elve years, had his unkempt (and almost unimaginable) head of hair
clipt off,--Jarl Rognwald (_Reginald_) of More, the most valued and
valuable of all his subject-jarls, being promoted to this sublime barber
function;--after which King Harald, with head thoroughly cleaned, and
hair grown, or growing again to the luxuriant beauty that had no equal
in his day, brought home his Gyda, and made her the brightest queen
in all the north. He had after her, in succession, or perhaps even
simultaneously in some cases, at least six other wives; and by Gyda
herself one daughter and four sons.

Harald was not to be considered a strict-living man, and he had a great
deal of trouble, as we shall see, with the tumultuous ambition of his
sons; but he managed his government, aided by Jarl Rognwald and others,
in a large, quietly potent, and successful manner; and it lasted in this
royal form till his death, after sixty years of it.

These were the times of Norse colonization; proud Norsemen flying into
other lands, to freer scenes,--to Iceland, to the Faroe Islands, which
were hitherto quite vacant (tenanted only by some mournful hermit,
Irish Christian _fakir_, or so); still more copiously to the Orkney and
Shetland Isles, the Hebrides and other countries where Norse squatters
and settlers already were. Settlement of Iceland, we say; settlement
of the Faroe Islands, and, by far the notablest of all, settlement of
Normandy by Rolf the Ganger (A.D. 876?). [2]

Rolf, son of Rognwald, [3] was lord of three little islets far north,
near the Fjord of Folden, called the Three Vigten Islands; but his
chief means of living was that of sea robbery; which, or at least Rolf's
conduct in which, Harald did not approve of. In the Court of Harald,
sea-robbery was strictly forbidden as between Harald's own countries,
but as against foreign countries it continued to be the one profession
for a gentleman; thus, I read, Harald's own chief son, King Eric that
afterwards was, had been at sea in such employments ever since his
twelfth year. Rolf's crime, however, was that in coming home from one of
these expeditions, his crew having fallen short of victual, Rolf landed
with them on the shore of Norway, and in his strait, drove in some
cattle there (a crime by law) and proceeded to kill and eat; which, in a
little while, he heard that King Harald was on foot to inquire into and
punish; whereupon Rolf the Ganger speedily got into his ships again, got
to the c