hard rule in Norway.

Olaf Trygveson's uncle had grown old in exile at Novgorod when young
Olaf and his mother fled from Norway to join him there and were captured
by Vikings in the Baltic and kept six years in the Gulf of Riga before
they got to Holmgard (972).

In 1019 Ingigerd of Sweden was married to Jaroslav; ten years later St.
Olaf was driven from Norway by revolt, and flying into Russia, was
offered a Kingdom called Volgaria--the modern Casan, whose old
metropolis of Vulghar was known to the Arab travellers of the ninth
century, and whose ruins can still be seen. Olaf hesitated between this
and a pilgrim's death in Jerusalem and at last preferred to fight his
way back to Norway.

The next King of the Norsemen, Magnus the Good, came from Novgorod by
Ladoga to Trondhjem, when Olaf's son Harold Hardrada fled back to his
father's refuge, to the court of Jaroslav; while Magnus had been in
exile, men had asked news of him from all the merchants that traded to
Novgorod.

Last of these earlier kings, Harold Hardrada, during all the time of his
wild romance in East and South, before he went to Miklagard, and after
his flight, and all the time of his service in the Varangian Guard of
the Empress Zoe, made Novgorod his home. His pilgrim relics from Holy
Land and his war spoils from Serkland--Africa and Sicily--were all sent
back to Jaroslav's care till their master could come and claim them, and
when he came at last, flying from Byzantine vengeance across the Black
Sea into the Sea of Azov and "all round the Eastern Realm" of Kiev, he
found his wealth untouched and Princess Elizabeth ready to be his wife
and to help him with Russian men and money to win back Norway and to die
at Stamford Bridge for the Crown of England (1066).

Harold is the type of all Vikings, of the Norse race in its greatest,
most restless energy. William the Conqueror, or Cnut the Great, or
Robert Guiscard, or Roger of Sicily, are all greater and stronger men,
but there is no "ganger," no rover, like the man who in fifty years,
after fighting in well-nigh every land of Christians or of the
neighbours and enemies of Christendom, yet hoped for time to sail off to
the new-found countries and so fulfil his oath and promise to perfect a
life of unmatched adventure by unmatched discovery. He had fought with
wild beasts in the Arena of Constantinople; he had bathed in the Jordan
and cleared the Syrian roads of robbers; he had stormed eighty castles
in