back to Norway with her sons; and naturally passed for the
secret adviser and Maternal President in whatever of violence went on;
always reckoned a fell, vehement, relentless personage where her own
interests were concerned. Probably as things settled, her influence on
affairs grew less. At least one hopes so; and, in the Sagas, hears less
and less of her, and before long nothing.

Harald, the head-king in this Eric fraternity, does not seem to have
been a bad man,--the contrary indeed; but his position was untowardly,
full of difficulty and contradictions. Whatever Harald could accomplish
for behoof of Christianity, or real benefit to Norway, in these cross
circumstances, he seems to have done in a modest and honest manner. He
got the name of _Greyfell_ from his people on a very trivial account,
but seemingly with perfect good humor on their part. Some Iceland trader
had brought a cargo of furs to Trondhjem (Lade) for sale; sale being
slacker than the Icelander wished, he presented a chosen specimen,
cloak, doublet, or whatever it was, to Harald; who wore it with
acceptance in public, and rapidly brought disposal of the Icelander's
stock, and the surname of _Greyfell_ to himself. His under-kings and he
were certainly not popular, though I almost think Greyfell himself, in
absence of his mother and the under-kings, might have been so. But here
they all were, and had wrought great trouble in Norway. "Too many of
them," said everybody; "too many of these courts and court people,
eating up any substance that there is." For the seasons withal, two or
three of them in succession, were bad for grass, much more for grain;
no _herring_ came either; very cleanness of teeth was like to come in
Eyvind Skaldaspillir's opinion. This scarcity became at last their share
of the great Famine Of A.D. 975, which desolated Western Europe (see the
poem in the Saxon Chronicle). And all this by Eyvind Skaldaspillir, and
the heathen Norse in general, was ascribed to anger of the heathen gods.
Discontent in Norway, and especially in Eyvind Skaldaspillir, seems to
have been very great.

Whereupon exile Hakon, Jarl Sigurd's son, bestirs himself in Denmark,
backed by old King Blue-tooth, and begins invading and encroaching in a
miscellaneous way; especially intriguing and contriving plots all round
him. An unfathomably cunning kind of fellow, as well as an audacious and
strong-handed! Intriguing in Trondhjem, where he gets the under-king,
Greyfe