so many war-ships, fully manned and ready, to be furnished
instantly on the King's demand by each province or fjord; watch-fires,
on fit places, from hill to hill all along the coast, were to be
carefully set up, carefully maintained in readiness, and kindled on any
alarm of war. By such methods Blue-tooth and Co.'s invasions were for a
long while triumphantly, and even rapidly, one and all of them, beaten
back, till at length they seemed as if intending to cease altogether,
and leave Hakon alone of them. But such was not their issue after all.
The sons of Eric had only abated under constant discouragement, had not
finally left off from what seemed their one great feasibility in
life. Gunhild, their mother, was still with them: a most contriving,
fierce-minded, irreconcilable woman, diligent and urgent on them, in
season and out of season; and as for King Blue-tooth, he was at all
times ready to help, with his good-will at least.

That of the alarm-fires on Hakon's part was found troublesome by his
people; sometimes it was even hurtful and provoking (lighting your
alarm-fires and rousing the whole coast and population, when it was
nothing but some paltry viking with a couple of ships); in short, the
alarm-signal system fell into disuse, and good King Hakon himself,
in the first place, paid the penalty. It is counted, by the latest
commentators, to have been about A.D. 961, sixteenth or seventeenth year
of Hakon's pious, valiant, and worthy reign. Being at a feast one day,
with many guests, on the Island of Stord, sudden announcement came
to him that ships from the south were approaching in quantity, and
evidently ships of war. This was the biggest of all the Blue-tooth
foster-son invasions; and it was fatal to Hakon the Good that night.
Eyvind the Skaldaspillir (annihilator of all other Skalds), in his famed
_Hakon's Song_, gives account, and, still more pertinently, the always
practical Snorro. Danes in great multitude, six to one, as people
afterwards computed, springing swiftly to land, and ranking themselves;
Hakon, nevertheless, at once deciding not to take to his ships and
run, but to fight there, one to six; fighting, accordingly, in his
most splendid manner, and at last gloriously prevailing; routing and
scattering back to their ships and flight homeward these six-to-one
Danes. "During the struggle of the fight," says Snorro, "he was very
conspicuous among other men; and while the sun shone, his bright gilded
h