of all the islands in the Scottish Main, Orkney, Shetland, and the outlying Faroe Isles;—­all these were his chosen abode.  In those islands he took deep root, established himself on the old system, shaved in the quarrels of the chiefs and princes of the Mainland, now helped Pict and now Scot, roved the seas and made all ships prizes, and kept alive his old grudge against Harold Fairhair and the new system by a long series of piratical incursions on the Norway coast.  So worrying did these Viking cruises at last become, that Harold, who meantime had steadily pursued his policy at home, and forced all men to bow to his sway or leave the land, resolved to crush the wasps that stung him summer after summer in their own nest.  First of all he sent Kettle flatnose, a mighty chief, to subdue the foe; but though Kettle waged successful war, he kept what he won for himself.  It was the old story of setting a thief to catch a thief; and Harold found that if he was to have his work done to his mind he must do it himself.  He called on his chiefs to follow him, levied a mighty force, and, sailing suddenly with a fleet which must have seemed an armada in those days, he fell upon the Vikings in Orkney and Shetland, in the Hebrides and Western Isles, in Man and Anglesey, in the Lewes and Faroe—­wherever he could find them he followed them up with fire and sword.  Not once, but twice he crossed the sea after them, and tore them out so thoroughly, root and branch, that we hear no more of these lands as a lair of Vikings, but as the abode of Norse Jarls and their udallers (freeholders) who look upon the new state of things at home as right and just, and acknowledge the authority of Harold and his successors by an allegiance more or less dutiful at different times, but which was never afterwards entirely thrown off.